TallGuyJohninBKK

None approved yet or moved beyond the trials phase, AFAIK.

Thats not what the OP reported... It said 50% of the latest deaths were UNvaccinated and other 30% were UNboosted with only 2 primary shots, probably long ago. Doctors and pub health experts have long said 2 doses only are not sufficient to protect well against the currently circulating COVID variants. So what the article really said was 80% of the latest COVID deaths in Thailand hadn't followed the bare minimum public heath recommedation for COVID vaccinations, which is 3 shots minimum.

No, he didnt... He declared the WHO's emergency declaration re COVID over. But also warned COVID is still killing and sickening thousands, and called on goverments and the public to maintain their COVID precautions.

Yes, or you could instead be among the latest COVID deaths, which the OP not surprisingly says were mostly unvaccinated or un-boosted.

I've been in Southern California now for the past 10 days, and I've seen quite a few people wearing masks wherever I go, myself included. Not a majority or even more than 10%, but I've never been alone here in wearing a mask wherever I've gone... Mostly falling into two categories: 1. older folks including myself, and serving staff at various kinds of workplaces. People are still dying and getting very sick from COVID here every day, even if in lower numbers than last year. These days, it's up to people, especially those in the various higher risk groups, to protect themselves as best as they can, since the government has basically abdicated on the issue.

Study: Original COVID vaccines protected against severe disease, death during Omicron In Australians who had never previously had COVID-19, a three-dose COVID-19 vaccination series was 42.0% effective against infection and 81.7% effective against hospitalization or death during Omicron, a new study in Emerging Infectious Diseases finds. ... Vaccine effectiveness (VE) for preventing lab-confirmed infection was 24.9% (95% confidence interval [CI], 21.2% to 28.4%), increasing to 42.0% (95% CI, 40.2% to 43.6%) for people who had received three doses of vaccine. VE was highest (70.7%) among those who had gotten a booster no more than 30 days before testing. Severe cases of COVID-19, defined by hospitalizations, and deaths were rare in the study. VE against severe disease for two doses of vaccine was 41.9% (95% CI, 4.8% to 64.5%) and increased to 81.7% (95% CI, 73.9% to 87.2%) for three doses. https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/covid-19/study-original-covid-vaccines-protected-against-severe-disease-death-during-omicron

Your anecdotal evidence doesn't prove anything about face mask wear and COVID. Nor does it negate the multiple studies that have been done that show wearing a quality face mask REDUCES, but doesn't eliminate, the risk of contracting COVID, even Omicron era COVID. "A study from Tokyo tested how well different types of masks protected the wearer from actual coronavirus particles. The study showed that even a simple cotton mask offered some protection (17 percent to 27 percent) to the wearer. Medical masks performed better, including a surgical mask (47 percent to 50 percent protection), a loosefitting N95 (57 percent to 86 percent protection) and a tightly sealed N95 (79 percent to 90 percent protection)." https://www.nytimes.com/article/covid-masks-protection-stats.html

Oddly enough, N95s are all that I've been wearing, exclusively, for the past 4 years.... Seems to have worked pretty well for me!

You have any source or evidence to support your claim? Because you haven't provided any...

Routine annual flu vaccinations have been a public health recommendation for a long time, including predating COVID. Your original posted conspiracy theory comment was only about the ongoing push for people to get flu vaccines. And I responded with clear info that the CDC pretty much recommends that almost everyone get an annual flu vaccine. In that post, you didn't originally comment at all about masking or any other COVID measures, only to try to drag those into the issue later.

That's interesting... I don't recall hearing that kind of masking request in either of my boarding areas... either at Swampy or in Taipei.... But at Swampy, I find it often hard to hear or understand any of those due to both the ambient noise, low volume of the speaker system, AND the heavily accented voices of the airline staffs trying to speak English. As I said above, the cabin crews on my two EVA flights wore their masks for the entirety of my two flights... even when they were in the galley areas working just among themselves... Presumably, EVA has some kind of policy for cabin crews on such things...

Back on the conspiracy theory trail again.... Who Should & Who Should NOT Get Vaccinated "Everyone 6 months of age and older should get an influenza (flu) vaccine every season, with rare exceptions. Different influenza vaccines are approved for different age groups. Some people (for example, pregnant people and people with some chronic health conditions) should not get some types of influenza vaccines, and some people should not receive flu vaccines at all (though this is uncommon)." https://www.cdc.gov/flu/prevent/whoshouldvax.htm When it comes to the flu, the following groups are those that the CDC considers to be at the most risk of complications: --Children aged 6 months through 4 years (59 months); --People aged 50 years and older;* --People with chronic pulmonary or cardiovascular, renal, hepatic, neurologic, hematologic, or metabolic disorders --People who are immunosuppressed due to any cause; --People who are or will be pregnant during the influenza season and people up to two weeks after delivery; etc etc

With Amazon's Echo devices, you can do BOTH! Amazon has a long list of various streaming radio stations and services that can be played back via verbal request using Echo devices. But the advantage of pairing an Echo device with the services like Spotify or Amazon Music is that YOU can pick exactly what songs, albums, artists you want to listen to, via verbal demand.... as opposed to just picking a streaming radio station of a particular genre... So if I want to listen to music by Eric Clapton today, I just say, "Alexa, play music by Eric Clapton" and that's what results. Or requesting a specific song or album or genre, etc. Spotify also has a nice feature allowing the user via Alexa to play basically the greatest hits of any band or artist on demand by saying, "Alexa, play "This Is Eric Clapton" or "This is [Whomever]." Also, the Echo devices are good at relaying streaming music to your home stereo system's speakers. The Echo devices I use at home, various Echo Dots and a couple of first gen Echo Show 5 in. displays, all have audio out jacks, which allow me to connect them via audio cable to my home stereo systems and their speakers. They also can be connected via Bluetooth and played via things like soundbars, greatly improving the resulting sound quality. There's also the "My Media for Alexa" service, which for a small annual fee, gives you access to an app you can install on your home computer where you may keep your library of stored music files, and then the My Media for Alexa service allows you to verbally request playback of them from and via Alexa devices, just like if the music actually was coming from Amazon or Spotify. https://www.mymediaalexa.com/ A great tool for unlocking music access for people like myself who also keep large collections of their own music stored in MP3 and other similar file formats on their home PCs or other similar storage devices.

