The Cipher

But....do you live or spend considerable time there anyway tho? ????

Man, you can literally go to any database of academic publications and find population studies that show the benefits of vaccines against Covid. Here's a link. There are dozens, take your pick. If investigating that link is too much work, here's a screenshot of a conclusion from one study. Sometimes I feel like all I do on here is people's homework for them. Come on, guys.

Jeez, there are some insane takes in here.

It is, isn't it? You love to see it. ????

I did this for a few months! Had a blast until lockdown hit. I'll be back and expect that many others in similar positions will be too (I'm already recruiting some of my friends to fly in and visit next time I'm in town). Quite excited to see how the influx of this type of worker changes the social fabric of the expat experience.

Well, this is a subjective values judgment and everybody will disagree what an appropriate threshold should be (or if there should even be one). And any discussion on the topic would be uncomfortable for many people - particularly those whose inclinations are towards emotion over logic. But that doesn't mean the topic isn't worth of discussing. As a practical matter, the implicit 'zero Covid before reopening' mantra that you see pushed by some regular posters isn't a viable solution out of the pandemic. When I see panic over stats like 9 kids out of 31,000 died from Covid - literally a rate of 0.00029 - it's pretty evident that a lot of people haven't reasoned through their positions on this issue. There needs to be an acceptance of some amount of risk is the tradeoff for increased quality of life. Yes, there will be some amount of personal tragedy from the decision to reopen. And we should continue to pursue minimally disruptive actions to mitigate those impacts where possible (like getting vaccinated). But overall, my opinion is that accepting the risk and moving forward will be a significantly better path for humanity as a whole.

I don't think that this message is necessarily intended to hide anything. He probably meant it exactly like it sounded like. It's really logical to expect that a loosening of restrictions will lead to an uptick in cases. The expert in the article is just making the valid point that there's no need to overreact if case counts are higher post-reopening than they are now. Some people might find it a little scary at first, but ultimately, this is for the best.

Hopefully many will take this advice to heart, and the situation can begin to normalize as the reopening begins and the vaccine rollout continues apace.

If you're long-term bullish on the space in general and your coins specifically, legit dollar cost averaging might not be a bad idea. Making timing calls on the direction of the market in crypto is hard, and from your post it sounds like you're uncertain about when the market will turn (which is fine. So are most of us). If a sudden downturn would wreck you, or affect your day to day lifestyle, you're probably overexposed. In that case you might want to take profit with part of your position until you'd feel comfortable just letting the rest of it ride. A lot of people seem to hold the view 'I don't understand it, therefore it is valueless'. But. Lack of understanding doesn't actually equate to lack of value, it just means you don't understand the source of value. And that's ok! The space is new and it is pretty complicated. It took me hours of quality reading/discussions to begin to get my head around it. If you're interested there are a lot of resources out there that will explain a bit about what gives certain projects in the space their value (like Ethereum, for example), and why different tokens can have different value propositions. Could also help you spot those scams that actually are valueless if you do choose to participate.

As a person who has argued against lockdowns myself, I want to make it clear that the quoted comment is not an accurate representation of my (and at least some other lockdown sceptics') views. My argument against lockdowns isn't that they aren't effective at reducing spread, my belief is that they are. The argument is that if we take the actual outcome data for Covid cases and interpolate it across our populations, there is a very strong case to be made that the cost of lockdowns are disproportionate to the threat that we face from Covid. The choice to lock down - and my opposition to that choice - are based on differences in values judgments, rather than any kind of real necessity of lockdowns to preserve the viability of our societies or species. And that's fine. I'm not here to argue that philosophical point. I just wrote this comment in response to the quoted comment, to show that while anti-lockdown positions might make some folks feel uncomfortable, they aren't necessarily hurr durr conclusions with no thought put into them.

I don't have the scientific background to comment on this. I don't know the answers to specific medical questions about the vaccines, and I'd rather not accidentally spread misinformation. What I do know is that those societies that have reached a certain vaccination threshold have seen critical cases decline enough to feel comfortable loosening restrictions and move towards full reopening. So politically at least, vaccines rates are seen as the answer. I just want normal life to resume ASAP, and if vaccine saturation is going to be the generally accepted benchmark to get us there, then I'm going to cheerlead for vaccines a little bit.

