TallGuyJohninBKK

Sheryl, I've got an upcoming Medicare trip back to the U.S. later this year that I was planning to include getting a free Shingles vaccine first shot. I'm also due for a COVID current-year version booster, since it's been about a year since my last one. Do you know anything about the advisability of getting a shingles and COVID vaccine shot at the same time, and whether there are any potential issues in doing so? Thanks! PS - If I needed to wait and do them separately, I'd probably still plan to get the Shingles shot in the U.S. under Medicare, as it's the more expensive one here in Thailand, and then get the COVID one here, if need be....

Vaccines don’t cause autism. So what does? Another CDC/MMR study is a waste. Autism rates are increasing due to complicated factors. Katelyn Jetelina, Andrea Tamayo, and Thomas Farley Mar 20, 2025 "Vaccines, including the MMR vaccine, do not cause autism. This has been thoroughly studied—over 25 epidemiological studies, including a fantastic 2019 analysis of more than 600,000 children in Denmark, have refuted any link. There’s also no biological plausibility: no vaccine component can alter neuron connections, and most brain changes associated with autism occur in utero, well before a child receives vaccines. ... Bottom line Autism diagnoses have increased globally over the last 60 years. Most of this rise is due to changes in how we define and diagnose it, but even standardized tracking suggests an increase. What we do know is that vaccines have nothing to do with it. And every dollar spent chasing that disproven link is a dollar not spent on research that could help parents and children." https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/vaccines-dont-cause-autism-so-what Your Local Epidemiologist (YLE) is founded and operated by Dr. Katelyn Jetelina, MPH PhD—an epidemiologist, wife, and mom of two little girls. Dr. Jetelina is also a senior scientific consultant to a number of non-profit organizations. YLE reaches over 340,000 people in over 132 countries with one goal: “Translate” the ever-evolving public health science so that people will be well-equipped to make evidence-based decisions.

Another worthless, non-credible anti-vaxer post from the usual suspect. CDC autism report disputes RFK Jr’s claims about why the condition is on the rise April 16, 2025 ... "...the CDC’s experts dispute the idea that the condition is becoming more widespread, despite the rise in its data, instead attributing the uptick in cases to improved diagnostics. The report’s authors say advances in screening and testing “have been apparent” since its last report was published and suggest that “differences in the prevalence of children identified with [autism spectrum disorder] across communities might be due to differences in availability of services for early detection and evaluation and diagnostic practices.” https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/other/cdc-autism-report-disputes-rfk-jr-s-claims-about-why-the-condition-is-on-the-rise/ar-AA1D1jQG RFK Jr. kept asking to see the science that vaccines were safe. After he saw it, he dismissed it January 31, 2025 The science on vaccines is clear to doctors and scientists — but not to Kennedy Sen. Bill Cassidy, a Louisiana Republican and physician, said the science is clear that measles and other childhood vaccines are safe and not linked to autism. [emphasis added] Kennedy said if shown the data he would recommend those vaccines and “not only will I do that but I will apologize for any statements that misled people otherwise.” So Cassidy pulled out and read aloud definitive scientific conclusions that vaccines don’t cause autism. Kennedy rebuffed him, instead mentioning a recent paper that outside experts have called fundamentally flawed — and Cassidy agreed “has some issues” – in an attempt to counter decades of rigorous studies. The senator told Kennedy his history of “undermining confidence in vaccines with unfounded or misleading arguments concerns me” – and risks casting “a shadow over President Trump’s legacy” if people die of vaccine-preventable diseases should he become health secretary." https://apnews.com/article/rfk-jr-vaccine-trump-science-autism-9b99621b01f11b7f0bdc81e5a0b82d2b

Another anti-vaxer here citing another in a long line of nutjob non-sources, not surprisingly: "Vernon Edward Coleman (born 1946) is an English conspiracy theorist and writer, who writes on topics related to human health, politics and animal welfare. He was formerly a general practitioner (GP) and newspaper columnist. Coleman's medical claims have been widely discredited and described as pseudoscientific conspiracy theories.[1][2][3] [Emphasis added] Coleman has claimed that COVID-19 is a hoax, that vaccines are dangerous, and that face masks cause cancer. All these claims have been debunked by more senior medical professionals.[36][37][38] Coleman has also claimed the Coronavirus Pandemic has links to the Agenda 21 Conspiracy Theory and the Great Reset Theory, which both suggest a cabal of elite figures are attempting to depopulate the global community. No evidence has been found to support these claims.[39]" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vernon_Coleman

Let's see just who the "smart" ones were: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/united-states-rates-of-covid-19-deaths-by-vaccination-status

More unsourced nonsense from a familiar purveyor of same.

