TallGuyJohninBKK

Your comment above regarding the speculation about Thai tax compliance potentially being linked at some point to the visa/extension process... The above speculation also doesn't reflect the fact, as previously noted here, that not ALL resident expats will in fact have a legal obligation to file a Thai tax return...or even register for a Thai tax ID. Because their foreign incomes sources may be exempt / non-assessible under the various tax rules (such as exempt by double taxation treaty provisions and/or being pre-Jan.1 savings accrued abroad, etc.)

Health Officials Tried to Evade Public Records Laws, Lawmakers Say May 28, 2024 House Republicans on Tuesday accused officials at the National Institutes of Health of orchestrating “a conspiracy at the highest levels” of the agency to hide public records related to the origins of the Covid pandemic. And the lawmakers promised to expand an investigation that has turned up emails in which senior health officials talked openly about trying to evade federal records laws. The latest accusations — coming days before a House panel publicly questions Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, a former top N.I.H. official — represent one front of an intensifying push by lawmakers to link American research groups and the country’s premier medical research agency with the beginnings of the Covid pandemic. That push has so far yielded no evidence that American scientists or health officials had anything to do with the coronavirus outbreak. But the House panel, the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, has released a series of private emails that suggest at least some N.I.H. officials deleted messages and tried to skirt public records laws in the face of scrutiny over the pandemic. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/28/health/nih-officials-foia-hidden-emails-covid.html

... ... https://oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Daszak-Testimony.pdf

House panel takes Fauci adviser to task for allegedly evading public records laws 23 May 2024 ... "A congressional panel yesterday grilled a top scientific adviser to former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) Director Anthony Fauci about email exchanges the witness had with his longtime friend Peter Daszak, EcoHealth’s embattled president. Both Democrats and Republicans on the panel suggested the adviser tried to evade public records laws and offered inappropriate help to the EcoHealth leader. ... Morens is now on administrative leave after it became public that he used personal email accounts to correspond with Daszak, as well as other researchers, about the 2020 suspension of a controversial NIAID grant to EcoHealth and its subsequent reinstatement. ... In his testimony, Morens repeatedly apologized for his actions and said “jokes” between friends were being misinterpreted as actual misdeeds. He said he switched to a personal Gmail account to correspond with Daszak because Daszak and his family were receiving death threats. He worried that personal information in NIH emails could be publicly released, after being requested via FOIA, and increase the risks for Daszak. He dismissed a comment he made about wanting a “kickback” from EcoHealth’s reinstated grant, as well as a reference to creating a “secret back channel” to Fauci, as “black humor” among friends trying to lift Daszak’s spirits." https://www.science.org/content/article/house-panel-takes-fauci-adviser-task-allegedly-evading-public-records-laws

The credible facts and research say the info above is wrong and overblown, even allowing for changes since the dates of the reports below: How many Muslim extremists are there? Just the facts, please. Brigitte Gabriel claims the 15 to 25 percent of the world's Muslims are plotting attacks in the West. Why that number is inaccurate. January 13, 2015 ... "Not according to Angel Rabasa, who is a senior political scientist at the RAND corporation. While conducting research for a 2014 book he coauthored, "Euro Jihad," he found that Western European intelligence agencies estimated that less than one percent of the Muslim population living within their borders are at risk for becoming radicals [emphasis added]. ... Working off of these intelligence estimates, if you were to take one percent of the Muslim populations of Germany, France, and the United Kingdom, by the most liberal of estimates, less than 125,000 Muslims living in these combined countries would be prone to radicalization. Add that to the possible radical population across the rest of Europe and the sum is approximately 325,000 Muslims are at risk of becoming radical. The key qualifier is "at risk of becoming radical." That doesn't mean they will pick up a gun or start plotting an attack." https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Security-Watch/terrorism-security/2015/0113/How-many-Muslim-extremists-are-there-Just-the-facts-please Tracking Radical Opinions in Polls of U.S. Muslims 2017 "This Research Note examines two telephone polls (2007, 2011) and three Internet polls (2016) to track opinions of U.S. Muslims relating to the war on terrorism. Results indicate that a small but consistent minority (five to ten percent) justify suicide bombing of civilians in defense of Islam..." ... Favorable opinion of Al-Qaeda (AQ) was low in both polls (1-12% in 2007 and 0-6% in 2011). Similarly, justifying suicide bombing (SB) was low in both polls: 2-10% in 2007 and 2-9% in 2011." [with the individual numbers varying among different Muslim ethnic/national subgroups in the surveys] ... Predicting RadOpinion. In 2007 only low education was a significant predictor of RadOpinion, that is, the mean of opinion of Al-Qaeda and opinion of suicide bombing. In 2011 there were two significant predictors: low education and reporting being physically threatened or attacked because of being Muslim. The one consistent predictor, low education, is not statistically strong; we do not yet understand why a small minority of U.S. Muslims have this radical opinion." https://repository.brynmawr.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1088&context=psych_pubs

