vermin on arrival

I just made an appointment for tomorrow afternoon and received no e-mail confirmation or phone text message. Should i just make another one?

6 minutes ago, DrJack54 said:

Depends on what basis you live in Thailand. 

Stating "past decade at my current flat" means what? Living here on extensions based on...?

 

Visiting a few months of the year in the winter every year, but renting the flat year round. Not living here, but visiting for 2 visits of two months each every year coming in on visa exemp. Stuck here now and can't get back home to Taiwan.

1 hour ago, DrJack54 said:

You need the hotel to file a TM30. It will be useless going back tomorrow without it. A receipt of payment will not cut it.

BTW your hotel could file a TM30 and give you a print out of it. 

I'm overstating this but for others applying for extension it's important to deal/stay with hotel that confirms that they will do this for you.

What if you are staying at a private apartment in Bangkok? I have never been asked for this in 20 years and the past decade at my current flat.

No letter needed for Americans at the present time. From the US Embassy website:

Last update: October 13, 2020

Q: What is the status on the Royal Thai Government’s visa amnesty?
A: On September 30, 2020, the Royal Thai Government officially approved a grace period until October 31, 2020 for persons in Thailand in temporary visa status (of all visa types) to depart the country. The measure was published on that date in the Royal Thai Gazette.  The grace period further extends the automatic visa extension that was first announced in late March due to Covid-related travel difficulties.

According to verbal communication from the Royal Thai Government’s Immigration Bureau, non-Thai nationals can visit any Thai Immigration office to request a 60-day extension of stay.  Thai Immigration will not require a letter from the Embassy as part of the extension request, so the U.S. Embassy and Consulate General Chiang Mai will no longer provide letters of support for Thai visa extensions.  For more information about applying for Thai visa extensions, please visit www.immigration.go.th or contact the Thai Immigration Bureau.

Please note the Royal Thai government is under no obligation to extend short-term visas and may end the practice at any time.  If your request is denied or you do not wish to change to an appropriate long-term visa category, you should begin making plans to depart Thailand as soon as possible.  Please contact the U.S. Embassy in Bangkok or Consulate General in Chiang Mai if you need financial assistance to depart Thailand.

https://th.usembassy.gov/covid-19-faq/

3 hours ago, Jackie66 said:

So I just got back from immigration. Did Tm.30 first then went for the 60 day "covid" extension. And I got an under consideration stamp to come back Dec 7. IO wasn't very friendly and said I should go back home and get a "family visa" and Thai government's good will can end any time and then kept on about foreigners staying here now doing bad things....etc...

 

So not sure. anybody else got the under consideration letter or am I the lucky one? ????

what is your nationality?

On 11/20/2020 at 2:42 PM, DrJack54 said:

https://forum.thaivisa.com/applications/core/interface/file/attachment.php?id=717765 61.01 kB · 56 downloads

 

It's 2 sided. This is first page. You sign on the back.

Thanks Dr Jack. Does this 60 day extension begin on the date of application or the date of the current permission to stay expiring? I have until Nov. 30th based on the latest covid extension with embassy letter done at MTT.

4 hours ago, salsajapan said:

 

 

it was denied there to MANY, so do not tell that you have the ultimate solution, this is ridiculous.

 

 

The denial was based on what grounds? Please explain. Was it for going to as different immigration than their earlier stamps? Country of origin? You referring to the additional 60 days starting December 1st correct?

When did you go to MTT to get it, and please, when did they say the 60 days would start from?

I will be going next week. Interesting that no appointment was required.

6 hours ago, AmySeeker said:

 

I really detest with a passion those who just say 'they should open up' and get on with it. They usually mention Sweden alot too. The same Sweden that in the last few days has announced lockdowns - guess their much lauded herd immunity experiment failed. 

 

That is interesting news on Sweden. Thanks for pointing that out. I am surprised by this. A short while ago, while positive test were high, the mortality and hospitalization figures were still quite good. I haven't followed too closely lately. I see at the start of the month these have moved up a bit. The lockdown seems to be a soft one.

21 hours ago, onthedarkside said:

There's a difference between infection fatality rates (IFR) vs what's called case fatality rates  (CFR)...

 

The IFR estimates are based on guesses/estimates of the much larger population of folks who may have had the virus, but never got confirmed as having it...

 

The CFR looks at the confirmed cases, and then what portion of  those confirmed cases end up dying.  The world CFR for CV right now is in the 2-3% range, with some countries with much higher individual CFR numbers.

