realfunster

If one person says something or produces a report and a thousand repeat it, it doesn't make it fact. The findings do, however, raise some interesting questions, which I hope will be further investigated in a deeper review of the methodology used for this trial and possibly some additional research.

The price of greed, corruption and an unstable and ineffectual political system…

Nice to see citizens taking action and applying pressure to ineffectual government officials. Maybe there is some hope after all…

Yep, I don’t think anyone was really buying that twenty-something lad as being the owner..

Some “approved” pharmacies have it in stock as do most, if not all, hospitals. The pharmacies will be cheaper than buying at a private hospitals by a margin. You will indeed likely need a prescription. Typically, you will find such large/approved pharmacies in the vicinity of Government hospitals. Government became concerned on mis-use, so a while back stopped smaller clinics and pharmacies giving it directly to patients.

Not surprising at the moment, young people are probably seeking some stability and security after the last couple of years. Tourism has taken a massive hit, there has been mass redundancies across the industry and it is still in the early stages of its recovery. It might take another 1-2 years before it is seen as a stable form of employment. Once the tourists return for a consistent period and in large numbers, I think it will become attractive again to potential employees.

That last statement is meaningless, 2017 & 2018 were in "normal" times. Hardly a celebratory matter to have an economy recovering at a snail's pace from COVID. The World Bank has already downgraded the 2022 forecast to 2.9% as well. So, with a -6.2% contraction in 2020, only 1.6% growth in 2021 and let's say 2.0%+ growth in 2022, it's going to be (at a minimum) 2023 before we return to pre-covid GDP and quite possibly this could slip into 2024. With regards to the old chestnut about the importance of tourism to GDP, I find it challenging to reconcile the overall 2020 and 2021 GDP numbers (when international tourism was largely non-existent and with other significant negative impacts on the Thai economy) to a hugely significant tourism GDP contribution. So either the GDP numbers are fudged or international tourism is not the 10+% of GDP that it is claimed to be...