All of the things I was thinking as well, harking back to my high school and college days working in various restaurant operations. And likewise my experiences here being seated at Thai restaurants, and never having any problem about that... Sometimes we might want a table and they seat us in a booth. Or sometimes we might want a booth and they seat us at a table, depending on the sizes and configurations of the options on hand. If we don't want or like what we get from their initial seating, a bit of discussion always has led to a satisfactory resolution. I've never felt here like I/we (the Thai wife and I) were being discriminated against for any reason via the seating selection process.

I don't know the basis for the claims you're making here, or how you arrived at your 4 billion figure. The basic COVID stats are: --7 million official deaths --estimated COVID deaths direct and indirect causes totaling 3-4 times higher --lives saved/deaths avoided by the COVID vaccines in the many millions, the exact figure depending on various sources. As for COVID vaccine side effects, all the credible sources are clear that serious side effects actually caused by vaccination are very rare among the 13 some billion doses administered thus far, and that those reactions are vastly offset by the numbers of lives saved. I've never seen any single, across-the-board explanation for why those people who do have serious reactions to COVID vaccines end up having those reactions. The potential reactions are varied depending on age, many other personal details and the specific vaccine given, and I'd assume their causes would be as well. But in general, it's well established that almost any medication or medical procedure undertaken is going to have some level of risk across a broad population.

Or your math calculations are nonsense... There are and were vastly different raw numbers of COVID infections vs hospitalizations vs deaths... and different rates for how effective COVID vaccines are/were in preventing infections (some), hospitalizations (substantial) and deaths (very substantial). So it's no surprise that the greatest protective rate from vaccinations is going to be against deaths.

Their king didn't think so, nor did the actual COVID death stats: Sweden's king says 'we have failed' over COVID-19, as deaths mount By Reuters --December 18, 2020 Sweden has registered more than 7,800 deaths, a much higher per capita rate than its Nordic neighbours [emphasis added] but lower than in Britain, Italy, Spain or France, which have all opted for lockdowns. https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN28S0BQ/

COVID deaths, even now, still far outpacing flu and RSV deaths in the U.S., as they have throughout the pandemic: Severe Viral Respiratory Illness https://www.cdc.gov/respiratory-viruses/data-research/dashboard/illness-severity.html

Early in the pandemic: Sweden's king says 'we have failed' over COVID-19, as deaths mount By Reuters --December 18, 2020 STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Sweden's king said his country had failed in its handling of COVID-19, in a sharp criticism of a pandemic policy partly blamed for a high death toll among the elderly. ... An official commission said on Tuesday systemic shortcomings in elderly care coupled with inadequate measures from the government and agencies contributed to Sweden's particularly high death toll in nursing homes. ... Sweden has registered more than 7,800 deaths, a much higher per capita rate than its Nordic neighbours but lower than in Britain, Italy, Spain or France, which have all opted for lockdowns. https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN28S0BQ/ And then later: Did Sweden beat the pandemic by refusing to lock down? No, its record is disastrous March 31, 2022 "The bottom line is that Swedes suffered grievously from Tegnell’s policies. According to the authoritative Johns Hopkins pandemic tracker, while its total death rate from February 2020 through this week, 1,790 per million population, is better than that of the U.S. (2,939), Britain (2,420) and France (2,107), it’s worse than that of Germany (1,539), Canada (984) and Japan (220). More tellingly, it’s much worse than the rate of its Nordic neighbors Denmark (961), Norway (428) and Finland (538), all of which took a tougher anti-pandemic approach." https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2022-03-31/sweden-covid-policy-was-a-disaster