 

Different people can use different statistics to give different contexts for reality.

 

Yes certainly, but everyone knows that the cfr, while being the only truly concrete number that people have, is not the true measure of the deadliness of the disease due to the iceberg effect.

7 hours ago, LazySlipper said:

 

 Considering that there are more and more people catching it a second time and that apparently the second time around is worst...

 

The current figure of confirmed reinfections is I believe 3 or maybe now 5 as stated by Dr. Scott Atlas, a public health policy expert who also has a degree in medicine, who has been working for the trump administration's covid response team since July. The current estimate of total infections globally is actually 10 to 20 times the global confirmed infection numbers. Prof. John Ioannidis of Stanford placed it as 780 million a while back so it would probably be up to 1 billion now. 5 out of 500 million to one billion is quite low odds of reinfection. Also, actually the second time around is mild or asymptomatic.

We need to get over this great fear we have of covid. It's real and can be quite bad. The mortality figure for people above 80 and for others with comorbidities is much higher than healthy and younger people (about 1000 times greater), but this is not the disease we were led to believe last March. For healthy people in their forties 2 out of 1000 die. Children might die, but the mortality rate is lower than that for the flu.

The overall ifr is .23%, and for people below 70 it is .05%. For, all those who chime follow the science when advocating fear, here is peer reviewed article from September, by John Ioannidis which was accepted by the WHO and gives the currently accepted ifr.

https://www.who.int/bulletin/online_first/BLT.20.265892.pdf

10 minutes ago, tomauasia said:

Palm reader. New broad minded leader required. One that sees they must learn to live with COVID rather than use it as a tool to end tourism. Open airport to interested pre tested tourists who will do your quarantine and stop wagging your tail. You have not succeeded anything. 

Yes, certainly, at least, everyone who would be willing to test before and after with quarantine should be allowed to travel anywhere in the world now. This is not the black death. End the hysteria. This is another version of the Great Fear, which existed during the French Revolution. There they saw royalist counterrevolutionaries everywhere, here the deadly covid virus, with uncontrollable numbers of covid deaths.

"with the aim of drawing visitors from 22 provinces in China that have been free of Covid-19 for more than 150 days."

My god you now need 150 days of the entire province be virus free to travel. And if not, what 5 month quarantine on arrival? The whole thing is insane. The hysteria over a disease with a recognized ifr of .23%, and for people under 70 .05%, is insane. If people doubt these numbers here is a peer reviewed paper by Prof. John Ioannidis of Stanford and accepted by the WHO, from Sept 15.

https://www.who.int/bulletin/online_first/BLT.20.265892.pdf

On 10/27/2020 at 5:51 PM, nobodysfriend said:

Please define " herd immunity " ... There is no proven long lasting immunity to the virus , even in people cured after being infected ...

How can something like " herd immunity " exist , if the individual cannot achieve a lasting immunity ...?

Herd immunity is when it becomes difficult for the virus to propagate itself well in society as people develop resistance to the illness. This does not mean that there will be no cases. It means that the disease will stumble as it tries to infect more and more people and many fewer people will develop serious cases or die.

As to your second statement. This is not true and comes from a simplistic understanding of the immune system and immunity. There is ample evidence for a long lived immunity to covid 19. Just because antibodies in the blood disappear after a few month (they do this in general by the way for all diseases since they are no longer unnecessary) it doesn't mean immunity is lost; there is still resistance/protection to the disease in the individual. The estimate is there will be at least 1-2 year immunity as is the case with other coronaviruses.

The blood antibody test is also very flawed when trying to determine the number who have been infected as it neglects other antibodies which are found in the mucous and lungs of people, who have no antibodies in their blood, but who were infected and fought it off. Also, it neglects t-cell immunity which needs to be specifically tested for and was found in 30% of people tested for it in Stockholm. Also after the antibodies disappear, people will still have t-cell and b-cell memory immunity and can begin mass production of antibodies and t-cell killer cells to the attack/resist virus very quickly. I have written at least one long post on this subject, however, I can no longer find with the update to this website.