My preferred bottled soft drink these days -- which can be somewhat hard to find, though Lotus stores often stock it -- is the Ichitan brand Jasmine green tea no sugar variety with the white colored bottle cap. Just rechecked the label today, and still says "no sugar" and no mention of any artificial sweeteners on the ingredients label.

Couple things: 1. Unfortunately, the OP news report here doesn't say exactly what classes of beverages these new sugar rules and taxes will apply to. Presumably, though the article doesn't say it, they're talking about bottled and canned soft drinks and other similar beverages sold on store shelves. However, I mention it because, if you really want to find A LOT of sugar content, try looking at the typical Starbucks or Amazon Cafe or similar flavored drinks, which are loaded up with the stuff, unless you specifically request a formulation without sugar or with very little sweetening. As far as I can tell, just guessing, there's no sign from the OP report that the referenced taxes are going to apply to THOSE kinds of prepared beverages here... which seems unfair in terms of providing equal treatment. 2. I've never really consumed sugary soft drinks. And even in recent years, about the closest I'd come would be adding a small dash of Oishi Genmai flavor green tea drink (their orange colored bottles) to my otherwise pure flat or pure carbonated soda water, just for a touch of flavoring. I know from looking at the label in the past, the Genmai flavor green tea had some sugar, but not much for me, because I used it very sparingly. But today, after reading the OP report here, I figured I'd recheck the Oishi Genmai bottle label I have at home. And to my surprise and dismay, somewhere along the way, unawares to me, they've changed the formulation to reduce the sugar content to 5g per 200 ml label serving, but at the same time now have added SUCRALOSE as an ingredient, which I certainly don't want in my drink. And the front labeling/packaging of the drink gives no clue that they've added Sucralose to the formulation somewhere along the way. Bad corporate behavior there, lacking disclosure, and they've just lost a customer for their product. 😞 So lesson here: if you consume any Thai market soft drinks and DON'T want artificial sweeteners in them, best to check the label these days, because they may not have the same formulation as what they had in the past.

Can anyone advise when (how long ago) was the last time that ANY LIVING SURVIVOR was rescued out of the SAOB pile of rubble? There were some living rescues in the immediate aftermath of the building's collapse. But as the days have passed beyond that to the now two-week point, AFAIK, there have been few, if any, recent ones. And 71 still counted as missing.

The 60 buildings structurally unsafe and closed data point above is interesting.... in that.... Just a few days ago, AFAIR, a prior report had put the number of unsafe/closed buildings in the BKK area at 30+ (I wanna say 34 from my recollection). So that number definitely has been increasing with the passage of time. If the latest 60 number is correct, that presumably means A LOT of local people are now homeless because of the EQ.... It would be nice if the Thai "news" media have some meaningful reporting on what's going on with those people and the buildings where they had lived...

Interesting to finally, after a VERY long drought of one sided-ness here, see this forum as with the OP here reporting world news reflecting BOTH realities of the war in Gaza.... and not just the blatantly Israel-only side, as has been the case for a long time. IMHO, both sides have crimes that their leaders and fighters should be held accountable for. But that doesn't and shouldn't excuse the rampant killing of innocents, by either side.

More COVID pandemic deflection from familiar right-wing characters here, such as the UK's Daily Telegraph, which has a pretty shoddy record of COVID reporting, as shown below. If the Telegraph wants to cry for people, instead of focusing on the relative few who ran afoul of COVID legal restrictions in the UK and faced resulting fines, how about shedding tears for the 230,000+ UK residents who died from COVID during the course of the pandemic. https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/uk/ Or the dozens of new COVID deaths that still occur every week in the UK even now, though those certainly are not reported in any of the COVID threads here anymore: https://ukhsa-dashboard.data.gov.uk/respiratory-viruses/covid-19#deaths Nope, don't want to talk about those folks, and how fewer would have died had more been vaccinated, or had more better followed public health precautions that The Telegraph routinely has ridiculed. As for the Daily Telegraph's shoddy track record of COVID reporting, one example below: ... https://healthfeedback.org/claimreview/covid19-vaccines-lowered-excess-deaths-during-pandemic-contrary-headline-the-daily-telegraph/

Six-wheeled construction cranes don't "slip" off the highway where they're parked.....