There have been various studies by various entities covering various periods of time and various geographies, but they all separately have come to the same basic conclusion: COVID vaccines saved millions of lives vs. what would have occurred in the absence of the vaccines. COVID vaccines saved 20M lives in 1st year, scientists say June 24, 2022 Nearly 20 million lives were saved by COVID-19 vaccines during their first year, but even more deaths could have been prevented if international targets for the shots had been reached, researchers reported Thursday. ... “Catastrophic would be the first word that comes to mind,” Watson said of the outcome if vaccines hadn’t been available to fight the coronavirus. The findings “quantify just how much worse the pandemic could have been if we did not have these vaccines.” The researchers used data from 185 countries to estimate that vaccines prevented 4.2 million COVID-19 deaths in India, 1.9 million in the United States, 1 million in Brazil, 631,000 in France and 507,000 in the United Kingdom." https://apnews.com/article/covid-science-health-england-54d29ae3af5c700f15d704c14ee224b5 The Impact of the Global COVID-19 Vaccination Campaign on All-Cause Mortality National Bureau of Economic Research -- October 2023 "The global COVID-19 vaccination campaign is the largest public health campaign in history, with over 2 billion people fully vaccinated within the first 8 months. Nevertheless, the impact of this campaign on all-cause mortality is not well understood. Leveraging the staggered rollout of vaccines, we find that the vaccination campaign across 141 countries averted 2.4 million excess deaths, valued at $6.5 trillion." https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w31812/w31812.pdf Report: COVID-19 vaccines saved US $1.15 trillion, 3 million lives December 14, 2022 A Commonwealth Fund study estimates that, through November 2022, COVID-19 vaccines prevented more than 18.5 million US hospitalizations and 3.2 million deaths and saved the country $1.15 trillion. ...... Approved COVID-19 vaccines have been available in the United States since December of 2020. Since Dec 12, 2020, 82 million infections, 4.8 million hospitalizations, and 798,000 deaths have been reported in the United States. "Without vaccination the U.S. would have experienced 1.5 times more infections, 3.8 times more hospitalizations, and 4.1 times more deaths," the authors wrote. "These losses would have been accompanied by more than $1 trillion in additional medical costs that were averted because of fewer infections, hospitalizations, and deaths." https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/covid-19/report-covid-19-vaccines-saved-us-115-trillion-3-million-lives

While there were some small-scale reporting errors early in the pandemic (died with instead of died from COVID), numerous sources are very clear that in the end, the actual numbers of real COVID deaths far exceed those tallied in the official counts (7+ million worldwide), making your claimed example above irrelevant. "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. Some of the specific figures are highly uncertain, as the large uncertainty intervals show. But the overall conclusion remains clear: in many countries and globally, the number of confirmed deaths from COVID-19 is far below the pandemic’s full death toll." Source: Our World in Data The pandemic’s true death toll: millions more than official counts Countries have reported some five million COVID-19 deaths in two years, but global excess deaths are estimated at double or even quadruple that figure. 18 January 2022 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00104-8

For some, yes. For many others, not: Per the above WAPO report: "When Lauren Smith, a 46-year-old triathlete in New Jersey, got covid in late April, she figured it would be a “nothingburger” like her first case two summers ago. Instead, she said she developed persistent fatigue for weeks that has made it difficult to train, and she decided to pull out of her upcoming competition. Her case is one that doctors would call mild, but Smith says doing so obscures the reality of a virus more complicated than the flu. “There’s no care or attention given to the fact that this is serious,” said Smith, noting that she was one of the only masked attendees at a recent Guster concert in Philadelphia. “I feel like so many people have said, ‘I’m tired of this, I don’t want to deal with this anymore.’ And I don’t feel like the CDC or any other agency is doing anything to combat that.” and "The proposal floored Cat Williams, who received a double lung transplant and faces heightened danger from covid infections because she takes medication that suppresses her immune system. At medical appointments, she has had to plead with medical staff to cover their faces while she gets her blood drawn and undergoes X-rays."