There have only been a total of 3 to 5 cases of reinfections in the world for all the infections in the world which are now estimated at 400-800 million, 10-20 times the number of confirmed global cases of 44 million . Prof John P A Ioannidis of Stanford actually estimates that the number infected globally at 780 million. He estimates that it is actually 78 million people(I believe) that have been infected in the United States. These topics were all discussed by Dr. Scott Atlas when he was interviewed by Freddie Sayers on October 20,2020. Dr Atlas is a public policy expert with medical training who is a professor at Stanford as well and was brought into the White House Coronavirus advisory team in July. Here is a link to the interview when he discusses the known data on covid 19 which gets limited airplay in the corporate msm. I strongly recommend watching this 40 minute interview as it is very informative:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpn3JxXqnp4

Referring back to Prof. Ioannidis, he was much maligned back in April for his study on the actual ifr of covid in the US, but he has been vindicated and his study with some small corrections had been peer reviewed and been accepted by the WHO as accurate. Interestingly enough here is his conclusion on the ifr:

"I included 61 studies (74 estimates) and eight preliminary national estimates. Seroprevalence estimates ranged from 0.02% to 53.40%. Infection fatality rates ranged from 0.00% to 1.63%, corrected values from 0.00% to 1.54%. Across 51 locations, the median COVID-19 infection fatality rate was 0.27% (corrected 0.23%???? the rate was 0.09% in locations with COVID-19 population mortality rates less than the global average (< 118 deaths/million), 0.20% in locations with 118–500 COVID-19 deaths/million people and 0.57% in locations with > 500 COVID-19 deaths/million people. In people < 70 years, infection fatality rates ranged from 0.00% to 0.31% with crude and corrected medians of 0.05%."

So this great killer disease by his study has an overall a median ifr of .23%. Here is the shocker for people under 70 the median ifr was .05%, meaning they had a 99.95% of not dying. Here is a link to the pdf. file for the WHO paper

https://www.who.int/bulletin/online_first/BLT.20.265892.pdf

Finally, here is an interview with Swedish doctor, Sebastian Rushworth , by Ivor Cummins in which Doctor Rushworth discusses the whole issue of immunity.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6IeN6sgJ3g

I hope you find them informative. Have a good night : )

1 minute ago, Lacessit said:

I relied on your post, was I wrong to do that?

No. However, I certainly could not go into all the details in a 2 hour video of the summit with Q & A as well as other information available on the website, etc. I recommend the time to consider it.

Also, in this summit, please realize that they were not referring to tetanus or other non communicable illnesses, but the epidemiologists were focused on illnesses of the same ilk as covid. Apologies if I am being repetitive. Have a good one : )

I went to MTT on Wednesday Oct. 21 and got my under consideration stamp that I received on Wednesday Sept. 23rd with an embassy letter turned into a valid to stay until November 30 stamp.

I would also say that the person returning passports was not friendly and I was scolded for talking when my passport was being handed back and not hearing her. Seems like there are no more temp helpers doing that as there used to be when it was all done at CW. I have come to hate going to immigration here anymore. I can't wait until the borders open up and I can go somewhere that I want to live again.

18 hours ago, Lacessit said:

Dr. Stefan Baral is not quite correct. There has never been herd immunity for diseases such as tetanus, that live in the soil and are not transmitted person to person. Same goes for Legionella pneumophila from cooling towers.

Therefore, saying herd immunity is as valid a concept as gravity is nonsense. Gravity doesn't do exceptions.

However, for infections disease such as covid it is. Did you watch the Great Barrington summit or give it any serious attention?

12 hours ago, Whale said:

 

Last winter?

The problems Sweden had last winter were to improper policies in the nursing homes which have since been corrected. They are doing very well now.

32 minutes ago, from the home of CC said:

imo doctors who sign onto this nonsense should have their medical licenses revoked - they are a disgrace to the profession and a danger to the public in general..

Nonsense. I emphatically disagree. They are taking a much broader view of public health policy and the global consequences of the current policies. The current policies are myopic and will cause much more harm than good. Have you watched the 2 hour summit or given what they said any serious consideration?

The WHO has said that globally around 1 billion will fall back below the poverty line due to the economic consequences of the lockdowns and border closures (this will reveres the trend of the last 20 years which saw 1 billion rise above it). Millions of children in the 3rd world will suffer from malnutrition by its estimate. Sunetra Gupta from Oxford (one of the 3 who presented the declaration)stated that 130 million are expected to die from hunger because of these policies; however, I do not know what study this estimate came from.

In addition, when assessing the deaths that might occur from allowing infections pass through the less vulnerable groups while protecting the more vulnerable, these experts stated that many more will end up dying in the future from not having proper diagnostics for heart disease, cancer and other diseases. 1.4 million people with tuberculosis in India alone are not receiving care for their illness due to India's covid restrictions on health care. Also, in considering the issue of long haulers, there is a lot of uncertainty about the numbers, but current studies are saying that it is less than 10%; however, it's not clear what the actual number is.

