TallGuyJohninBKK

British Heart Foundation Covid vaccines: your questions answered Updated 31 January 2024 Is the coronavirus vaccine safe? Yes. Vaccines are only approved for use after being tested on tens of thousands of people. All of the approved vaccines are shown to be safe. In the UK, tens of millions of people have now had a Covid-19 vaccine, and reports of serious side effects have been very small. [emphasis added] The Medicines & Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) continues to monitor Covid-19 vaccines to make sure they meet strict standards of safety, quality and effectiveness. https://www.bhf.org.uk/informationsupport/heart-matters-magazine/news/coronavirus-and-your-health/coronavirus-vaccine-your-questions-answered#safevaccine

And, the media is hardly "silent" on COVID these days:

We've hardly ended up years later "exactly where we were pre-covid." For example: https://data.who.int/dashboards/covid19/deaths?n=c AND

And then there's this: UK Health Security Agency: 16 April 2024 "Current vaccines provide good protection against severe disease and hospitalisation. UKHSA surveillance data relating to last spring’s programme shows that those who received a vaccine were around 50% less likely to be admitted to hospital with COVID-19 from 2 weeks following vaccination, compared to those who remained unvaccinated. According to World Health Organization data, 400,000 lives in England are estimated to have been saved up to March 2023 due to the COVID-19 vaccine programme." https://ukhsa.blog.gov.uk/2024/04/16/whos-eligible-for-the-2024-covid-19-vaccine-or-spring-booster/ AND Covid vaccines saved more than 400,000 lives in England and Scotland, WHO says The study is the most comprehensive to date in showing how effective Covid vaccines have been, scientists say January 19, 2024 "Covid vaccines have saved more than 420,000 lives in England and Scotland, according to an analysis by the World Health Organisation (WHO). The study estimates that jabs saved 396,532 lives in England and 24,340 lives in Scotland between December 2020 and March 2023. As such, they reduced the death toll from Covid by 70 per cent during this period, the analysis found. (more) https://inews.co.uk/news/science/covid-vaccines-saved-lives-england-scotland-who-2862550

No correlation between vaccination coverage and the amount of excess mortality... What can explain the excess mortality in the U.S. and Europe in 2022? 02 Nov 2022 ... Third, the healthcare systems of many countries are still reeling from the COVID-19 pandemic. Many hospitals remain underfunded, underequipped, and understaffed, leading to suboptimal care for patients. But one thing we do know isn’t contributing to excess mortality is COVID-19 vaccines, contrary to claims by some. As we demonstrated earlier, there’s no correlation between vaccination coverage and the amount of excess mortality, nor is excess mortality positively correlated with the deployment of public COVID-19 vaccination campaigns. Therefore, the evidence available contradicts this claim. https://healthfeedback.org/what-can-explain-the-excess-mortality-in-the-u-s-and-europe-in-2022/

And then as to Bridgen's central claim: Fact Check: No evidence to link UK excess deaths to COVID-19 vaccines By Reuters Fact Check February 7, 2024 ... "For example, ONS data show all-cause deaths in England were higher among the unvaccinated than those who had received at least one dose, for every month in its April 2021 to May 2023 dataset. “There is no evidence COVID-19 vaccinations are linked to these estimated excess deaths,” a spokeswoman for the ONS said via email. Experts point to the long-term effects of surviving COVID infection, NHS delays and a lack of preventive care as explanations for the higher-than-average mortalities. ... VERDICT Misleading. There is no evidence linking COVID-19 vaccines to excess deaths in the UK. https://www.reuters.com/fact-check/no-evidence-link-uk-excess-deaths-covid-19-vaccines-2024-02-06/

The BBC also weighed in on Bridgen's COVID vaccine views as well in fact checking his past comments. Andrew Bridgen: What has suspended MP said about vaccines? 12 January 2023 ... "However in recent months, he has made increasingly misleading statements about vaccine safety. In December 2022, Mr Bridgen called in Parliament for a "complete suspension" of Covid vaccines based on what he described as, "robust data of significant harms and little ongoing benefit". This went against the overwhelming weight of evidence, from a number of different independent teams of researchers, that found that Covid vaccines' benefits far outweigh any known harms. (more) https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-64237949