Despite “FLiRT” variants, this may be the first covid wave with little federal pressure to limit transmission or data to even declare a surge By now, it’s as familiar as sunscreen hitting the shelves: Americans are headed into another summer with new coronavirus variants and a likely uptick in cases. This is shaping up to be the first covid wave with barely any federal pressure to limit transmission and little data to even declare a surge. People are no longer advised to isolate for five days after testing positive. Free tests are hard to come by. Soon, uninsured people will no longer be able to get coronavirus vaccines free. “If a wave materializes this summer, we’re less poised to navigate the rough waters,” said Ziyad Al-Aly, an epidemiologist and long-covid researcher at the Veterans Affairs health-care system in St. Louis. (more) https://sg.news.yahoo.com/covid-still-summer-anyone-care-180911363.html

I don't know what supposed ads you're talking about, and you don't' provide any sources for your various claims above. If there were any such ads that talked about preventing transmission, it only would have been because that's what the credible research showed during a period of time early in the pandemic (2021 after the vaccines were first deployed), as the reports below confirm: Fact Check: Preventing transmission never required for COVID vaccines’ initial approval; Pfizer vax did reduce transmission of early variants "Once the vaccines were on the market, independent researchers in multiple countries studied people who received the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine and did show that vaccination reduced transmission of variants circulating at the time." https://www.reuters.com/fact-check/preventing-transmission-never-required-covid-vaccines-initial-approval-pfizer-2024-02-12/ Fact check: Vaccines protect against contracting, spreading COVID-19 Nov. 17, 2021 ... "Yes, it is true that vaccinated individuals can also be infected by and spread SARS-CoV-2 to others," Shweta Bansal, an associate professor of biology at Georgetown University, said in an email. "However, the evidence is crystal clear that risk of transmission for a vaccinated individual is significantly lower than for an unvaccinated individual." Bansal pointed to data from the United Kingdom, which shows the COVID-19 vaccines reduce the chances of getting infected by 50%-75%. A preprint study, also conducted in the U.K., found that two doses of the Pfizer vaccine are 80% effective against preventing all infections with the delta coronavirus variant. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2021/11/17/fact-check-covid-19-vaccines-protect-against-infection-transmission/6403678001/ What do we know about COVID-19 vaccines and transmission? Reuters Fact Check November 19, 2021 ... VERDICT Vaccines help reduce transmission by preventing infection in the first place, as well as reducing how infectious a person becomes once infected. Research into the latter is still ongoing; however, current studies show that while vaccinated people transmit the virus less than people who are not, this effect is reduced against the Delta variant. https://www.reuters.com/article/factcheck-coronavirus-vaccines-idUSL1N2SA1FZ/ And as for your other unsourced and unsubstantiated claims, among them: --The COVID vaccines in the U.S. were originally given emergency use authorization approval, but that was later followed by by formal, regular approvals from the US FDA for both the Pfizer and Moderna COVID vaccines, including for the most recent XBB version vaccines. So they ARE fully and formally approved. FDA Takes Action on Updated mRNA COVID-19 Vaccines to Better Protect Against Currently Circulating Variants September 11, 2023 ... Specifically, today’s actions include: Approval of Comirnaty (COVID-19 Vaccine, mRNA) to include the 2023-2024 formula, and a change to a single dose for individuals 12 years of age and older. Comirnaty was previously approved as a two-dose series for individuals 12 years of age and older. Approval of Spikevax (COVID-19 Vaccine, mRNA) to include the 2023-2024 formula, a change to a single dose for individuals 18 years of age and older, and approval of a single dose for individuals 12 through 17 years of age. Spikevax was previously approved as a two-dose series for individuals 18 years of age and older. https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/fda-takes-action-updated-mrna-covid-19-vaccines-better-protect-against-currently-circulating As for "saving grandma," indeed they did in large numbers. Per Reuters from earlier this year: "The vaccines are still very effective at preventing serious illness, even if they do not block infection, experts said. A recent study in the Lancet Infectious Diseases journal from the Karolinska Institutet and Danderyd Hospital in Sweden found the updated vaccine, which targets the XBB.1.5 coronavirus variant, reduced the risk of COVID hospitalization by 76.1% in people affected by more recent variants, based on public health records from adults over 65 years old. https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/who-sees-incredibly-low-covid-flu-vaccination-rates-cases-surge-2024-01-12/ PS - as the pandemic wore on and multiple variant ensued, generally becoming more vaccine evasive, the rates of reducing transmission dropped significantly, though not entirely, and protections waned more quickly, even in more recent times.

