Guderian

What could possibly go wrong with this cunning plan? Thailand is still on the forbidden list of most western countries, so quarantine on returning home will be required. China is locked up tighter than a clam as far as tourist travel outside the country is concerned. By December, the next Winter wave of infections and deaths will be ramping up nicely across the northern hemisphere. The Phuket sandbox has shown clearly that, no matter what precautions are taken, the virus will find its way into the community and spread like wildfire (55 cases per 100K people in Phuket, compared with 21 nationally). Now what else have I missed?

Tune in tomorrow for another episode of "The Thailight Zone" (cue spooky music), lol.

If what has happened with the virus spreading in Phuket, in spite of all their precautions, is anything to go by, then by the end of the year the country will be recording around 50,000 new cases every day, mostly in the newly-opened tourist hotspots. In spite of the vaccines, that's going to translate into a lot of deaths that otherwise would not have happened. Boris Johnson has put a number on it, saying that he's prepared to accept 50,000 covid-related deaths a year as the price of reopening the economy. It would be interesting to hear what the Thai government and people think is an acceptable number of deaths among their countryfolk in order to allow tourists back in.

My brother just sent me a copy of his NHS covid vaccination certificate, and the bar code is only valid for one month. He had two doses of Pfizer in February and March. He thinks it will just be a case of going through the motions on the NHS site again to get a new one when this one expires, but I guess they're keeping their options open until they decide how long you can be considered to be 'safe'. Being a type 2 diabetic in his 70's, he'll be very happy if he's offered a booster after 8 months, anyway.

It's only a short step from this idiocy to getting back to blaming farangs for importing and spreading the virus. I'm sure Anutin is sitting in his office slowly joining the dots, lol... that's it, d-i-r-t-y f-a-r-a-n-g-s

Have they closed the hairdressers and swimming pools again yet, lol? Better swim a few lengths this morning and then get my locks shorn this afternoon, because it can't be long...

From what I recall, October was the EARLIEST they were expecting to receive Moderna, but it was supposed to arrive sometime during the fourth quarter. Maybe Santa will bring it on Christmas Day, lol? To date, Thailand has double-jabbed just 11.2% of its population. No way is that going to get above 20% by the start of October, so in effect they'll be rescuing the restaurants by denying 80% of the population access to them. But hey, the bigwigs will all be double-jabbed, so at least they can get back to eating and drinking in their favourite places, nobody else matters anyway.

I swim every day (when it's allowed) and I am fed up with the village pool opening and closing like a Gogo dancer's privates, lol. I'm seriously thinking of buying a house with a 15m or 20m pool.

The population of Phuket is around 400,000, while the population of Thailand is 70 million. So 200 infections in Phuket daily is the equivalent of 35,000 new cases a day nationally, almost three times today's number. By all rights, they should be putting the island under the strictest lockdown yet, but instead they want to create the perfect conditions for the virus to spread even faster. It reminds me of the Great Songkran Travel disaster that the government decided wouldn't hurt things back in April, which helped to spread Delta around the country.

Let's get some truth into that particular sentence: ...when Thai politicians, grubbing around in the dirt to look for ways to make money from non-Chinese vaccines, had created a totally unnecessary local vaccine shortage.

Just wait until all the people who've been protected by this miraculous product try to get a Western vaccine passport. The WHO (aka CHO, or Chinese Health Organisation) might have approved it, but the relevant American, British and European regulators have not done so and, until the Chinese release the full details of their clinical trials, they are very unlikley to do so.

That's more like it, lol!

Like every decison that's been made during this pandemic, we won't have a say in it, so probably best to just go accept that it is what it is and go with the flow.

https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/covid-19/info-by-product/pfizer/index.html Before mixing, the vaccine may be stored in the refrigerator between 2⁰C and 8⁰C (36⁰F and 46⁰F) for up to 1 month (31 days). After one month (31 days), remove any remaining vials from the refrigerator and discard following manufacturer and jurisdiction guidance on proper disposal. Use beyond use date labels to track how long the vaccine has been in the refrigerator.

Please show us the numbers comparing the Sinovac-AZ regime with just AZ. There's probably no significant difference after a few weeks. But hey, the CP guy who has a business interst in the company manufacturing Sinovac evidently needs the extra money, so the government has to find some weak excuse for continuing to buy this ineffective product. They'd be far better off abandoning Sinovac and using the cash to buy more doses of Western vaccines, but how's a Thai politician or businessmen supposed to make a decent living from that sort of activity? Pesky farangs and their business ethics, things are so much simpler when you're dealing with the Chinese.

Food? I thought he was buying some film for his camera, lol.

It's entirely up to the condo management, as the pool is a common area and it's their job to manage it. Many years ago, I lived in Jomtien Complex Condo which has a swimming pool on the fourth floor that catches a lot of wind. At one time they were, in effect, closing the pool during the rainy season by draining it partly, so there wasn't really enough water for swimming. The reason was that the wind blew a lot of water out of the pool and down the drains, and the cost of the chemicals used in replacing that water every time a storm with big wind hit was regarded as excessive. Drain the pool by a third or a half and the waves caused by the wind will just hit the sides, instead of spilling over the circulation culverts around the pool and down the drains. All the swimmers complained but it was like talking to a brick wall.

I was just trying to put it politely, lol.

Yeah, that caught me out last night too, lol. I went for a pizza at the local Italian restaurant just after 8:00 and was told to go away. Luckily, I had one in the freezer so I just fired up the oven when I got back home. Never mind, I managed a swim and a haircut, so that's 2 out of 3, lol!

That leaves 20% of deaths among the under-50's, which sounds high to me. I guess they were mostly afficionados of the likes of KFC and MacDonalds, and had developed a physique to match, it's so sad to see many Thai children looking like this...

Spoken like a true politician. In spite of the current mess having been caused by the government and its various tentacles, he makes it sound like the damage to the economy is entirely the fault of the Thai people!

The village pool was open this morning, and very enjoyable it was after six weeks of looking at it from the wrong side of the fence, lol! I went to Jomtien in the afternoon to get a haircut, no problem there either, then drove back along Beach Road and a lot of the deck chair vendors were open for business. I saw several people cavorting in the sea, so I guess that's open for swimming too.

Since Pattaya and Hua Hin are at similar latitudes and the sea temperature will be much the same, it makes you wonder why Pattaya isn't concerned about this too. There are certainly plenty of jellyfish in the sea here since the rainy season started, as I can attest from numerous stings received while swimming in the sea. Presumably not box jellyfish, though, as I'm still breathing, lol. They already have many swimming areas buoyed off to protect people from jet skis and boats, would it be that difficult to string some jellyfish nets below the buoys? With the seas warming as a result of climate change, the poisonous jellyfish problem isn't going to go away.

This is an unholy mix of ignorance and callousness. Around 90% of adults in England and Wales were fully vaccinated when all the restrictions were finally dropped a few weeks ago. Cases have spiked there, but deaths are far less than before the vacination programme, and often largely among the unvaccinated. At least in Britain people were given a choice about having the vaccines before restrictions were lifted, here in Thailand it's all down to the luck of the draw, and with only 10% of the population fully vaccinated it's obvious that deaths are going to spike along with new infection numbers. The Thai government is going to be guilty of genocide against its own people if it allows the virus to run free in a largely unprotected population.

That's an odd thing to say, since the government is the root of most of the big corruption issues, lol!