dan42

I always say that Covid-19 is like a mirror. It shows every country all its strenghts and weaknessess, it puts them in front of a mirror like in the Snow White tell and shows them their real face.

Covid-wise, the situation is bad everywhere, there's almost no place on Earth to escape. In some places you will find death and poverty, in others they control the virus through a police-state...

Covid pressures countries so much that it puts them on the edge. I imagine your concern is related also to the political situation in the coming months and years because the pressure on the goverment is expected to increase and nobody knows how this might end up. Doesn't look good to be honest so I get your feeling.

1 hour ago, WaveHunter said:

Viruses can also mutate to become less lethal / less transmissible.  That really what accounted for the end of the Spanish Flu pandemic.

The 1918 Flu had nothing to do with Spain. If at least it had started in Spain, but it didn't. It had nothing to do with Spain at all. It got that name because it happened during WWI and all countries were censoring the news about the flu; Spain was neutral so its media informed. And hence the name. Probably the most unfortunate and unfair nickname ever given.

Uff....not good....

I feel so sad especially for the people in the villages.... Being so easy to influence with rumours, misinformation and panics they must be terrified at this moment. Poor people...

I'm really starting to think that the EU and the US need to start paying serious attention to what is happening in SEA, sending vaccines, equipment, experts... They won't have a stable vaccines supply for some time and they don't have the luxury to go on full lockdowns for long periods so they really need help. This is a once-in-a-century situation and any help we send them could help to save many lifes.

In the time I have been using this forum I have seen many users laughing at Thailand, their processes, government, some behaviours, credibility... It's been kind of shocking because I assume many of those live there so I wonder why the hell would they live in a place they have such little respect for...

So, is this a real pattern? Do you think this is common? Maybe more among some specific groups of foreigners living in Thailand? 

Not surprised seeing images like this yesterday.

I really want to understand and empathize with Thailand's vaccination program but I really can't. These images are difficult to process. 

26 minutes ago, Pattaya Spotter said:

As Singapore has said, once vaccination numbers increase, new cases aren't important...serious hospitalizations and deaths are.

Same approach here in Spain. We have around 30-40k new cases per day and the healthcare system is managing pretty well. Once you get around 40% of the population fully vaccinated, starting with the elderly and going down age group by age group, severe illness, hospitalizations, ICUs and deaths go down fast. Here we are at around 55% fully vaccinated, it's going fast and considering the low number of anti-vaxxers here I think we will reach 80-90%. I think Italy is starting to ignore new cases as an important metric as well, and that makes sense on countries with advanced vaccination programs IMHO

Back to Thailand, I think we need to stop looking at the past and blaming the goverment and start looking at the present and future, focusing on solutions no fingerpointing because that won't help, will only put the goverment more nervous and on a defensive position, and what they need now is focus. There's almost no country in the world that has not made obscene mistakes on this so let's move on.

In terms of strategy, I believe it's a mistake to focus so much and almost only on vaccines. No matter what the goverment does, it will take months until Thailand receives a stable and sufficient amount of vaccines and design the logistics to innoculate them fast and efficiently. So a strong focus must be put on what to do in the meantime to reduce deaths as much as possible and limit damage on the economy. They need to increase testing of people and drain waters to anticipate clusters, tracking positives and close contacts, print baths and estimulate the economy, control the borders, invest on equipment (i.e.: ventilators), apply strong measures to reduce movement around the country...Many many things the goverment must do beyond vaccination.

Wow....I cannot imagine this happening in Europe man....He would be completely destroyed by the media, opposition, social media... Probably even your own party... How can you tell your own people those things when they are suffering so much? 

Unbelievable.

The crisis is over. Open the gogobars!!!!!!

2 minutes ago, brewsterbudgen said:

A full national lockdown would reduce the numbers, but without a proper national vaccination programme won't the numbers start to rise again once the lockdown ends? Could the whole country be locked down for months?

Three months lockdown; army and police deployed to control the measures and provide food to those in need; during these months buy vaccines and design the logistics to vaccinate the whole country. IMHO the time for soft measures is over.

Okay, this looks really ugly now. They must put the whole country under full lockdown ASAP. I don't understand what the hell they are waiting for.

As I said in a different thread, the measures the Thai government is implementing seem too soft IMO. Here in Spain, when we suffered that terrible 1st wave the whole country was put under lockdown between march and june and you were only allowed to leave home to buy food, medicines and a couple of additional urgent situations. The army was deployed throughout the whole country, there were military controls everywhere. I even found the militaries a couple of times in the supermarket I usually go, checking the situation. It was really shocking, like a <deleted> movie, but it worked. In June contagions went down almost to zero. And at that time we didn't have the hope of the vaccines yet so the situation was much worse.

So I think Thailand needs to do exactly that: lock down the whole country for three months, deploy the whole army and police to control that the measures are respected, and use those three months to buy vaccines desperately and design the logistics to innoculate the whole country as fast as possible after the lockdown. They need to learn from the bad times others had.

I wish the best to thai people, extremelly difficult times coming for them.