The Thai MoPH website has a somewhat surprising breakdown of cumulative COVID deaths reported thus far in 2024 by region and province (see the right column below): Per Google Translate: https://ddc.moph.go.th/covid19-dashboard/?dashboard=province PS - It may exist somewhere, but I haven't been able to find thus far a comparable breakdown by province of COVID hospitalizations.

Thailand's spring 2024 COVID surge finally moderated some this past week, with new weekly COVID hospitalizations and COVID deaths both declining, but serious condition COVID hospitalizations and COVID patients requiring ventilation to breath both continuing to increase. The latest weekly report from the Thai Ministry of Public Health saw new COVID hospitalizations finally decline 4.3% after 10 consecutive weeks of increases, falling to 1,801 cases for the week of May 19-25 versus 1,882 for the prior week. The 6 newly reported COVID deaths last week fell 62.5% from the 16 reported the prior week. The latest COVID deaths number is more in line with what have been typical weekly COVID death numbers in recent months. But the latest numbers of serious condition COVID patients (689, up 1.5% from 679 the prior week) and COVID patients requiring ventilation (305, up 8.5% from 281) both showed continuing increases. By comparison, for the first week of 2024, Thailand's key weekly COVID statistics were much lower at 664 new weekly COVID hospitalizations, 4 deaths, 144 COVID patients hospitalized in serious condition and 89 requiring ventilation. The Thai government does not publicly report the total numbers of all current COVID hospitalizations, but instead only breaks out the subtotals for those in serious condition and requiring intubation, and then the new COVID hospitalizations each week. With the latest update for the period May 19 to 25, Thailand's weekly new COVID hospitalizations at 1,801, averaging 257 per day, still remain more than three times higher than the 501 weekly count recorded in mid-March when the latest COVID surge began. Thailand had a similar COVID surge in spring 2023, when weekly COVID new hospitalizations rose from a few hundred to a peak of more than 3,000 by early June 2023 before eventually subsiding. So thus far at least, the spring 2024 new hospitalizations have remained well below the spring 2023 peak. Among the 6 new COVID deaths reported for the past week, the MoPH said 5 were male and 1 female. By age, all were reported to be age 70 and above. The MoPH only recently resumed publicly disclosing the broad age ranges for Thailand's reported COVID deaths, something they had ceased many months prior with the end of COVID's declared emergency status in Thailand. With the latest weekly report, Thailand since the start of 2024 has now seen 18,620 COVID hospitalizations and 126 official COVID deaths, according to the MoPH. The weekly COVID new hospitalization counts reported by the MoPH in recent weeks have been as follows, with the spring surge beginning well before this year's mid-April Song Kran holidays, but then climbing for 10 consecutive weeks before the first decline for this past week: March 16 -- 501 March 23 -- 630 March 30 -- 728 April 6 -- 774 April 13 -- 849 April 20 -- 1,004 April 27 -- 1,672 May 4 -- 1,792 May 11 -- 1,880 May 18 - 1,882 May 25 -- 1,801 The MoPH's weekly COVID reports for Thailand are available at the following MoPH website: https://ddc.moph.go.th/covid19-dashboard/?dashboard=main They also have been posted each week in the following AseanNow forum thread: https://aseannow.com/topic/1311049-weekly-thai-ministry-of-public-health-covid-reports/