Been traveling abroad this week, left Thailand on an EVA flight via Taipei to the U.S., where I'm staying for a bit, first time abroad in four years... A bit of a weird experience... When I went to Swampy, the counter staff at EVA were not wearing face masks, though lots of other people/passengers and employees in the terminal were, including myself. Once I got on the airplane, ALL the EVA cabin attendants were wearing face masks for the duration, both on the BKK to Taipei route and the subsequent Taipei to U.S. route. I kept my face mask on throughout the entirety of both flights, except for brief periods when eating. And somehow, I managed to survive the ordeal without great mental or physical trauma (sarcasm alert.... ???? ) I'd guesstimate close to half or so of the passengers were wearing face masks during the flights, probably a bit more on the BKK-Taipei route, and a bit less on the Taipei-U.S. route. Once here in the U.S., clearly, most people here aren't wearing face masks... But after having been around a couple days, I'm far from being the only one still masking. In particular, I've noticed those who are wearing masks when out and around tend to be the older folks, not surprisingly, since they (and me) are in the higher risk groups. But they are in the very distinct minority here right now, from my observations thus far. And, kinda matching my experience with the EVA cabin crews, the other segment I find still masking here are service staff at restaurants and such. The patrons aren't wearing face masks by and large, but a lot of the serving staff still are, at least based on the various places I've frequented over the past couple days. Of course, unlike Thailand, COVID hospitalizations and deaths in the U.S. have been on a pretty steady downward trend for most of 2023 thus far, while Thailand's numbers have been steadily rising since the start of April. Here's the latest from the CDC for the U.S.: https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#datatracker-home The CDC says California, where I'm staying, had 1,284 new COVID hospitalizations, and few COVID deaths, for the week ending May 6, a 16.6% decline in hospitalizations from the prior week. https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#cases_new-admissions-state There were no COVID related restrictions, or vaccination requirements, anymore for incoming international air travelers transiting thru Taipei. And I believe I read elsewhere that Japan has also recently lifted its prior COVID related restrictions on international air travelers transiting thru Japan.

For the record, I mis-spoke in my comment above, so I want to correct it... (I'm away from home and traveling right now...) The tally of new COVID hospitalizations for the period two weeks ago declined slightly, before resuming its upward trend in the latest report for last week. So the corrected version is, new weekly COVID hospitalizations in Thailand have increased in 5 of the past 6 weekly reports, and as noted, are now about 12 fold higher than they were at the start of April.

So the U.K. has its own local version of Fox News.... ????

Over a 2-1/2 year period that COVID vaccines have been available, which would be two initial shots and then boosters every 6 months or so thereafter. Which is pretty much what the public health authorities have been advising. Do you also exclaim "Sweet Jesus" when people go to get their annual flu vaccine shot each year?

Bivalent vaccine 72% protective against Omicron infection "In Open Forum Infectious Diseases, researchers share their case-control study, which measured the effectiveness of bivalent (two-strain) COVID-19 mRNA vaccines against symptomatic infection during the BA.5-dominant period in Japan—September 20 through December 31, 2022. This is one of the first studies to measure VE of newer BA.4/BA.5-containing bivalent vaccines, which were developed in 2022 to target highly transmissible Omicron subvariants. ... The VE of bivalent vaccine (regardless of which subvariant the vaccine targeted) was 72% (95% confidence interval [CI], 61% to 80%) against Omicron infection." https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/covid-19/bivalent-covid-vaccine-shows-good-omicron-protection-while-older-version-wanes

Weekly COVID hospitalizations in red, and COVID deaths in dark gray: COVID in Thailand - April 2-8 COVID in Thailand - May 7-13 https://www.facebook.com/informationcovid19/photos

If the US was having a 12 fold increase in COVID hospitalizations like Thailand over a six week period, people there would be changing their habits as well...

Vaccines still do, for some months post vax, reduce the odds of both catching and spreading the current virus. Numerous studies have documented that, and the protective benefits of wearing face masks as well... But, the key word there is REDUCE the risk, not eliminate it. Thats why combining the two together -- current up to date vax and consistent face mask wear -- helps reduce the risks for everyone.

I did... and that's setting a very poor example for the public and the country, IMO. Every time a person makes a choice about their behavior, they have the potential to worsen -- or lessen -- the current COVID spike.

As has been explained here many times before, the younger and healthy people have low odds of getting seriously ill or dying from the current version of COVID. BUT....those same younger and heathy people very easily can become infected, and then unknowingly spread the virus to others around them, who may become seriously ill and die... That's why it's a PUBLIC health issue, not an "I'm OK, so I don't care about anyone else" issue.

I'm sure the Thai MoPH would be happy to hear your complaints that they should provide MORE info and details on Thailand's current COVID spike... I agree, they should. And under the current circumstance, people would be well advise to resume wearing face masks when close around others, particularly in indoor settings. The MoPH has been ADVISING that now for some time... But the message largely got lost amid all the recent national election coverage... Plus some folks, just dont want to listen regardless.

Based on their past history, Id say its pretty clear BOTH are liars and spreaders of false information and partisan nonsense.