And all of the above was widely ignored because everyone knows just who Bridgen is -- an anti-vax loon who was kicked out of his own Conservative political party for his nonsense, and someone whose past comments on COVID have repeatedly been shown to be misleading and/or wrong. Andrew Bridgen: MP expelled by Tories after Covid vaccine comments 26 April 2023 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-leicestershire-65402195 AND https://fullfact.org/can-i-trust/1244/andrew-bridgen/ AND Bridgen and Kruger have been down these same misinformation roads before in Parliament, and have been shown to be wrong and/or at best misleading. MPs' vaccine debate fact checked 10 November 2022 MPs recently debated an e-petition asking the government to conduct an investigation into whether Covid-19 vaccines are responsible for an alleged “increase in heart attacks and related health issues”. We looked at a number of claims made about vaccines or Covid-19 during the debate on 24 October and found a number of them were misleading or missing important context. We have taken a look at a selection of them below. We have checked many of the claims before, including about government advice on whether pregnant women should be vaccinated, that Pfizer never tested whether its vaccine stopped transmission and whether vaccine side effects are underreported to the Yellow Card scheme. (more) https://fullfact.org/health/vaccine-safety-westminster-debate/

The alleged extortion case will NOT "rock [the] Thai police force." Rather, it's just a little droplet in a huge pond of systemic corruption that will barely make a ripple.

I was just fiddling with the apps on my Android phone, which already had G Pay installed, but pretty much unused. When I went to install Google Wallet from the Play Store, there was a message saying the GP U.S. app will "no longer be available starting June 4." I assume that means in the Play Store, dunno what it means for use on my phones. At any rate, I was able to install Google Wallet on my main phone along with Google Pay, and set up both for tap to pay using one of my U.S. debit cards... And it seems the Android phone has to be NFC capable and enabled in order to make contactless payments. Now for finding some unsuspecting Thai merchant to be my tap to pay guinea pig!!!! 🙂

Thank you for SOMEONE! finally posting on the actual topic/question posed by the OP!!!

Actually, they did before COVID, and they do now for the next one/future pandemic as well. The public health community is always spending a lot of time and energy looking at what might come next. For the future: Next pandemic likely to be caused by flu virus, scientists warn Influenza is still the biggest threat to global health as WHO raises fears about the spread of avian strain 20 Apr 2024 Influenza is the pathogen most likely to trigger a new pandemic in the near future, according to leading scientists. An international survey, to be published next weekend, will reveal that 57% of senior disease experts now think that a strain of flu virus will be the cause of the next global outbreak of deadly infectious illness. ... Indeed, some scientists still believe Sars-CoV-2 remains a threat, with 15% of the scientists surveyed in the study rating it their most likely cause of a pandemic in the near future. (more) https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/20/next-pandemic-likely-to-be-caused-by-flu-virus-scientists-warn And for the past prior to COVID: Experts predicted a coronavirus pandemic years ago. Now it’s playing out before our eyes September 8, 2020 (CNN) — In 2017, a team of experts at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security published a scenario as part of a training exercise that they believed could happen in the not-so-distant future. The SPARS Pandemic Scenario The year is 2025. A few American travelers returning from Asia die of an unknown, influenza-like illness. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirms the victims were infected with a novel coronavirus, SPARS-CoV. Nothing is known about this novel coronavirus. There is no rapid diagnostic test. There are no known treatments. And there is no vaccine. (more) https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/08/health/coronavirus-pandemic-training-scenario/index.html

Because it's in the U.S. / Canada Home Country topics subforum??? And I don't think Canada has a comparable program that they officially title "Social Security."

Americans thinking of doing any big transfers into Thailand to take advantage of the current currency exchange rates also need to keep in mind that they may trigger additional U.S. government reporting requirements under the FBAR program (for more than $10K held in foreign accounts) and separately under the FATCA program for foreign financial assets totaling various larger amounts, depending on marital status and other details.

