BernieOnTour

On 1/16/2021 at 5:52 AM, BernieOnTour said:

 

Well, these mRNA vaccines have different objectives than eg. a polio vaccine, 

that Bloomberg remark doesn’t really reflect for what AstraZeneca and Pfizer were testing in their trials - check the „Endpoints“:

 

If the person to person spread is not tested, how can it protect your citizens against infection ?

 

Rethinking the only endpoint listed above

-„prevention of symptomatic disease in vaccine recipients“-  

they tested and wanted to achieve  ...

During our governments‘ announcements in March-May 

- wasn’t the biggest danger coming from „Superspreaders“ ?

- and those were defined to be „asymptomatic“ and moving around, not aware of being infected?

Wondering, what the outcome of the vaccinations will be, when the vaccination campaigns move from our elders to the younger ones ...

2 hours ago, AmySeeker said:

What zone is Chiang Mai in ?

read again ...

plain as pikestaff

On 1/26/2021 at 10:00 AM, webfact said:

More than one million people had already lost their jobs and the number could double to two million in the first quarter due to the new spread, he said.

I don’t understand, what these new job losses have to do with an Covid outbreak amongst Myanmar workers in a tiny province ...

The real reasons are: Quarantine and red tape to enter Thailand.

... and in the meantime, Seychelles, Maledives, some Caribbean islands like Cuba, African countries like Kenia, Tanzania, Gambia, Madagascar opened up to tourists 

18 hours ago, webfact said:

Thailand 4th among 98 countries studied for best response in handling pandemic

By The Nation

 

 

Australian analysis centre, Lowy Institute, has come up with a ranking for countries in terms of managing the Covid-19 pandemic in 36 weeks after the 100th case was confirmed.

 

It evaluated 98 countries based on the availability of data across six indicators that were used to construct this index.

 

The country topping the list as the best in controlling the outbreak is New Zealand (94.4 points), followed by Vietnam (90.8), Taiwan (86.4), Thailand (84.2) and Cyprus (83.3). Meanwhile, Brazil (4.3), followed by Mexico (6.5), Colombia (7.7), Iran (15.9) and the United States (17.3) are said to have the worst management among 98 countries.

 

China, where the first Covid-19 case was found in Wuhan, was excluded from the index due to the unavailability of data.

 

The scores were calculated from six indicators, namely confirmed cases, confirmed deaths, confirmed cases per million people, confirmed deaths per million people, confirmed cases as a proportion of tests, and tests per 1,000 people.

 

Lowy Institute said that despite having more resources, high-income countries’ average scores in handling the outbreak is not much higher than developing countries.

 

Source: https://interactives.lowyinstitute.org/features/covid-performance/

 

Better healthcare systems and financial ability to sustain lockdowns were beneficial to managing the pandemic, research shows. These assets were particularly important at the height of the pandemic, when the ability of governments to support or supplement citizens’ incomes during extensive lockdowns became crucial.

 

Yet, these factors are not a guarantee of success against Covid-19, as demonstrated by the poor performance of several advanced economies, including the US and UK. Countervailing forces were also at play — advanced economies tend to have older populations, with a greater proportion of the population vulnerable to Covid-19, and many elderly citizens living in old-age care facilities, which were particularly prone to virus outbreaks.

 

The lead established by high-income countries narrowed significantly towards the end of 2020 prior to the unrolling of mass Covid-19 vaccination programmes.

 

Developing countries that had dealt with the crisis well in early stages, have now hit a wall due to their financial and resource limits. However, compared to advanced countries, the rate of fatality has been quite low even in countries like India, where the pandemic accelerated dramatically.

 

 

Despite the data being less reliable, there are possibly other variables affecting these outcomes. One factor may be that many developing countries have younger populations, who may be less prone to the worst effects of the virus.

 

The Covid-19 disease continues to spread worldwide with more than 100 million confirmed cases across 190 countries and 2 million deaths since January last year, after China announced the first case of “viral pneumonia” in Wuhan.

