ChC1

Not surprised. But the question is, it is 2021, why are you still using Twitter this 2010 past timer?

29 minutes ago, richard_smith237 said:

 

Your point seems to be that someone could "breathe in air / water vapour on which the SARS-CoV-2 virus is  present and then breath out particles with the SARS-CoV-2 again within a few hours or days”....  

 

But.. will the virus replicate within the body ??? nope, not to a degree which can be identified by a RT PCR test with 35 replication cycles. 

 

Will a vaccinated person test positive for Covid-19  ??????  in the case of Pfizer, 95% of those exposed to the SARS-CoV-2 virus will not. 

 

 

You are obviously misinformed. 

But to answer your question:

1, I never said that. You are assuming and out words in my mouth.

2, There is no evidence. But the alarming thing is Pfizer CEO said a September/Winter booster shot is need. Also look at the example of Israel, one needs to be vigilant.

3, Pfizer never claims its vaccine can prevent infection. It only says based on its study by a certain time, approximated a percentage of participant in the trial did not test for positive. All information and trail data is only valid to the point the trail concluded.   

Good luck.

33 minutes ago, richard_smith237 said:

 

Vaccines do prevent infection - This is efficacy.

 

Tests have shown that Pfizer has an efficacy of *96% (before Delta Variant). 

 

i.e. If without a vaccine 100 people test positive for Covid-19, of those same 100 people, if vaccinated 96 of them would not test positive for Covid-19.

 

 

I am all for vaccine and I wish everyone gets vaccinated. But, Covid vaccine does not prevent infection. You are wrong to assume that otherwise. I will quote the package leaflet information for AstraZeneca vaccine, It came with the package of the vaccine.

1, What Covid-19 Vaccine AstraZeneca and what it is used for? 

COVID-19 Vaccine AstraZeneca is a vaccine used to protect people aged 18 years and older against COVID-19.

COVID-19 is caused by a virus called coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2).

COVID-19 Vaccine AstraZeneca stimulates the body's natural defences (immune system). It causes the body to produce its own protection (antibodies) against the virus. This will help to protect you against COVID-19 in the future. None of the ingredients in this vaccine can cause COVID-19.

I would like you read the third paragraph from the manufacture leaflet in Question 1 which i quoted above. None of the vaccine prevent infection. Vaccine is to help you build antibodies. mRNA vaccine is the same although works differently. Virus can enter your body even if you had Moderna or Pfizer. The only difference between an unvaccinated and a vaccinated infected person is viral load. With AstraZeneca vaccine, the body recognise the virus and attacks it so the virus does not replicate itself to cause serious damages. But you can still carry the virus except in low viral loads that the PCR test may not be able to identify. For unvaccinated people, the virus go rampant in your body and replicate itself so fast that it cause severe symptoms very fast as the body immune system can not recognise it and deal with it. 

The highly effective Pfizer vaccine at 96% only means 96% of the vaccinated people will produce enough immune response that no viral loads can be identified by PCR tests. For the sake of science, all Pfizer vaccinated people can still 100% catch the virus and the odd number of Covid-19 virus can survive in their body. You can still be a carrier of this virus even if you inject 5 times of the Pfizer vaccine. 

We definitely need as many people get vaccinated as possible. But we can't tell people things that are not true. Zero Covid strategy pursued by Australia and China is unachievable. We need people to understand how vaccine works so people can remain vigilant before the next wave hit. This virus mutate too fast the current vaccine may not be enough to help this coming winter. 

They need some tweaks on sandbox before it is doable:

1, Stop all domestic arrivals unless holding evidence that they are on business or visiting family and friends, plus a rapid test within 24 hours. Domestic vacationers can have their beach holiday in Hua Hin or Pattaya. If you want to make Phuket a box, you have to somehow give up domestic tourists to make Phuket a box;

2, Cancel 3 compulsory tests, make it only one on arrival and one at day 12. If less than 12 days, only one on arrival;

3, Make sure every visitors is vaccinated. Children not vaccinated? Tough, stay at home or vacation at home country. Or better, leave them at home. At present, less people test positive is better. Maybe you will loose some family travellers, but it is better to have a successful test run before the country open in October (which I think is 2022).

4, Make it more friendly to travellers so that tourists can have their Fit to Fly certificate done at the hotel.  

5, Cancel the requirement to download the spying apps. Nobody wants that. You have to trust tourists to follow the rules. There will be rule breakers but hopefully there would be very few.

6, Reduce the requirement of COE. Make sure travellers can apply with only a certificate of Vaccination and a 7 nights hotel reservation. Everything else can be checked on arrival. Be more flexible.