Thailand MoPH Weekly COVID report for May 19 - 25, 2024: --1,801 new COVID hospitalizations, averaging 257 per day, down 81 / -4.3% from the prior week --6 new COVID deaths, down 10 / -62.5% from the prior week --689 current COVID patients hospitalized in serious condition (pneumonia symptoms), up 10 / 1.5% from the prior week (dark purple) --305 current COVID patients hospitalized requiring intubation/ventilation to breathe, up 24 / 8.5% from the prior week (light purple) Cumulative figures since the start of the current year are COVID new hospitalizations (18,620) & COVID deaths (126). Of the 6 new official COVID deaths for the past week, the MoPH below is reporting that 5 were male and 1 female. By age, all 6 were reported to be age 70 and above. https://ddc.moph.go.th/covid19-dashboard/?dashboard=main The latest MoPH report on new weekly COVID hospitalizations marked the first reported decline in new cases after 10 consecutive weeks of increases dating back to mid-March. Even so, the current levels of new weekly COVID hospitalizations remain more than three times higher than at the start of the recent surge. The weekly new COVID hospitalizations during that period have been: March 16 -- 501 March 23 -- 630 March 30 -- 728 April 6 -- 774 April 13 -- 849 April 20 -- 1,004 April 27 -- 1,672 May 4 -- 1,792 May 11 -- 1,880 May 18 - 1,882 May 25 -- 1,801 By comparison, Thailand's key weekly COVID indicators to start 2024 were 664 new COVID hospitalizations and 4 COVID deaths for the first week of the year. Last year, Thailand had a similar spring COVID surge that saw new weekly COVID hospitalizations peak at 3,085 in early June.

The Thai MoPH admitted early in the pandemic that a portion of their reported COVID deaths in that early period were died "with" COVID types... They then (several years ago) changed / tightened their definition of what they would count as a COVID death to be a pretty narrow one. From March 2022: "Kiattiphum said the death report would be rewritten to separate patients with lung inflammation from those who did not have lung inflammation, and the reports would also state the main cause of death.... Kiattiphum unveiled the plan to review the report on Covid-19 fatalities after Deputy Prime Minister and Public Health Minister Anutin Charnvirakul told reporters earlier in the day that he had consulted with senior officials of the ministry about daily reports on Covid-19 fatalities. ... Anutin said the daily reports seemed to show that Covid-19 fatalities had increased but, he said, people, who died due to other causes or diseases should be separated from the Covid-19 fatality reports. Anutin said the meeting discussed that when patients died while they were on a ventilator and died of lung inflammation caused by Covid-19 virus, they could be classified as Covid-19 deaths. https://www.nationthailand.com/in-focus/40013255 So the notion that officially reported COVID deaths reported by MoPH these days (two years later) aren't really COVID deaths isn't supported by any facts.

And that was the accurate figure for preventing symptomatic COVID illness that was found from the COVID vaccine clinical trials, and from some subsequent studies once the vaccines were first deployed. "In December 2020, Pfizer-BioNTech’s Phase 3 clinical data for its original vaccine showed 95% efficacy for preventing symptomatic COVID." ... Moderna uses the same mRNA technology as Pfizer-BioNTech and had a similarly high efficacy at preventing symptomatic disease when the companies applied for authorization." https://www.yalemedicine.org/news/covid-19-vaccine-comparison "In a multistate network of U.S. hospitals during January–March 2021, receipt of Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna COVID-19 vaccines was 94% effective against COVID-19 hospitalization among fully vaccinated adults and 64% effective among partially vaccinated adults aged ≥65 years." https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7018e1.htm