 

Read more at at https://interactives.lowyinstitute.org/.../covid.../

 

Source: https://www.nationthailand.com/news/30401933

 

-- © Copyright The Nation Thailand 2021-01-28

 

- Whatever you're going through, the Samaritans are here for you

- Follow Thaivisa on LINE for breaking COVID-19 updates

 

Interesting..

Tanzania not even listed !

????

4 hours ago, rooster59 said:

while also protecting citizens from Covid-19 before vaccines become widely available.

Well, these mRNA vaccines have different objectives than eg. a polio vaccine, 

that Bloomberg remark doesn’t really reflect for what AstraZeneca and Pfizer were testing in their trials - check the „Endpoints“:

If the person to person spread is not tested, how can it protect your citizens against infection ?

22 hours ago, webfact said:

maintained that a vaccinated group was able to prevent 78 per cent of infections and 100 per cent of severe symptoms

Well ... at least looking at the performance, the Chinese Sinovac vaccine looks better than the Moderna / Pfizer vaccines - they didn’t even evaluate prevention of infection and concentrated on the severe symptoms !

British Medical Journal:

https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m4037

https://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2020/11/26/peter-doshi-pfizer-and-modernas-95-effective-vaccines-lets-be-cautious-and-first-see-the-full-data/

Immediate side effects and longterm effects are another side of the coin, which might speak against Sinovac...

However, Sinovac is using a proven technology with the incapacitated viruses, whereas the mRNA vaccines from AstraZeneca and Pfizer are a totally new technology and due to the 9 months of telescoped trials (compared to 10 years plus, normally) they were not able to evaluate longterm  effects.

In principle, the trials -what this genetic recording of your DNA and the application of nanoparticles means in the longterm for your body- are happening during application.

... it’s not for nothing, that the British drug agency MHRA saw the need to buy a new, artificial intelligence based, IT system to monitor the „the expected high volume of COVID-19 vaccine adverse drug reactions (ADRs)”:

https://pharmaphorum.com/news/mhra-looks-to-ai-to-hunt-for-covid-19-vaccine-side-effects/

https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m4258/rr

6 hours ago, polpott said:

The CCSA have now asked the governor of Chonburi to reverse his reversed decision and return restaurants to takeaway only. You couldn't make it up.

Yep - heard that already last night... and the guy telling that seems well connected.

17 minutes ago, SupermarineS6B said:

Can you imagine the amount of phone calls coming from some very touchy individuals to the government ?    Ooooh, wouldn't it be nice to be a fly on the wall in the halls of power......  Hey Somchai, open it up. or we'll open you up........ Kao jai mei ?  

Well ... imagine, you are a restaurant owner, you already had a very low turnover during the last few months, then you stocked up for preparing a big New Year dinner, spending a huge amount of money.

What would you do ?

On 12/31/2020 at 6:16 AM, Mango Bob said:

I don't care how many times the PM heard this.  You could have had a vaccine by now and nothing has been done.  To me this is dereliction of duty.   A vaccine now would have the country fully open in less then a year.  But to keep hoping cases go down on their own is not going to work.  I think Thailand needs new leadership.

I recommend to check the publications of the vaccine manufacturers and studies about the vaccines in British Medical Journal:

eg. BionTech clearly states, that the vaccine is tested to protect you against getting severe Covid symptoms - and nothing else.

That means, it is absolutely unclear, if the vaccine is also delivering

       Sterile Immunity = protecting against infection of others.

It is not for nothing, that several health ministers are demanding that -even after vaccination - you have to stick to face masks and social distancing !

2 hours ago, Dart12 said:

cause if there is one place you are gonna get it it'd be a restaurant, with the dozens of people that touch your food, silverware, plate, cups, drinks, beers, receipts, receipt cup, menu, walk by you , sit by you, serve you, clean up while you sit there.

That is the old status from April 2020.

