onebir

35 minutes ago, WaveHunter said:

According to Tong Zhaohui, an expert in the central guidance group and vice-president of Beijing Chaoyang Hospital,

“When doctors diagnose pneumonia, they can only get the etiology of the disease 20 to 30 per cent of the time. We have to rely on clinical diagnosis 70 to 80 per cent of the time. Increasing the diagnosis of clinical cases will help us make an additional judgment on the disease"

ie they just don't have enough test kits...

On 2/12/2020 at 3:40 AM, Peter Denis said:

A Non Imm O - extension for reason of marriage has other requirements than one for reason of retirement, and needs to be approved by divisional headquarters (so takes longer).

So... is there currently a retirement visa for people without Thai spouses, and without the insurance requirement?

57 minutes ago, ukrules said:

He tested negative for the new variant of coronavirus.

Good news!

Dr John Campbell (who's covering this very well on his youtube channel) reports. "Presumably he caught it while in custody in Thailand". ????. Other reports not clear on whether the prisoner has tested +ve.

https://news.sky.com/story/two-uk-prisoners-being-tested-for-coronavirus-11931564

5 hours ago, WaveHunter said:

With the unusually high Serious Complication Rate (SCR) of 20%, the number of resultant ICU cases will quickly overwhelm the healthcare system (as in a matter of weeks!!!). 

 

That is when the fatality rate will soar far beyond whatever it is right now.  That is why there is a mad rush in China right now to build new hospitals and convert all sort of public spaces into temporary emergency hospitals (which look more for detainment centers) for non-ICU cases...to ease the burden on the main hospitals so they can deal with expected massive number of ICU cases!  Sadly, there will not be enough ICU beds for all the ICU cases, so many deaths will occur, not directly from the virus, but from the inability to treat the severely ill.

Wuhan/Hubei ICUs have been overwhelmed for some time. I recall hearing (can't recall where, unfortunately) that Wuhan had around 49,000 beds. ICU beds account for 1-2% of total beds in China*. ie Wuhan has around 2,000 ICU beds. So, with an SCR of 20%, if Wuhan has over 10,000 cases (of ~33k confirmed cases reported for Hubei) its ICU capacity will be more or less filled.

This is probably one reason the mortality rate in Hubei Province is far higher than in other places (eg 3.2% = 1068/33366 in Hubei) vs maybe 0.2% outside China.

It's easy to get complacent because of the apparently slow rate of spread outside China (& indeed in most Chinese provinces outside Hubei). But it seems that all/or most Chinese cities have been imposing strict quarantine conditions on everyone for several weeks (friends in Kunming and Chengdu have told me this, and these are far from the worst affected cities outside Hubei).

Strict quarantine of entire cities can't continue much longer; nor can the international travel bans. Barring some serendipity, I'd expect the spread of the virus to pick up rapidly when city-level quarantine &/ travel bans are lifted.

A possible serendipitous factor: the virus could be very sensitive to hot/humid weather. I believe a link to research indicating that this helped curtailed the spread of SARs (with the exceptions of HK and Singapore, where aircon is very widespread) has been posted above.

Comparing the relative import risks (RIRs) calculated for SE asian countries by the Robert Koch-Institute** with the case counts, it does indeed seem that the less-developed countries have less than their share of cases. Assuming proportionality of case counts with RIRs, Thailand, HK and Singapore 'should have' ~50, ~25, ~10 cases, compared to 33, 49, 47.  On the other hand, several less developed (&  presumably less airconned) SE asian countries' case counts seem broadly in line with their RIRs. And perhaps HK and SIngapore are more crowded than average? But it's just possible that hot climates and sparse aircon may spare SE asia from COVID-19 epidemics.

*https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2875498/

**http://rocs.hu-berlin.de/corona/

1 hour ago, Samuel Smith said:

What effect does our hot climate have on the virus?