You made a similar claim here weeks ago, and nothing happened on that since then. Public schools in Thailand reopened for the new academic year as scheduled earlier this month. May 8: https://aseannow.com/topic/1326823-expect-increase-in-covid-19-cases-as-school-term-approaches/?do=findComment&comment=18900393 That didn't happen: May 22: https://aseannow.com/topic/1327862-new-school-year-same-old-story-thailand’s-education-system-‘stuck-in-the-past’/

The original COVID vaccines were never clinical trialed or approved on the basis of being able to limit/reduce transmission. That was never part of the original expectation or basis for approval, although it did in fact occur in the early going of the pandemic with the early versions of the COVID virus. The vaccines were trialed and approved on the basis of being able to limit/reduce symptomatic COVID illness, which in fact they did, and continue to do...although these days, after multiple variants, the effectiveness is more toward limiting/preventing hospitalization and death from COVID, and that certainly ought to be people's highest priority and expectation. The false claim of the COVID vaccines being approved or originally promised to prevent transmission is a common anti-vaxer falsehood. Fact Check: Preventing transmission never required for COVID vaccines’ initial approval; Pfizer vax did reduce transmission of early variants By Reuters Fact Check February 13, 2024 "To get emergency approval, companies needed to show that the vaccines were safe and prevented vaccinated people from getting ill. They did not have to show that the vaccine would also prevent people from spreading the virus to others. Once the vaccines were on the market, independent researchers in multiple countries studied people who received the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine and did show that vaccination reduced transmission of variants circulating at the time." ,,, At the time governments were negotiating advance purchases of vaccine in 2020, the European Medicines Agency had already laid out requirements for an application for conditional marketing authorization of a COVID-19 vaccine, clinical trials were underway, and tests to show the vaccine prevented onward transmission were not required of any vaccine maker. ... The U.S. Food and Drug Administration laid out similar expectations for vaccine trials in June of 2020, and did not require data regarding the effect on virus transmission." https://www.reuters.com/fact-check/preventing-transmission-never-required-covid-vaccines-initial-approval-pfizer-2024-02-12/

Still no accord: WHO Member States Fail to Reach Agreement on Pandemic Accord; Way Forward in Hands of World Health Assembly 24/05/2024 A last ditch effort of WHO member states to finish negotiations on a pandemic accord has failed to yield agreement ahead of next week’s World Health Assembly (WHA) – with key articles in the draft text still unresolved including the thorny formula for global sharing of vaccines and medicines during international health emergencies. As of Friday evening, member states of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Board, assembled in Geneva, had stopped negotiating over the draft text, and were instead talking about the way forward. And on that, as well, there was no accord, leaving a future pathway in the hands of the WHA. According to sources who spoke to Health Policy Watch, member states were debating over recommendations to try to conclude the accord in parallel talks during next week’s WHA; to extend the negotiations by another six months; or even by a year. The most radical proposal was for a ‘suspension’ of the global health assembly in mid-week, so that delegates could focus solely on the treaty negotiations. But that seemed highly unlikely in light of the packed WHA agenda, which also includes highly political items related to the war in Ukraine and in Gaza. (more) https://healthpolicy-watch.news/breaking-pandemic-accord-negotiations-stall-again-with-way-forward-in-hands-of-world-health-assembly/

And the broader global perspective: Just How Do Deaths Due to COVID-19 Stack Up? Despite a likely undercount in many places, COVID is among the leading causes of death in most countries ... "Despite improved treatment and the growing, albeit inequitable, availability of vaccines and therapeutics for COVID-19, 2021 was its deadliest year. About 3.9 million COVID-19 deaths occurred in 2021, representing about half of all COVID-19 deaths from 2020-2022. This is probably related to the emergence of the delta variant, which was much more likely to lead to fatal outcomes compared to the ancestral variant, and the omicron variant, which despite being less severe than the ancestral variant is more transmissible. [emphasis added] Despite the relaxing of mitigation measures and the expiration of some public health emergency orders, 2022 had the fewest annual deaths from COVID, about 1.3 million, likely due to widespread population immunity from vaccines, infection, or both." https://www.thinkglobalhealth.org/article/just-how-do-deaths-due-covid-19-stack