I suggest, you check relevant  BMJ studies or the WHO publications: 

1) the virus is transmitted by air, not from surfaces

2) it needs a longer exposure (minimum 10 minutes to transfer a sufficient virus load), therefore someone just passing you is not exposing you to a number of viruses high enough to overwhelm your immune system

3) There is no study, I am aware of, which shows, restaurants are a hotspot.

Meanwhile, 9 months have passed, there’s more scientific and statistical material about SAR-Cov2 publicly available then to any other infectious disease 

... so it should be time, that our media, “influencers” and especially: politicians, go with the time and inform themselves, instead of just continuously repeating old so-called “facts” from April, when we were all rightfully scared, because sufficient data and studies were not available.

P.S.

... and sticking to old Cholera-style measures from the 19th century is absolutely not understandable,

in the 21st century, with all our science, data and computational power, never before experienced - we should do far better, there are a lot of doctors giving advice for better measures.

It was already in April clear, that the main risk group were people above 70 in care homes - but despite that, 50%-64% of Covid-deaths in France, UK, Sweden, Spain NYC suffered exactly in this risk group!

We could and should do far, far better really protecting our elders !

Where did he get these numbers ???? ? ... Imperial College, Neil Ferguson, who forecasted already millions of fatalities from Swine Flu?

He should better consult  Ioannidis:

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.22.20160341v3

However - maybe, evaluating the whole study is to complicated for him ... so just scroll to “Conclusions” in the abstracts!

Well, all those expecting miracles should ask themselves first:

        What do I expect from a Covid-19 vaccine ?

Then you should cross-check your expectations with this:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/williamhaseltine/2020/09/23/covid-19-vaccine-protocols-reveal-that-trials-are-designed-to-succeed/?sh=1a2233cb5247

In case, you prefer a more scientific version in British Medical Journal, cross-check here:

https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m4037

3 hours ago, brucec64 said:

 People who get their information from memes and dodgy alt-right websites don't seem to ever be able to make that huge leap of understanding.

Those people who don’t make that “huge leap of understanding” - as you? - are those, who invest their time to dig into scientific studies in leading scientific publications as BMJ or eg. take their calculators out, apply the Bayes Theoreme  and compute, what effects prevalence, specifity and sensitivity have on Positive or Negative Predictive Values of rtPCR- and antibody tests and on R0 ...

And by digging into studies, they find for example a study from ETH Zurich, which evaluated the “Querdenker” movement and found astonishingly not a lot of alt-rights, but that 23% of them elected before the Greens ... >250% than the Green Party’s share at the last election for parliament !

1 hour ago, Jeffr2 said:

https://edition.cnn.com/videos/world/2020/12/02/uk-approves-pfizer-coronavirus-vaccine-biontech-ceo-pleitgen-intv-intl-ldn-vpx.cnn

 

3:30 starts to get interesting.

Interesting, which of the 3 “endpoints” were tested in Phase III :

In the end, it’s all about “Prevention of symptomatic disease”

2 minutes ago, Jeffr2 said:

What I was trying to say....science doesn't fully understand this virus yet.  Probably won't for many years to come, especially with regards to long term effects.  We've got a long way to go.

I understand ...

If you see it like that - what’s then your attitude regarding new vaccines against Covid-19 ? 

The long way to go for science would also apply to the scientific fundamentals of the mechanism of actions these new vaccines are based on - or how do you see it?

3 minutes ago, Jeffr2 said:

The article does not say that about asymptomatic people.  It says we don't know, but it could be the viral load they were exposed to, genetic factors, face masks, etc.

 

But that article draws no firm conclusions.

okay !

Maybe, this metastudy from Peter Doshi in British Medical Journal, listing a lot of studies regarding pre-existing immunity,

might give you some more food for thought about immunity and asymptomatic patients:

https://www.bmj.com/content/370/bmj.m3563

In the end, it’s all up to everyone, to draw his own conclusions.

Nowadays, an awful lot of information is available in the internet for free and we do not necessarily need journalists to “interpret” those information.