 

https://nusmedicine.nus.edu.sg/medias/news-info/2230-hot-and-humid-weather-may-end-the-novel-coronavirus

Quote

The HKU team argued that this may be the reason warm and humid Southeast Asian countries did not have SARS outbreaks, unlike Hong Kong and Singapore where in their words, there is “intensive use of air-conditioning”. Thus, just as with influenza, the 2019-nCoV may slow down when the sun starts to shine more and the weather warms up in temperate and subtropical countries.

This highlights that R0 isn't really a constant associated with the virus; it also depends on its physical and social environment. The central Chinese spring festival environment - cool/cold weather, long journeys in crowded trains, lengthy family gatherings etc - may well have boosted transmission (and estimated RO) relative to many other places, including Thailand. (It also looks like 'R0-cruise ship' is well above the overall estimate...)

Some comments from epidemiologists here (not all negative):

https://www.thedailybeast.com/coronavirus-pandemic-worst-case-scenario-is-ugly-experts-say?ref=scroll

Not exactly what you're after, but this might be helpful:

http://thai-notes.com/FSITLC/index.shtml#!Index

(The drill MP3s are a bit fast for me; I download them (right click) and play them them back slightly slowed down with VLC.)

On 2/3/2020 at 6:22 PM, khunpa said:

http://rocs.hu-berlin.de/corona/#relative-import-risk

 

I'd like to caution against taking these results at face value. The problem is that the estimates for 'relative import risk' (RIR) within China only use air passenger figures. But passenger traffic on China's rail network is around 5 times air passenger traffic (3x for high speed rail services only).

So the RIR estimates for some cities within China are strongly biased up or down depending on how well served they are by rail relative to air. To quantify this I plotted province-level 2019-ncov cases (y) vs RIR (aggregated 40 airports in each province). (See attachment).

The n cases/RIR estimated relationship within China is very poor. And it's Chinese airport level RIR estimates that form the basis of the country level RIR estimates.

How much does this matter? I'm not sure. Hubei had the bulk of the initial cases, and I think the element of a countries' RIR based directly on air passenger traffic from Wuhan is unaffected. However, the element of country RIRs based on transit via another Chinese airport could be affected quite a bit. For example, I noticed the problem with these estimates because Kunming, which has the highest RIR estimate, ranks 18th by (official) cases. Taking cases, rather than RIR estimates as a measure of infectivity likely to be transmitted from Kunming, the element of country RIR's would be reduced by a factor of perhaps 6 (the n cases/ RIR correlation is very poor, so that's a rough guess).

So if 0.6pp (say) of Thailand's RIR reflect flights from Kunming a more realistic figure might be 0.1pp, and Thailand's RIR would be around 1.4%, rather than 1.9%.

It's a bit involved, but I hope that makes sense. I've raised the issue with the author of the paper; he's aware of the problem, but perhaps not of its scale (&/ that unfortunates in fora like this may be taking the paper's estimates a bit too literally...)

If someone has a handle on the proportion of China-Thailand flights/passengers coming from the various cities in China, it might be possible to get a better idea of whether the rather high estimated RIR for Thailand makes sense. (Or made sense when the flights were running...)

Selection_002.bmp

Here in Ubon, I see a lot of the western churches here offering free language classes. There are people teaching for free.

Could someone mention a couple of churches that have these classes? A friend of mine in Ubon was wondering... Thanks!

I'm in China; things are certainly different in Thailand, but I'd like to suggest you could look for work teaching an international foundation year (IFY).

I'm teaching various subjects (maths/business/marketing/accounting) for an IFY; our qualifications are fairly similar (although my background is in Economics). I suspect you could do the same - maybe with a bias towards the computing side.

One major provider of IFYs (and study years abroad that substitute for the first 1 or 2 years of a degree) is NCC Education. Unfortunately, that one doesn't seem to have any centres in Thailand (see http://www.nccedu.com/Find%20a%20centre/index.asp) - though Malaysia is chock full of them. But there's an Australian equivalent (Unilearn) & might be others.