7, Forget the ASQ when tourists got close to a positive case, stay at their original hotel is good enough. Many Phuket hotels have two or more buildings or wings. Hotels and resorts have enough capacity to move the questionable tourists to a wing specifically for them. If the hotel or resorts do not have two buildings or wings, they should not be SHA+. It is called contingence plan.

I know my opinion will not be popular. But you must have a clear message to the public, do you want tourists or not? If so then you need to have the plan based on the needs and concerns of a tourists. At this moment, the sandbox is not designed to have tourists in mind, but to satisfy unscientific government figure heads. 

Melisa wants to divorce Richard. She told her best friend Cindy: I am going to leave Dick. I already packed my bags. I am moving back to my parents. But I will come back to check if Dick is OK every one to two months and stay for 2 to 3 weeks each time...

Cindy: Melisa, you are not being leaving Richard. You are still with Richard half of the time. You are not 'left'. You are kidding yourself!

So to the original poster: You are the Melisa, you think you have left Richard the Dick, you are still technically live with him, except you are away half of the month when Dick can now fxxk around while you are away. In marriage term, it is not a divorce, it is even not a separation. 

20 minutes ago, mrfill said:

Indeed. The UK has just announced that from 16 August, anyone in England who has had both their Covid jabs will no longer have to self-isolate if a close contact tests positive for Covid.

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/explainers-54239922

The irony is that this supposedly to be a very good news for Phuket Sandbox, so British tourists won't need to worry about 10 days lost in self isolation upon return!

But with the Dubai group saga, many British tourists would think twice before committing a trip.

It could be something lost in translation. The original texts might said airlines requested 33 additional frequencies rather than additional 33 airlines. To put it in simple language, Qatar is flying 4 times a week, it may requested to fly 7 times a week (daily), hence 3 additional frequencies. Etihad is flying twice a week and it may requested to go for daily, hence 5 additional frequencies. The additional 33 weekly frequencies just mean maybe existing airlines wish to add more flights, and/plus maybe 1-3 new airlines looking at to do a weekly charter. All the requests are added together comes up 33 additional frequencies per week. Which is basically 5 new daily flights in total. I often find there are bad translations from Thai to English. If this article was written by a junior journalist who did not understand aviation terms, it could result in bad reporting like this. I am not saying this particular journalist made a mistake. But from common sense and aviation knowledge, I found additional 33 weekly frequencies is more believable than 33 new airlines looking to fly to Phuket.

Question, how did that 83 years old get his Covid insurance? Most of the insurance from Thailand I saw has an age limit of 75.

1 hour ago, 3NUMBAS said:

new varaints are apearing all the time ,the lamda strain has apeared in the uk from peru

there will always be others n future its never ending

It is in 31 countries already. But it has not taken over as the dominant strain yet. The scientists community is still investigating why it is the case. According to the news I read, this strain is more transmissible and could evade the vaccine. 

4 hours ago, internationalism said:

but what, if he got infected already on Phuket?

as to sinovac in the next post - this vax is not used in the west, so he had some other vax. 

I remember reading somewhere UAE used the Sinovac or other Chinese vaccine. 

5 hours ago, Exploring Thailand said:

Good post, and it certainly looks like the right decision for you not to come.

 

One thing I don't fully understand is your concern about privacy. What data are you concerned about sharing?

As I said in my post:

 It is not the intention I am not happy with, it is who can access the information and how secure the information is makes me worry.

So to translate into easy English. I have no objection to have a tracking app and I understand why Thai wants it. But, I don't trust the other end of the information safeguard. The app requests almost all permissions from your phone. That means you are putting your whole privacy on your phone (including your photos on your phone and the control of your camera and address book) to some random IT guys who scored the contracts with the government. And, double that! Because one has to have both Mor Chana and Thailand Plus. So two sets or unknown companies and its employees can theoretically has the ability to steal any information on your phone as they like. Or if hackers hacked into the IT company's data base, they can and have the ability to do whatever they like with the information they collected from your phone or even control your phone through the app. They can peak into your personal emails, they can share your private pictures with anyone they like, And if they are skill enough (hopefully not), they can either spy on you while you are in the hotel bedroom doing unspeakable things, or figure out your credit card credentials. 

Here are the permission Mor Chana and Thailand Plus wants:

Camera:

• Take photos and Videos

Location:

• Precise location (GPS and network based)
•  Access Approximate Location (network based)

Storage:

• Modify or delete the contents of your SD card
• Read the contents of your memory card (Why they need these two??)