(actually, it’s from Hall, The Friends of Voltaire ...)

17 hours ago, rabas said:

Just to clear up some old wive's tales now that covid-19 is much better understood.

 

The true number of asymptomatic cases is roughly 17% to 20%. The majority of cases do develop symptoms and you can't hide an ongoing outbreak.  Covid symptoms are mostly different from common runny nose colds so most competent doctors can spot covid-19 much of the time. 

 

Even before covid, Thailand tested significant respiratory infections using an inexpensive 'panel test' to detect any of 20+ causes including flus, rhinovirus, and common cold coronaviruses. Even in January, they used panel tests to distinguish covid from other respiratory illnesses, and can still do that. Bottom line, these is no ongoing widespread covid problem in Thailand.

 

https://www1.racgp.org.au/newsgp/clinical/australian-study-determines-true-asymptomatic-covi

 

https://www.zmescience.com/science/true-number-asymptomatic-cases-042342/

 

Actually, a higher number of “asymptomatic” cases might be better...

In essence, asymptomatic means nothing else than that the patients immune system was strong enough to fight the virus in a way, that noticeable side effects were not  experienced.

eg. https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/08/08/asymptomatic-coronavirus-covid/

Additionally, a positive rtPCR test does not necessarily mean, you are infectious.

Article with several references to studies here: https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/infectious-positive-pcr-test-result-covid-19/

20 hours ago, Mung said:

You might not be far from the truth. 
 

Do you remember the initial videos that came out of China at the very start of the viral outbreak? They depicted people fainting in the streets, hospitals rammed to the brim, and the whole scene felt like a dystopian horror movie. Months later, these scenes have not really been repeated anywhere else, which leads to suggest that those videos may have been faked.

 

Secondly, do you also remember how when the virus first emerged? WHO said that planes did not need to be grounded as that would not prevent the spread of the virus. Of course this is nonessential, it would have stopped the viral spread as that much is obvious. This was said by WHO when the virus was only in China and then subsequently in Thailand. The head of WHO, Tedros, had an odd relationship with the Chinese leader. Sources stated such things as, 

"the two men met in the Chinese capital, the number of cases was rising, and revelations were emerging that officials in Hubei province and Wuhan -- the city where the virus was first detected -- had sought to downplay and control news about the virus, even threatening medical whistleblowers with arrest."

Let's also remember that Chinese doctor who 'died' from the virus.

 

Thirdly, we have yet to establish where the virus originated – it's still an unknown. We do know that Wuhan is the home of the only biological weapons manufacturing location of such a magnitude to create something such as an engineered virus. Also, how did the Chinese obtain the the genetic sequence of the virus as early as February the 25th?

"Scientists in China have sequenced the genome of the COVID-19 virus demonstrating that it is a completely new virus, albeit closely related to the coronavirus (CoV) responsible for severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). Their findings are published in the journal Chinese Medical Journal."

 

Fourthly, China has upped their spending power during the economical downturn on foreign assets, as a means to grab them at devalued prices.

"Even as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to affect the global economies and businesses, Chinese companies have upped the ante to acquire or invest in distressed foreign assets in strategic locations. Against this backdrop, governments across several nations are now concerned about this move by China, according to GlobalData, a leading data and analytics company. Several media reports also suggest that there has been a growth in Chinese companies seeking proposals for targets from banks. During January to April 2020, 57 Chinese outbound M&A deals worth US$9.9bn and 145 Chinese outbound investments worth US$4.5bn were announced. The key M&A target destinations for Chinese firms included Hong Kong, the US, the UK, Germany, France, Canada and India. The key investment destinations during the period included the US, India, the UK, Hong Kong, Japan, France, Germany, South Korea and Australia."

 

Now the question must be asked, was all of this a plan from the start?

China is only part of the game...

If an organization, whose members are the 1000 biggest companies with an average annual turn over of 5 billion dollars,

is openly communicating about the “Great Reset”,

everybody should wake up !

