whatsupdoc

A really scary article in the BKK Post.

It states in the first line; "The Revenue Department is preparing to amend the law to collect taxes from individuals who have income from abroad, even if that income is not brought into the country."

If Thailand starts to tax worldwide income I'll have to seriously reconsider if I want to stay for more than 180 days a year in Thailand....

1 hour ago, JackGats said:

Qdenga is a vaccine for those without previous infections. I wonder if it's worth getting.

Not just for those without previous infections... As far as I know it is actually recommended to prevent a second infection with a different dengue strain.

I tried to find any reference to an IATA prediction of 200 million arrivals in Thailand by 2031....... No surprise, but couldn't find it.

Are the Thais just making it up???

21 hours ago, London Lowf said:

Not necessarily as that would also catch Thais. Before I discovered Thailand I used to got to Turkey - or Türkiye as they have now rebranded themselves - and non-Turks had to queue up at a kiosk to pay an entry fee and get a receipt before going through immigration. I can't remember how much it was but it was much more than B300. I think that quite a lot of countries do this.

About 4 months ago I went to Turkey and there was no such thing at the airport.....

8 minutes ago, impulse said:

Tobacco based vaccines are being researched all over the world...

 

https://tobaccoreporter.com/2022/04/01/the-virtuous-weed/

 

211 million baht is peanuts for a pharma study.

 

Thanks for that article. It gives a proper background, unlike the PBS article.

Quote from the linked article (PBS): "“Covifenz” is made from plant proteins which, to the human immune system, look like the virus that causes COVID-19"

From a scientific point of view this raises far more questions for me how this should (or even can) work than it gives confidence. Would need a lot more background information before I could even start to believe this is not a total waste of resources.

1 minute ago, ThailandRyan said:

From where? I flew in from the US and through Korea was mandatory to show the pre flight pcr test results before boarding. They then put a sticker on your boarding pass which was double checked again at entry to the plane.

All within Europe. It just depends on the countries you are flying to, not on the airlines. And even though I have a house in Thailand, I will not return as long Thailand sticks to their silly entry rules.

36 minutes ago, unblocktheplanet said:

Shifting the blame. All int'l airlines require PCR results before boarding. No diff. Monkey talks...

Made quite a lot of international flights lately and never needed a PCR result.....

1 hour ago, Virt said:

It says this in the article.

It's that not the same as saying a positive pcr test after day nice are false positive, since there are no live virus left or am I mixing up things?

 

No study detected live virus beyond day 9 of illness, despite persistently high viral loads, which were inferred from cycle threshold values.

Right. It does make me wonder though why the virus particles seem no longer infectious. Like I said, RNA is very rapidly degraded unless protected by the virus envelope or some protein. Maybe some kind of blocking of the spike protein does the trick.

1 hour ago, Virt said:

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanmic/article/PIIS2666-5247(20)30172-5/fulltext

 

It's old news so no idea why the other poster implies there is a hidden story somewhere.

 

Authorities are aware that PCR tests can test positive after infection.

Which is why some countries don't demand a negative test before you can go back to work after infection,

since it would take quite a while for some people to test negative.

Thank you for the article. It does not however tell that PCR test are prone to false positives due to "dead" virus material as claimed by the other poster.

It does say that the virus genetic material can still be found for quite a while after infection. Whether or not these virus particles are infectious is difficult to tell, maybe the laboratory test for that is not accurate enough (it might not detect below a certain threshold of virus particles, unlike the PCR test).

5 hours ago, The Hammer2021 said:

Not all countries  require  PCR tests such as the UK.

PCR tests are prone to generate  false positive by detecting old dead covid  material  from recovered covid patients.

With the advent of Omicron this phenomenon will increase

This is THE REAL PCR test story.

Do you have any source to back that claim? RNA is very unstable and rapidly degraded (unlike DNA), so I highly doubt your statement in the case of RT-PCR tests for Covid-19.

On 11/12/2021 at 11:50 PM, Card said:

The PCR tests don't necessarily show that you are currently infective. It tests for viral DNA and that DNA may be historic and no longer infective. The lateral flow tests for whole viral particles which are much more likely to be infective.

The virus contains RNA, not DNA. For a PCR test this RNA first has to be copied into DNA (with an enzyme called Reverse Transcriptase) so to detect viral RNA you need an RT-PCR test.

I suppose that RNA outside of the virus particle would be broken down immediately (RNA is very unstable, DNA is not). So I think it would be unlikely that the (RT)PCR test would pick up 'historic', no longer infective, genetic material of the virus as opposed to genetic material from infective virus particles.

4 minutes ago, Captain Monday said:

Not so they have been used for decades. Any Physician should be familiar for patients with medical issues who need authorization to travel by air. 

 

Alitalia MEDIF.pdf 835.77 kB · 1 download Lufhansa MEDIF.pdf 170.67 kB · 0 downloads Air France-MEDIF_EN.pdf 217.77 kB · 0 downloads

At least in The Netherlands (and I suppose many other countries) general practitioners are not allowed to give out a Fit to Fly document. You would need to go to a specialized clinic (and pay a steep price for the useless form....)

9 minutes ago, johnnyloda said:

In Europe no medical institution has the faintest idea what a fit-to-fly certificate is ... 

And doctors will be very hesitant to give you one (might even be against the law). But there might be ways to get one, even without a physical check, as long as you pay for it. It my country it was 60 euro to get one for my wife. Totally useless requirement by the Thai government.

8 minutes ago, Crusader said:

To put a little twist on this one...we are always reading and hearing of how many Billions of baht the country is losing, and how many billions of baht they are still hoping to amass this year. 

 

But...never have I seen a message, or heard any words of thanks for the many thousands of us who choose to stay here, and do in fact contribute huge amounts of money to the country. 

You might be too optimistic about those 'huge' amounts....

42 minutes ago, kynikoi said:

I've always believed it came from the lab...the unnatural virus. The circumstancal evidence was always overwhelming. At this point only a half wit would think this unnatural disaster was bats flying into Wuhan, biting a pangolin on the ass which some poor Chinaman bought and his wife made into soup.

Nice that you just believe things, I'd rather stick to scientific evidence (not circumstantial conspiracy theories). Haven't seen any proof that the virus is of an unlikely unnatural origin.

1 minute ago, dinsdale said:

As soon as you do gain of function you change the nature of the virus. I'm not here to educate you. Do it yourself and you might learn something.

I have a lot of experience in working with micro-organisms (including viruses). I do not need your 'education', I only asked for the scientific evidence you claimed. Spreading conspiracy theories is easy, giving real scientific evidence isn't.

6 minutes ago, dinsdale said:

Funny how the lead WHO investigator in the Wuhan investigation has been recused from the committee investigating the source of Sars-Cov-19 due to conflict of intersest, that being involvement in gain of function research at the Wuhan Lab. Please show me evidence that this is not the case. It's on youtube. He says it himself. They were fiddling with bat viruses. If you don't believe this you don't believe what is on record. Do some research.

You suggested that it was not a natural virus. Still waiting for scientific evidence....... The fact that viruses are being researched in a laboratory doesn't make them unnatural.

2 hours ago, dinsdale said:

I agree with most of what you say. There is a very big doubt with substantial scientific backing over this being a natural virus though.

But you are not going to share that substantial scientific backing....? Because it doesn't exist?

4 hours ago, Peterw42 said:

The VAT refund for "tourists" is only on goods you purchase in Thailand and take back home. I think it also doesn't apply once you have any sort of long stay visa

I did get tourist VAT refunds while having a multiple entry non-O visa.