Other:

• Run foreground service
• Access Bluetooth settings
• Run at startup
• Google Play license check (Why?)
• view network connections
•  Prevent phone from sleeping (power draining exercise)
• receive data from Internet (Why?)
•  Access location in the background
• control vibration (why? They are afraid we use the phone as vibrator?)
• Full network Access (Why?)
• Retrieve running apps (Why?)
• Play Install Referrer API (Why?)
• Recognise physical activity (Mor Chana only, but WHY?)
• Pair with Bluetooth devices (WHY?)
• Access extra location provider commands
• Activity recognition (Why?)
• Use biometric hardware (Thailand Plus only, but WHY?)

Again, there is no evidence anyone would do that. But as an average person who worry about online security and privacy, download unknown app is always a concern. Then you read through the permission these apps want, you start to realise it is not a location tracking app, it wants more personal information you wonder if it is necessary.

Plus, if you read the review of these two apps in the store, you would notice Thailand Plus is full of 'bugs'. The rating for Thailand Plus is 1.8 while Mor Chana is more mature and has a rating of 4.1 in Google Store.

I will reiterate again, I can tolerate with maybe one app, but not two. Both app wants to prevent your phone from sleeping and beeping locations data continuously, you would need charge your phone every 4-8 hours. 

Finally, I don't think other holiday destinations like Malta, Dubai, Spain, Portugal, Mexico and others would request you to surrender your privacy to two apps that controls your phone. 

7 minutes ago, billythehat said:

 

Crivvens, and I bet there was no Unicorn offered in those pricy quotes.

 

There’s me thinking Thailand had become dear…

Well, part of the reasons are the 10 days self isolation requirement by British government for people travelling from Amber countries (which majority of Europe, Thailand and other holiday destinations are). I was talking to my surgeon today, he would like to take his family to Portugal or Spain, but he could not afford to loose 10 days to self isolation after return. Many professional people have the same dilemma. Hence the inflated domestic travel price for school holiday season this year. Too many professional and high income people can not go overseas due to the current rule. The high end holiday let makes a kill by set the price high enough to cater for these time poor cash rich client. But the news are buzzing that this 10 days self isolation rule would be scraped tomorrow. So we have to wait and see. Maybe Phuket will see a surge of British booking once the 10 days self quarantine rule is no longer there. But still, I will evaluate the whole situation accordingly.

5 minutes ago, billythehat said:

Sir, if indeed these were the figures you were supplied with, could you please confirm they were for a location in Cornwall, England and not Cornwall, Narnia.

 

My aunty runs a guest house in Penzance, Cornwall, and informed me that for £71k, she will not only provide a sea view suite but also provide a genuine Unicorn for your exclusive use during your stay.
 

It is an absurd story. But here we go:

Father-of-three quoted £71k for week's stay in Cornwall holiday home | Daily Mail Online

Sorry had to cite from the Daily XXXX. From this article:

[QUOTE]A father-of-three was quoted £71,000 for a week's stay in a Cornwall holiday home and has slammed firms for 'exploiting' families on staycations. 

Conservative councillor Paul Nickerson said a three-bedroom contemporary home in St Ives he was interested in came to a whopping £10,232-per-night when he enquired about a week's stay.[/QUOTE]

and

[QUOTE]Nurse Donna Brunton from Consett, County Durham, looked into UK holidays after she became concerned that her £2,500 all-inclusive Malta trip might be a no-go.

She said: 'A holiday park in north Cornwall was quoting £3,699 for the four of us to stay seven nights, self-catering in what looks like an upmarket caravan. [/QUOTE]

Of course it does not represent the actual market and some of the quotation are selective to reflect the absurdity of the market. But the reality is it does happen, rarely, but exist. 

4 hours ago, Airalee said:

Yes.  

Really? I don't see any property are by the beach. Among the 5 properties showing on your screen shot, only the first one seems to be close to the water but requires a reasonable 5-10 minutes drive to the river bank and 20-25 minutes drive to the beach. 

1 hour ago, Airalee said:

And that’s why I never pay attention to the news…

 

 

Sure, but is any of these accommodation are right by the sea or at least have a sea view? 

4 hours ago, Bangkok Barry said:

Interesting post. You could, of course, go to Cornwall instead. Nice beaches, decent weather at this time of year. No testing, no flights, no spy apps on your phone. Why anyone would even consider coming to Thailand now is beyond me, especially as most businesses are closed.

Your honourable gentleman, of course you are right. But if you follow the British news, you may notice a week in Cornwall at this time of year, we are looking at anywhere between £2,500 (TH100,000B) to £71,000 (TH2,980,000B) depends on the accommodation availability. Then factor in food, drinks and activities, it is cheaper to go to the Maldives. Except Maldives is in red list currently.

Plus, have been quarantined in UK for almost 470 days, an overseas trip is on the top agenda for many British residence like me.