US Measles Cases Rise 26% in a Week; Total Now 607 in 21 States By Damian Garde April 4, 2025 at 4:16 PM UTC The US now has 607 confirmed measles cases, a 26% jump from a week ago. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported 124 new cases Friday in 21 states, with 97% of them in people who were unvaccinated or their vaccination status was not known. ... The measles vaccine is 93% effective in preventing infection after one dose and has prevented an estimated 60 million deaths since 2000, according to the World Health Organization. https://archive.ph/OBbyO AND ‘We are on track to have the worst measles outbreak of this century’: Dr. Jha ABC News’ Martha Raddatz interviews Biden’s coronavirus response coordinator and dean of Brown University's School of Public Health Dr. Ashish Jha on “This Week.” March 30, 2025 https://abcnews.go.com/ThisWeek/video/track-worst-measles-outbreak-century-dr-jha-120311443

Last time I checked, there were some 70+ people still listed as missing / unaccounted for in the rubble of the project. AFAIK, other than a handful of rescues of living souls that occurred in the day or two after the quake, there have been few if any rescues of living souls in the ensuing days after that. AFAIK, all the recent media reports about "breakthroughs" and signs of life being heard have resulted in nothing tangible (rescues of living souls) in recent days up to this point. At least among the misc. Thai news reports I've been reading lately (including the OP here), most don't even mention any more the count of those still listed as missing, apparently preferring not to remind readers of that sad tally.

The above just shows the idiocy of government leaders who were in the news just a few days back declaring that the investigation into the SAB collapse needed to be completed within one week. Khaosod English - March 31, 2025 "The Prime Minister has ordered a fact-finding mission to be completed within one week. Deputy Prime Minister and Interior Minister Anutin Charnvirakul signed an order on Sunday, March 30, establishing a committee led by the Chief Engineer from the Department of Public Works and credible experts. “We expect it will take about seven days to establish the facts...." [emphasis added] https://www.khaosodenglish.com/featured/2025/03/31/probe-focuses-thai-chinese-venture-in-bangkoks-fatal-building-collapse/

More anti-vax nonsense and misleading statistics from the OP poster here, not surprisingly: From the OP: From the HHS VAERS website: Guide to Interpreting VAERS Data Evaluating VAERS Data "When evaluating data from VAERS, it is important to note that for any reported event, no cause-and-effect relationship has been established. Reports of all possible associations between vaccines and adverse events (possible side effects) are filed in VAERS. Therefore, VAERS collects data on any adverse event following vaccination, be it coincidental or truly caused by a vaccine. The report of an adverse event to VAERS is not documentation that a vaccine caused the event." [emphasis added] https://vaers.hhs.gov/data/dataguide.html

Kennedy's on the ball for sure! 😞 Another of Trump's morons now attempting to run the U.S. government, and failing abjectly. RFK Jr. says 20% of health agency layoffs could be mistakes April 3, 2025 "Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. suggested Thursday that around 20% of the job cuts by the Trump administration's Department of Government Efficiency will be wrong and need to be corrected. Around 10,000 employees were laid off from the Department of Health and Human Services on Tuesday, as part of a restructuring architected by Kennedy and Elon Musk's DOGE task force. But Kennedy acknowledged they didn't get everything right the first time. "Personnel that should not have been cut, were cut. We're reinstating them. And that was always the plan. Part of the DOGE, we talked about this from the beginning, is we're going to do 80% cuts, but 20% of those are going to have to be reinstated, because we'll make mistakes," Kennedy said, speaking to reporters at a stop in Virginia." (more) https://www.cbsnews.com/news/rfk-jr-hhs-job-cuts-doge-mistakes/ He and his ilk are disgracefully playing with people's lives, both HHS employees, and the Americans and people around the world who depended on and benefited from what had been an expansive U.S. domestic and international public health presence. Until Trump and Kennedy started dismantling it with axes.

I'd answer your question above, but doing so would be off-topic for this thread as regards COVID. As regards this thread and its topic, I've always supported and endorsed relevant laws being followed and enforced, and those NOT following pertinent laws should be held to answer. In this case, the Chinese law breakers were let off without serving a day in custody, despite the SUSPENDED sentence that was handed down. IMHO, they should have been given and served the sentences they received without suspension. But the Thai courts decided otherwise, and it was within their legal authority to make that decision.