In addition, it should be noted that these are not fringe beliefs despite what the mass media has been trying to hammer home in order to manufacture some sort of consent to these policies. Stefan Baral, the epidemiologist from John Hopkins, stated that when discussing his viewpoint with colleagues with whom he disagrees, they took his views seriously and did not dismiss them as some nonsensical and dangerous fringe belief as you do. Dr. Martin Kulldorff, of Harvard University, stated that within his field of expertise, which is public health policy, the majority of his colleagues agreed with him. The perception that there is some broad consensus for the current policies is incorrect.

In another post on this issue you said that it was immoral to allow some sort of societal immunity to take place as part of the policy on this issue. I put it to you that the reverse is true. To shut down the global economy in order to protect what will primarily be elderly and sick people in the developed world, who have already lived full lives, and end up killing children, etc. in the 3rd world and destroying the economic lives of many in the younger generations globally(which, in addition, is leading to mental illness and suicides), is actually the selfish and immoral thing to do. In addition, in a kind of practical moral sense, many more will actually end up dying then will result from this illness, which has an ifr between .1% and .6% (probably .3-.4).

Realize also that these medical experts are not saying to do nothing and let the disease run it's course. They are talking about focused protection of the most vulnerable while allowing the rest of society to function while the less vulnerable acquire immunity, which in turn will protect the vulnerable and elderly; this has been public health policy 101 for infectious diseases for decades. In the short term, this will be uncomfortable for these vulnerable for they will need to hide away to shield themselves, but the painful process will end more quickly then locking down society and waiting for a vaccine which may never really work well. In addition, the more we rush the vaccine as our sole option, the more likely it will not work well, and it will have dangerous side effects.

Infections are not the problem it's the hospitalizations and deaths. Lots of infections are in fact good (as long as hospitalizations remain low) as it helps society move forward to the biological fact of herd immunity. Certainly as much care as possible must be made to protect the elderly. The deaths are rising which is a matter of concern. I cannot find hospitalizations, but elsewhere in Europe (France, Italy and Germany for example) where they show the serious or critical cases, it's quite low at 1% or less per nation.

Sweden is of course sitting pretty now with only 39 serious cases and single digit mortalities in the nation despite the large rise in cases. Keeping the country relatively open last winter helped them immensely. The lockdowns elsewhere are just making the economic, social and epidemiological problems last much longer.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/sweden/

People need to realize the ifr for the disease is in the .1-.6% range. One prominent German virologist put it at .4%. For healthy people in their 40s, there is a 2 in 1000 chance of dying. For children, this disease has a lower mortality rate than the flu. It is for the elderly that there is a serious concern as they are 1000 times more likely to have a fatal case than a younger person and special care must be given to them.

https://gbdeclaration.org/frequently-asked-questions/

22 hours ago, ukrules said:

Japan is a bit of an anomaly here, I expect it's due to some other factor, like adhering strictly to rules that prevent infection.

I think low obesity rates and generally healthier population is the main cause...maybe genetics, maybe more exposure to coronaviruses...everything i heard about japan was that internally things were more lax there than elsewhere in Asia.

From the website:

"Medical & Public Health Scientists

9,422

Medical practitioners

24,746

Signatures will be made public after approval

With the current success of the campaign we have to ensure that the server remains available for signatures to be added.
We will update this page with a static list of verified and approved signatures as time allows."

So the number of health care professionals climbing on board is steadily increasing. Funnily enough this just came out from the WHO:

WHO warns against COVID-19 lockdowns citing grave economic consequences

https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/4029246

So even the WHO is waking up to the huge social and economic ramifications of these lockdowns. Doubling world poverty and child malnutrition are starting points.

“Just look at what’s happened to the tourism industry in the Caribbean, for example, or in the Pacific because people aren’t taking their holidays,” Nabarro said.

“Look what’s happened to smallholder farmers all over the world because their markets have got dented. Look what’s happening to poverty levels. It seems that we may well have a doubling of world poverty by next year,” Nabarro continued. “We may well have at least a doubling of child malnutrition because children are not getting meals at schools, and their parents, in poor families, are not able to afford it.”

In the end, the WHO envoy appealed to world leaders to avoid locking down their countries as a means to tackle the pandemic and suggested using better alternatives.

“We really do appeal to all world leaders: stop using lockdown as your primary control method. Develop better systems for doing it. Work together and learn from each other, but remember lockdowns just have one consequence that you must never, ever belittle, and that is making poor people an awful lot poorer.”