Here some of their publications:

https://www.weforum.org/focus/the-great-reset

14 hours ago, Donga said:

I don't believe in lockdowns, they are a blunt tool. Hurt so many people, mostly the young, and/or less financial and drives me nuts.

However, Covid is very real, needs to be managed and there are some effective measures that the Europeans and Americans played poorly - effective quarantining and tracing, basic social distancing (inc reducing crowded indoor gatherings, but not outdoors, masked if crowded), community masking and self isolation for the vulnerable. Heat and humidity can be an advantage but did little to help Central American countries.

I don't get the cold/flu angle. Suffice to say, there is a lot more immunity to the common cold, e.g. I have the vaccine for free each year. The cold doesn't burden the hospital systems as much as Covid does when not managed well. Fortunately Thailand has managed Covid very well.
 

You are hitting the nail on its head.

Every health official worldwide is telling us: the priority is to protect the most vulnerable group: elders above 70. In western countries, a lot of these are in care homes and hospizes.

So - that’s exactly that group, which hasn’t a great a mobility and is not directly affected by the lockdowns !

However, the lockdowns affect primarily people younger than that, who according to the Prof. Ioannidis study, published in the WHO bulletin, have a lower case fatality rate han Influenza!

... a really focused method to protect our elders, eg. the Tuebingen-model, would be far more effective and have less collateral effects.

4 hours ago, EricTh said:

What I notice in Thailand is that most people have the decency to wear mask. That is the most important reason besides other measures.

 

In western countries, most people don't like to wear mask.

Well, I see daily quite the opposite (unless they go into a 7/11 or a mall).

And maybe ... contrary to common believe, it’s really a good idea:

Kansas left it to its 105 counties, if they introduced an obligation to wear a mask or not. Comparing the fatalities, those counties with obligatory masks encountered an increase in fatalities  by factor 1.5 

Possible explanation:

... coughing and sneezing is a natural mechanism to reduce the virus load.

Not for nothing, the slime in throat and nose is increasing, when catching a cold. The mucous membranes are constantly renewed and and the front layer cells with dead virus particles (from apoptosis) and active viruses are thrown out, when coughing and sneezing.

Masks are considered to protect others from droplet infections.

These droplets are relatively big (micrometer)  so that the masks hold them back. If the droplets dry out (which happens in a few seconds) the viruses get released, and a continuous „self-infection“ is starting, by breathing in, what’s inside the mask.

Even worse than catching a droplet from an infected person: the tiny viruses (nanometer) find their way far easier directly into the lungs instead only in the upper respiratory tract.

9 minutes ago, MRJOHNNY said:

Think you will find the U.K. have tested well over half of the population already, approx. 40 million plus tests completed to date, so the possibility of doing the same in Thailand whose population is about 3 million more than the U.K. is not beyond reality. 

And ... what did that testing change in the UK, if you look at the fatalities?

On 12/10/2020 at 5:18 AM, Mops59 said:

The seller should be charges with fraud and scam for his action. He needs to be aware of the consequences.  This customer pays this price once and will never return. He is worse of.

But the government is doing the same with the dual price system for national parks. So the message is take as much as you can from the tourist. Disgusting attitude.

It was no double pricing: the complaint came, after he charged a Thai the same price as his other customers !

That „Mr. 99 Seafood“ is there since years and had before Covid mainly (Farang) tourists. It’s directly at the Beach Road with seaview and compared to some Phuket restaurants in comparable location not even overpriced.

If now the Thai cheap charlies are making their government funded holidays, then going to such a restaurant, do not read the menu, just order and expect the same price as at the rot khen in Nakorn Esarn-Endoftheworld ... well ! Add in to that: going to a seafood restaurant, but ordering krapao kai with khai - chicken with egg. 555

It is also neglecting some facts, business owners have to compensate, when doing business in such locations:

- exaggerated rents (from landlords, mostly of the „influential“ type)

- high „fees“ -those without invoice- to certain institutions