Not exactly the best way to encourage international earthquake aid relief....

Also, regarding the past presidential cycle with Trump and Harris, at least according to the following article, the most of the largest billionaire donors and the largest amounts given by them went to Trump and Republican causes... Bill Gates and Michael Bloomberg were large donors to Harris, but trailed far behind Musk: https://tech.yahoo.com/business/articles/10-biggest-billionaire-donors-kamala-200000585.html The 10 biggest billionaire donors to Kamala Harris, Donald Trump, and others this election November 5, 2024 ... "Musk has spent at least $118 million of his own cash on efforts to help Republicans this election cycle, while his America PAC has spent just shy of $150 million to support Trump, according to a Sunday filing. That PAC, which Musk founded earlier this year, has also dropped millions of dollars on Congressional races." By comparison, Gates gave $50 million to Harris. And regarding Bloomberg, the article aptly notes: "Billionaire Michael Bloomberg is one of the few donors who have given as much to support Democrats as other wealthy individuals have Republicans. [emphasis added] Until recently, Bloomberg had donated just $47 million to efforts supporting Harris’ election bid. However, Democrats close to him recently convinced him to support Harris’ campaign with a $50 million donation to a nonprofit supporting her candidacy." https://tech.yahoo.com/business/articles/10-biggest-billionaire-donors-kamala-200000585.html

MAGAs and Musk have their own unique and special take on trying to buy U.S. election outcomes, and they've been working hard it at: As example from the OP: "Musk even traveled to Wisconsin two days before the election to personally hand over $1 million checks to two voters" Or before that: Elon Musk spends $277 million to back Trump and Republican candidates https://www.cbsnews.com/news/elon-musk-277-million-trump-republican-candidates-donations/ Musk keeps giving select voters $1 million checks. How is this legal? April 1, 2025 "CNN — Neither state nor federal courts have stopped Elon Musk from handing out $1 million checks to voters, first in Pennsylvania during last year’s presidential campaign and now in Wisconsin, where Musk is backing a conservative candidate for the state Supreme Court. ... How did we get here? WOLF: This is the second straight election in which the world’s richest man and a campaign superdonor has handed out million-dollar checks essentially to random people. How can this possibly be legal? GHOSH: The moment that we’re in is the logical and unfortunate result of the culture of how elections are financed in this country that was unleashed by the Supreme Court in the Citizens United decision." https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/01/politics/elon-musk-million-dollar-checks-campaign-finance-what-matters/index.html Or with Trump last year: Trump pressed oil executives to give $1 billion for his campaign, people in industry say “This is a scandal” and “an indictment of the system” — but probably legal, one legal watchdog told POLITICO. 05/09/2024 ... The oil industry has a long list of policy actions it would want Trump to take, including dismantling parts of President Joe Biden’s green agenda and rolling back pollution regulations that threaten to crimp their profits. As POLITICO reported Wednesday, oil executives are also preparing some highly specific requests for Trump, including executive orders they hope he would sign if reelected. https://www.politico.com/news/2024/05/09/trump-asks-oil-executives-campaign-finance-00157131

From the OP report: "Despite their prison sentences, the court decided to suspend their jail time for one year, in light of the mitigating factors" [emphasis added] That means, they got sentenced legally, but won't actually have to serve any time at all. That last pgh of the OP report is what's called in the news business "burying the lede." (the key/most important thing) The bottom line of it is -- they walk away with little consequence and China is satisfied. Not a single day in custody served, and less than $200 fines. I suspect, they'll all now be headed quickly back to homeland China.

Chadchart, prior to becoming a politician, was a civil/structural engineer by academic qualifications and trade. What happened at the State Audit building must make him literally sick to his stomach: "He completed a bachelor's degree in Civil Engineering (First Class Honors) from Chulalongkorn University and then received a Master's of Structural Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and a Doctorate of Engineering from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in the USA with Ananda Mahidol Foundation Scholarship in 1987." "Chadchart used to work as a structural engineer in a private company. Later in 1995, he joined the Faculty of Engineering, Chulalongkorn University as an associate professor and an assistant to the president. In addition, he has served as a director in many state enterprises such as The Transport Company Limited, Mass Rapid Transit Authority of Thailand and Aeronautical Radio of Thailand Limited..." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chadchart_Sittipunt All that said, the BMA's potential culpability in all this hasn't been established, one way or the other, AFAIK.