You are right about this, but I've realized that it's a surprisingly difficult point for others to accept. Regular people just aren't used to thinking in percentages. And sure, we can complain about that, but the truth is that complaining isn't really helpful to actually solving the problem. Practically, it's better to just accept that the majority view carries policy consequence. Yeah, your quoted solution above would probably work out fine for societies if everyone bought in and just accepted it. But the reality is that, based on the messaging of the past two years, many people aren't prepared to accept it. You can see that in some of the other responses to your comments above. So what's the right thing to do? Get vaccinated. You may or may not feel that you need the vaccine personally, but every incremental person vaccinated helps us move closer to the herd immunity threshold. Being right is fun and all, but ultimately we should really just want to put this entire thing behind us. Right now getting vaccinated is a low risk, low effort act, and it seems like the most direct path towards getting back to a normal world.

You might want to double check how dollar cost averaging is supposed to work.

Plz explain how banks win in a situation where large numbers of small-sized borrowers are unviable.

Great news. You love to see it.

Darn bruh. Good thing I'm not a farang I guess ????✌️. In any event, long-term farang visas to Vietnam are irrelevant to the bull case. But without going into too much detail about how the sausage is made, I really only plan to spend a couple of months in Vietnam initially and then a few weeks a couple of times a year thereafter. I get the feeling I'll be able to manage that.

This is kind of irrelevant to the discussion, but I agonized about buying a floor Punk when they were 5 Eth (~$15,000) and then finally decided not to do it. God dammit. Sorry. I just needed to unburden myself to cope, and this seemed like as good a place as any to do it.

I am really bullish on Vietnam for this exact reason. Very favorable demographics, huge urbanization potential, lots of room for catch-up growth, and a population with a relatively more Northeast Asian work-ethic. I intend to spend more time there familiarizing myself with the country/culture once the pandemic situation normalizes. Pretty easy call for attractive long-horizon growth. Conversely Thailand over the same horizon is facing the same intense demographic challenges of other Asian countries like Japan and South Korea, but without the deep capital reserves and advanced economy. And it seems too late to build up these buffers before the aging tsunami hits. I'm not sure that there's the appetite in Thailand for mass immigration either. I think the country will still be a fun place for the next 10-15 years, but unless something radical happens in that time, stagnation/decline thereafter seems pretty inevitable.

It's true. I took off a couple of weeks ago. But, I just want to clarify - I flew back because the restrictions had made Thailand un-fun. Not specifically to get vaccinated. Now, I am going get vaccinated, but mostly to do that small act to help us put Covid behind us rather than out of any real concern about the pathogen. I do encourage everyone to get vaccinated whether or not they are concerned about Covid personally. Also the 777 I took on the ICN->YVR leg was full af. Probably like 95%+ full. So sometimes I like to pretend that I am, at least, a little bit brave.

Lmao. Some of us superficially brave blowhards honestly just dgaf. And you can cry if you want to. It's all the same to us. ????‍♂️

They have to start somewhere. If this pandemic has taught us anything, it's that the vast majority of people respond to the emotional content of messages and to herding behavior, without needing to understand the nuance of the information underpinning the message. Yeah, I agree it's going to be difficult to walk back the hysteria, but it's encouraging to at least see government institutions attempting to move in this direction. Ultimately, if we are going to be able move forward with an acceptance of Covid (and I do think we will get there), there needs to be a buy-in from a very substantial portion of the population. Every voice shifting the narrative away from fear helps.

I see. Well, ok then. Thanks for replying and sharing your perspective.

I'm not sure what qualifies as inexpensive, but I recently needed a PCR test to fly and used WellMed clinic on the recommendation of a couple of friends who also used them. Service is in English and I enjoyed a professional experience with my results delivered ahead of schedule. Located in between the Phrom Phong and Asok BTS stations and walkable from either. ฿3,500 all in.

Genuinely curious - what would the adoption threshold be for you to admit that you're wrong about this? Like, what would have to happen in the real world?

Now you're getting it ????