In China this has some signficant advantages over "pure English" teaching:

- less competition for jobs (you need to have a relevant masters & experience)

- the employers have more difficulty finding teachers, so they treat you a bit better (similar salary to full-time English teaching in a private school, but shorter hours)

- class size <=8. ('oral english' classes in the university where I've been teaching had up to 70/class!)

- better motivated students (they are, after all, planning to going abroad v soon so they need it)

- the materials you're expected to use are foreign produced & generally better quality

- the subjects are more interesting to teach than English (even accounting!)

- no requirement for a TEFL/TESOL cert unless you teach the English component (For NCC an online cert is ok for this)

Anyway, it's an alternative. If you do discover similar opportunities in Thailand, please let us know!

After the first time and also after the second time, maybe 2 years later, everything was back to the way it used to be before the surgery.

Thanks for the info dominique - i didn't realise it was possible for the septum to redeviate I don't really have a doctor to ask here in China, and having seen the state of the hospitals I'd be very reluctant to have elective surgery here! So if you know of any good online sources of information, I'd really appreciate it.

If you haven't tried it already, I've found that yoga practices helped a great deal with the breathing problems (which I didn't really realise I had until I started doing that sort of thing). Yoga's probably a bit more accessible and I've found several practices help improve my breathing with almost immediate results:

- vinayasa yoga: moving between different postures with breath and movement exactly synchronised

- (single nostril) pranayama exercises: pressing on the outside of one nostril to block it and breathing through the other for a certain number of counts, and following certain patterns

I've not tried it, but "neti" - irrigating the nostrils with (salty?) water using a small watering pot type device - could help too.

If you're interested you could try http://www.yogaelements.com/. They exclusively teach vinyasa style yoga, & although I don't think they teach pranayama to beginners, they might show you some simple pranayamas if you asked. (Kapalabati & alternate nostril breathing strike me as the most appropriate). I also have a yoga teacher friend in BK who teaches a less strenuous style of yoga - PM me if you'd like me to get in touch with her.

Tai chi/chigung type practices can help too, but they don't seem as specific to this type of problem, which yoga addresses directly because (believe it or not) according to yoga theory which nostril you're breathing through at any given time has a direct influence on your mental state...

At http://fsi-language-courses.com/

Texts for Volume 2 of the Thai, Vietnamese & Cambodian Basic courses have been uploaded, with a bit of luck the audio will follow soon...

Thanks wpcoe - I'll investigate BNH. Any other congenitally crooked septum types with tales to tell?

Anyone ever had this done in Thailand? Or (perhaps though experience of other nasal/plastic surgery) have any idea of good hospitals, approximate costs etc? Thanks!

i have just booked what I believe to be the cheapest way from london to bkk (one way).

Will Oasis let you board the aircraft in London on a O/W ticket? Do they accept a ticket out of Macau as a ticket out of Hong Kong?

Assuming the OP is British, I think you simply get a 6 month stamp on entering Hong Kong. (Although it's a few years since I've been.)

In January this poster seems to have needed an onward ticket to board.

I flew into HK one-way with Oasis in April. (The route had a particular appeal for me because EU citizens can enter Hong Kong without a visa, and once there, get 6m visas for China over the counter that are much more complicated to get elsewhere...) I was required to have an proof of onward travel of some kind, but the check-in staff accepted an e-confirmation for a rail ticket to the mainland. If you want to go to BK via this route, just call the Oasis call centre and get them to confirm (by email) that an onward flight confirmation from Macau is acceptable.

The food and facilities on the Oasis flight were perfectly acceptable (though drinks, snacks & special meals are extra.) They don't supply Flight socks and a toothbrush...

There's a ferry direct from HK airport to Macau airport (AKA 'skypier') - you don't have to clear HK customs, so the transit time is fairly short, & Oasis have a pretty good timeliness record. A gap of 4-5 hours should cover most circumstances - otherwise I believe many travel insurance policies (excluding the back-packer type) would cover a missed connection.

If you can't find comparably cheap one-way ticket (or if these all have long waits for connections) then it seems like a pretty good route. For a difference of GBP100, you could spend a day or three in HK/Macau...