Because the U.S. government and others starting back in 2020, faced with an emerging worldwide pandemic, spent a ton of money to support and advance pre-existing mRNA vaccine research by the pharmaceutical firms and others, and to adapt that to the then-newly emerged COVID virus, and in doing so, substantially reduced COVID's toll of death and illness around the world. "The US government invested at least $31.9bn to develop, produce, and purchase mRNA covid-19 vaccines, including sizeable investments in the three decades before the pandemic through March 2022. These public investments translated into millions of lives saved and were crucial in developing the mRNA vaccine technology that also has the potential to tackle future pandemics and to treat diseases beyond covid-19." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9975718/ US public investment in development of mRNA covid-19 vaccines: retrospective cohort study The British Medical Journal (BMJ)

The 7 million COVID deaths number is the official tally based on all the official COVID deaths reported by all the various countries/governments around the world since the beginning of the pandemic, which have been tracked and totaled by the WHO. Other private groups have tallied comparable totals from the same reports. Those are widely considered a major undercount to what the actual likely totals of COVID deaths have been, which have been estimated by multiple sources to be several times higher, into the 20+ million range. https://data.who.int/dashboards/covid19/deaths?n=c And then... as to the larger estimates: "The Economist built a machine-learning model to estimate the number of excess deaths during the pandemic for 223 countries and regions.20 From these country-level estimates they calculate a global figure. Globally, the model estimates that the total number of excess deaths is two to four times higher than the reported number of confirmed deaths due to COVID-19.21 https://ourworldindata.org/excess-mortality-covid#estimated-excess-mortality-from-the-economist

Just wait until Thailand gets into the nuclear power business one of these days...... 😞 They've pretty clearly shown, repeatedly, as is the case here, that their regulation and enforcement are insufficient to actually protect the environment, the public and pretty much everything else.

The Social Security program is currently facing "a customer service crisis," according to the Social Security Administration's (SSA) new commissioner, former Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley. "We're in a customer service crisis right now," O'Malley said, talking on the agency's podcast, SSA Talks, in an episode released on Thursday. "It's not normal. It's not acceptable. And it's not right [that] the people who have worked their whole lives to earn benefits should have to wait for 44 minutes, for an hour or more, in order to have their question answered." O'Malley was sworn into his new role in late December 2023, after the SSA came under fire following an investigation that revealed that the agency had asked for billions of dollars back from beneficiaries in overpayments. The investigation was followed by a hearing from the House Ways and Means subcommittee which prompted the SSA to promise a review of its procedures around benefit overpayments. (more) https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/retirement/social-security-chief-issues-update-crisis/ar-AA1nrPKh

More independent, peer-reviewed research that COVID vaccinations help reduce the transmission of the virus in the months following vaccination, even though they don't block it entirely: Infectiousness of SARS-CoV-2 breakthrough infections and reinfections during the Omicron wave Published: 02 January 2023 "Analyzing SARS-CoV-2 surveillance data from December 2021 to May 2022 across 35 California state prisons with a predominately male population, we estimate that unvaccinated Omicron cases had a 36% (95% confidence interval (CI): 31–42%) risk of transmitting infection to close contacts, as compared to a 28% (25–31%) risk among vaccinated cases. In adjusted analyses, we estimated that any vaccination, prior infection alone and both vaccination and prior infection reduced an index case’s risk of transmitting infection by 22% (6–36%), 23% (3–39%) and 40% (20–55%), respectively. Receipt of booster doses and more recent vaccination further reduced infectiousness among vaccinated cases. These findings suggest that, although vaccinated and/or previously infected individuals remain highly infectious upon SARS-CoV-2 infection in this prison setting, their infectiousness is reduced compared to individuals without any history of vaccination or infection. This study underscores benefit of vaccination to reduce, but not eliminate, transmission." https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-022-02138-x

Just to clarify a bit, the news report from the Independent linked above has the following recap of the penalties against the convicted officers: "Boone was convicted and sentenced to 366 days in prison, while Myers was given a year's probation. Colletta was given three years probation and two consecutive weekends in prison for lying to the grand jury. Both Colletta and Hays pleaded guilty to their charges. Hays was sentenced to 52 months in prison and two years of probation, according to NBC5." https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/crime/black-undercover-officer-beaten-st-louis-b2531716.html So in other words, according to the Independent, three of the four received some prison time in their sentences, with two of the four getting meaningful time. In summary: --Hays was sentenced to 52 months in prison and two years of probation --Boone was convicted and sentenced to 366 days in prison --Colletta was given three years probation and two consecutive weekends in prison for lying to the grand jury --Myers was given a year's probation.

