onebir

21 hours ago, Mickeem said:

In Chang Mai there are MANY Thai Yai (Shan) Lisu Akha Lahu etc living and working, they go out and speak among themselves in their own languages .. and yes I can also differentiate between them and know which language they are conversing in

Same in Yunnan, a bit to the north. But there, Thai is one of the dialects ???? (Or something very close to Thai/Lao: the Dai minority language. There seem to be Dai-style restaurants all over China.)

So... the cash requirements for single entry (60 days + 1x30 day ext possible) and STV (90 days + 2x90 day exts possible) are the same???

28 minutes ago, placnx said:

Plague is less infectious. I don't know the R number for plague, but anyway transmission is not airborne.

PlagueS - I meant it as a generic term for epidemics (inc airborne ones like influenza)

2 hours ago, GroveHillWanderer said:

As others have said, that 20% figure has been disputed by many other reputable scientists.

Yeah, I wasn't proposing the 'let everyone get infected' approach. But the 1-1/r estimate of the herd immunity threshold derived from the SIR model is just one estimate, and models with different assumptions can give very different estimates. So before doing anything drastic, policymakers in places where there's evidence that a substantial proportion of the population has been infected should, at least, be open to the possibility that the region could be approaching the herd immunity threshold, if there's data pointing in that direction.

3 hours ago, GroveHillWanderer said:

As Caitlin Rivers, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security in Baltimore, and Kristian Andersen, an immunologist at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California say in the piece, one thing mitigating against the idea of herd immunity from natural infection is the possible short duration of naturally-acquired immunity, and the fact is that herd immunity has never been achieved this way before:

That's a remarkable claim, given that various plagues failed to wipe out humanity long before vaccination was invented.

3 hours ago, Shuya said:

They must be running out of feet to shoot themselves into 

Enter the CenTATpede

Maybe time to invest in a snake catcher.

It's going to be a long winter...

Never let a celebrity parse your statistics ????

(Georgia is ~4% hispanic, ~31 black...)

16 hours ago, stevenl said:

"Lindsay Graham (C) has been a royal supporter of President Trump"

 

I'm sure the BBC will correct the typo soon.

The Queen's Engrish?

7 hours ago, Grumpy one said:

Who would have guessed Narathiwat was of Scottish decent.

Giving the Russian a Glasgow kiss, what's next

A Cosmpolitan? At least it wasn't a Screwdriver...

I reckon a spritz with lao khao is the way to go.

8 minutes ago, BradFinch said:

In the hit documentary "Supersize Me", fast food and a sedentary lifestyle brought Morgan Spurlock to the brink of a heart attack within weeks.

I think the ASQ hotels do have gyms? But who knows whether they manage to keep them Covid free. So another precaution would be to acclimatize oneself to some kind of exercise routine that can be done with no/portable equipment and limited space. (Quite a few of the Scott Sonnon/Tacfit programs fit the bill.)

21 hours ago, silver sea said:

Witches? Really?! But where are their broomsticks? That’s what young girls (and their mothers ????) want to know. It’s a fantasy film after all. An opportunity for the film producers to update the Nimbus 2000 broomstick surely: https://methodshop.com/harry-potter-broomstick/

That's just bringing the broomstick back to it's roots. Cultural de-appropriation that should shuurely be celebrated!

1 hour ago, BradFinch said:

But I've stayed in some horrible accommodations with all manner of pollution being squirted into the premises at random times.

Actually I had trouble with a freshly-painted hotel room in China before they (supposedly!) switched to low-VOC paints. Luckily it was summer so I had the windows open a lot...

(Ex?) Boy scout?

On 11/6/2020 at 1:18 PM, snoop1130 said:

Thunberg responded at the time by updating her Twitter biography to include: "A teenager working on her anger management problem. Currently chilling and watching a good old-fashioned movie with a friend."

Greta 1 - Trump 0

Quote

A study suggests air travel may not be so safe after all. A flight into Ireland is described as the cause of 59 new coronavirus infections.*

https://www.dw.com/en/how-safe-is-air-travel-during-covid-19/a-55435284

*~13 on the (only 17% full) flight itself.

1 hour ago, Jingthing said:

Absolute nutcase.

Or he has a lot to lose...

3 hours ago, Walker88 said:

She is extremely bright, and the Biden team is likely to be filled with actual experts in every field from finance to trade to diplomacy to medical science. I am in touch with a member of Biden's transition team, and the number of well-known experts in various fields who are volunteering to be a part of the post-45 clean-up effort is astonishing. Real patriots are rising to the occasion. Biden will truly pull the best of the best, and if he decides to step aside before his term ends, Harris is perfectly capable of orchestrating the team.

I hope you're right. Recalling the incredible level of racist animus* directed at Michelle Obama, who was only the FLOTUS, in US society Harris's demographic alone could make her incredibly divisive before policy even gets a mention...

1 hour ago, Jingthing said:

They'll continue to be afraid of him even after he leaves the white house. He can run again. 

Unless he gets so angry he stamps his his foot and falls into a hole in the ground. (That would make him *rumplestiltskin)

Wasn't there a leak that he's expecting a lot of legal cases incoming? Perhaps he'll finally get the discrediting he deserves (& in fact should have been subject to pre-2016. But facts about him which I personally thought made him unelectable, and had previously been reported in the media, gained no traction during the 2016 election.)

*insert initial to taste

On 10/24/2020 at 3:43 PM, timendres said:

The worst part is dealing with the many Thai girls flirting with you.

Hardship defined

52 minutes ago, ChouDoufu said:

Trumpchi GS8

Never understood why they called it this in English. In Chinese it's 传祺, chuanqi, something like 'lucky banner'. The common meaning for 'chi' in Mandarin are 'pool', 'shame' and 'late'. I guess it's not intended to be translated back, but whenever I saw it, it made me think of 'Trump-pool' (swamp!), Trump-shame (none!) and now Trump-late (...counted ballots).

3 hours ago, BangkokReady said:

It's extremely embarrassing and infuriating.  Especially from a country that has a proud history of coming together to defeat a common enemy.

 

A lot of incredibly selfish and short-sighted individuals that don't care about anyone other than themselves, or are simply too stupid to realise that they are not the only person who is at risk.

I don't get this either... The British history's not so recent, but Israelis have been subject to more or less constant existential danger too; if 'coming together' was going to work anywhere, one might have thought it would be there. But actually they also managed to fail to keep Covid under control (partly due to political reluctance to impose a timely second lockdown).

The logic (& even existence) of the concept of a 'common good' seems lost on many people in many places.