They'll be refunding the tax (but not fuel surcharge) for no shows, according to this report:

http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=...&sec=nation.

But I couldn't see any change to their Terms and Conditions... :s

Well someone's been there at least:

See: Know Of Any Cheap Bali Packages?

I've known heaps of people who have flown to China then got the Trans Siberian, etc west. I mean to do it my self one day so there must be a way of proving your moving on.

You can in fact buy a KCR train ticket (to Guangzhou) online & the Oasis HK accepted the confirmation email.

But it was still a very good savings and Air Asia has a new hotel called "Tune Hotel" where I stayed for an amazing 12 USD!

What did you make of the hotel?

But if you just book the return for some arbitrary date and check to be sure the ticket is changeable, then you should have no problem in calling the airline and changing the ticket after it's issued. I've done this several times in the past.

I contacted Air New Zealand about this question specifically. They said to book with an arbitrary date & then contact the call centre, where they'd give me a free date change. (from what I hear, Air NZ are pretty liberal with free date changes anyway...)

There's a link to it on their website. It's from RM9.99 a night upwards (+RM12.99 for 12 hours aircon) - so if it's tolerable it might be good for KL visa runs, especially if booked far enough ahead to get the lowest rate...

Re Amadeus: according to Wikipedia, there are four major computerized reservation systems (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_reservations_system). And low cost airlines in particular tend to use proprietary systems (see 1st para in "Today's Challenges". So it seems very difficult to check an onward e-ticket.

I have an onward ticket problem for a planned trip via Hong Kong (thanks incidentally to the insightdull moderator who deleted my post about that) & spoke to a supervisor at the Oasis Hongkong bookings centre about it. I mentioned that "some people have suggested I use a doctored e-ticket", and he confirmed that it would be 'very difficult for us to tell if it was genuine' but mentioned that 'it would cause problems if we found out'. A poster claiming to be a travel agent on the thorntree forum also offered to make me a fake itinerary which he claimed the check-in staff would be unable to check.

Re cheap genuine onward tickets: Cebu Pacific Air has BKK to Manila flights for US$80-90. It would be a pain to pay this every month, but it looks like this wouldn't be necessary:

13.  Refund will be made provided that the unused coupons are surrendered to Carrier within two (2) years after the expiry date of the validity of the ticket. Refunds for credit card transactions are processed within 45 working days.

14.  The following refund fees shall be collected for voluntary refunds: Domestic tickets – PHP 300.00 ( CAB approval dated December 4, 2006 ); Hong Kong tickets – PHP 1,500.00; Singapore tickets – PHP 1,500.00 (CAB approval dated February 28,2006); Kuala Lumpur tickets – PHP 1,500; [b]Bangkok tickets – PHP 1,500[/b]; Jakarta tickets – PHP 1,500; Taipei tickets – PHP 1,500; Shanghai tickets – PHP 1,500; Xiamen tickets – PHP 1,500;

(Conditions of contract - http://secured.cebupacificair.com/itd/itd/TermsAndConditions)

So if you want to make land visa runs, it should be possible to a valid onward e-ticket for PHP1,500 (US$30) per run. This is about the same as the train fare to Penang - but should also satisfy any over-zealous officials who insist on an onward air ticket (although perhaps this is just something airline check-in staff tend to do?)

Airasia doesn't give refunds (not even on departure tax ), but does allow date changes; an Airasia ticket might make sense if you're actually planning to use it. If the onward ticket has to be for within 1 month of entry - sorry if I missed this fact, it's a long thread - you can change the date for THB500-900 (see their Terms & Conditions, link at bottom of home page).

So there are fairly inexpensive ways to 'genuinely' circumvent the onward ticket requirement. And if you're prepared to take the risk - which is difficult to quantify - a fake e-ticket might do the trick.

get a train ticket!

Can I get a train ticket? The last time I bought one from outside China, the agents (were supposed to) deliver it to my hotel once I arrived. AFAIK all the agents in China work like that...