It's been clearly shown that COVID vaccines reduce [not eliminate] the risk of symptomatic infection and reduce the risks of hospitalization and serious illness from COVID: "CDC data show that vaccination [with the newest vaccines] offered significant protection. People who received the updated COVID-19 vaccine were 54% less likely to get COVID-19 during the four-month period from mid-September to January. The vaccine provided similar levels of protection against XBB lineage variants and the JN.1 variant." https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/73/wr/mm7304a2.htm and "Studies designed to accurately assess vaccine impact on COVID transmission also show that vaccination DOES reduce the chance of person-to-person spread of the virus." https://www.unmc.edu/healthsecurity/transmission/2023/12/05/get-your-updated-covid-vaccine/ and "Getting a COVID-19 vaccine reduces the risk of infection with the COVID-19 virus and slows the spread of COVID-19. Also, vaccination can prevent severe illness from COVID-19." https://www.mayoclinichealthsystem.org/hometown-health/featured-topic/covid-19-vaccine-myths-debunked

High humidity and high pollution levels don't cause people to become infected with the COVID virus.... But, there could be related effects, such as more people staying indoors in confined air con spaces to avoid the heat outside. And people traveling back home to visit families for Song Kran. And the generally greater socialization occurring during this time of the year. Though, it has been shown that people exposed to high pollution levels are at risk for worse symptoms once infected with COVID. "Emerging research, including a study from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, finds that breathing more polluted air over many years may itself worsen the effects of COVID-19. The Harvard Chan study led by Xiao Wu and Rachel Nethery and senior author Francesca Dominici found an association between air pollution over many years with an 11% increase in mortality from COVID-19 infection for every 1 microgram/cubic meter increase in air pollution (for comparison, many Americans breathe air with 8 micrograms/cubic meter of particulate matter)." https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/c-change/subtopics/coronavirus-and-pollution/

Simple so-called medical masks have some benefit in that they tend to capture/reduce the particles exhaled by the wearer.... So they have some benefit in reducing the risk to people around the wearer. But as you say, they don't have as much value in protecting the wearing from inhaling COVID particles that may be in the air, because they don't form a seal. For that purpose, N95 and similar masks are the way to go, because if worn properly, they provide an airtight seal in the face that only allows filtered air in and out. ----------------------------- "It’s true that masks work best when everyone around you is wearing one. That’s because when an infected person wears a mask, a large percentage of the infectious particles they exhale are trapped, stopping viral spread at the source. And when fewer viral particles are floating around the room, the masks others are wearing are likely to block those particles that have escaped. But there is also plenty of evidence showing that masks protect the wearer, even when others around them are mask-free. The amount of protection depends on the quality of the mask and how well it fits. Health experts recommend using an N95, KN95 or KF94 to protect yourself against the Omicron subvariant BA.2, which is now the dominant version of the coronavirus and is far more infectious than previous strains." New York Times https://archive.ph/jIsm5

The only statistics being reported by the MoPH here for serious condition/pneumonia symptoms and those requiring intubation are hospitalized patients with confirmed positive tests for COVID. Pneumonia type symptoms can be a standard manifestation of COVID. The MoPH is classifying them as COVID cases, even if you aren't.

The weekly numbers of COVID hospitalizations have been rising steadily since mid-March, long before Song Kran, and have now doubled since that time, going from about 500 then to now 1,000 per week. The same kind of upswing occurred last spring in Thailand as well, and weekly COVID hospitalizations at their peak last spring exceeded 3,000. The spring upswing last year didn't subside until mid-July. As OP report recounts: "It was found that patients requiring hospital treatment increased by 18.26% [for the most recent week], with this having risen continuously for six weeks in a row."