Osthos

7 minutes ago, Nismooo said:

The difference is that HK and Singapore do not have parties like the Phuket Kolour beach party, full of covid deniers, no one wearing mask etc. 

On that point I would say HK was in exactly the same position last November as Thailand is in now. The superspreader event that triggered a wave of serious cases was linked to a ballroom dancing club. People in close proximity dancing without masks and violating the limit on the number of people present at the same time (Sound familiar?). From this wave HK implemented very similar restrictions as Thailand has now, controlling the spread over a month or two.

As to the reduction of quarantine, I think it's obvious the economic considerations were weighed quite heavily in that decision.

And I agree short term lockdown pain will control this wave quicker and would be preferable for some. But what about those who would lose their livelihoods or those who can't afford a hard lockdown? Does the government have the will or the means to help them survive?  

29 minutes ago, Marvin Hagler said:

 

As we have seen from every country around the world, if you want to reduce case numbers then you need a hard lockdown and it takes weeks to see the effects of the lockdown.

 

There has been no lockdown and only a few days since any measures have been implemented and those measures were extremely weak compared to a full lockdown. To think numbers would go down at this stage due to measures taken in the last few days seems completely incorrect to me.

 

I am not advocating a lockdown, just saying a severe lockdown brings down the numbers and not a half art lockdown..this has been shown in pretty much every country around the world.

I get what you're saying, for the most part lockdowns have shown to work ala Melbourne last year and the UK earlier this year. But there are also more variables at work which give a chance for the restrictions put in place to work.

One is that people are generally self policing. People are largely compliant to wearing masks. And if reports are to be believed, whist many people traveled home during Songkran, many people too cancelled their trips.

Another is that if we compare regional countries that had not gone into full lockdown to control the virus. Both Singapore and Hong Kong have been in similar positions to Thailand and both had similar restrictions on nightlife, restaurants, and bars. Through these measures, both have defeated waves of cases that infected relatively small numbers of its population. And both these places are much more dense population wise compared to Thailand, even to Bangkok. 

A lockdown would indeed bring the cases down much more quickly, but there's evidence that currently restrictions work too.

Edit: Spelling.

3 minutes ago, Bkk Brian said:

That maybe correct but what is not revealed is how many people were tested. Each person tested positive receives at least another to confirm and one or two more to see when they are no longer infected. Then you have all the tests carried out in quarantine etc. Its certainly not clear. So the hope of this being 16,000 people tested is highly unlikely.

That's fair, the data provided here does not provide this detail. However, assuming those who tested positive were again tested twice, given the relatively low number of positives prior to April 4th, it would not put too much of a dent in the number of unique people tested. Perhaps a thousand at most.

We know from the last peak that Thailand can test at least ~30k per day. Will it be enough for this wave? No idea. 

14 minutes ago, smedly said:

you do realise that at 1,300 infections per day that covers just over 7 days of infected people, how many tests are they actually doing per day ?????, I will bet it's not much over 3000

The last data point from ourworldindata shows a rolling average of 16,100 tests done per day over 7 days as of April 4th. During the last wave, testing peaked at 30,800 per day.

Link: Thailand: Coronavirus Pandemic Country Profile - Our World in Data

Edit: Included link.