TallGuyJohninBKK

For those mulling over whether they think another COVID vaccine shot might be needed or not... something to consider:

Per Thai MoPH regarding XBB.1.16 symptoms, via Google Translate: "COVID symptoms XBB.1.16 or “Arcturus” - Coughing a lot and often - Strange sore throat, feeling like something is stuck in your throat. -Has mucus or phlegm -high fever over 38.5 °C - Some people have a nose that can't smell. and the tongue does not taste - Eye irritation, red eyes, a lot of eye discharge, can't open the eyes" Source:

Also Rajivithi Hospital in Bangkok: Per Google Translate: "Rajavithi Hospital Open for online registration Moderna bivalent booster and immunomodulatory vaccine (LAAB) For people aged 12 years and over. Click https://bit.ly/3s9n1Fj or Walk in every Monday - Friday (except public holidays). Time: 8:30 a.m. - 1:30 p.m. at the injection room, 1st floor, Thosaminthrathirat Building, Rajavithi Hospital Source:

Interesting... TH MoPH posted on FB two days ago regarding the recent post-Song Kran COVID death of a 34-year-old Burmese factory worker living in the Sathorn District of Bangkok who tested positive for the new COVID XBB.1.16.1 strain after being found dead in his room from pneumonia type symptoms. Per Google Translate: "The Ministry of Public Health reveals test results of a Myanmar man who has tested positive for COVID-19 found severe pneumonia before death repeat!! Vaccination can prevent serious illness and death." "The results of the investigation showed that the deceased worked as a factory worker in Bangkok, had never received the COVID-19 vaccine before and had no history of receiving COVID-19 treatment before his death. Songkran Festival The deceased played Songkran water with friends. And starting to have a fever, red eyes, buy medicine and take it yourself, but stay in the room. not admitted to the facility." Source: One for all the folks here who repeatedly claim that COVID Omicron these days only kills the elderly...

From a MoPH post yesterday via Google Translate: "National Committee on Communicable Diseases Approved the plan for the next phase of the COVID-19 vaccination service, which is an annual COVID-19 vaccination for the public (2023 - 2024), which will be injected in 2023 as the first year, 1 injection per year, recommended before the rainy season. or since April Because it is expected that the infection will spread a lot during the rainy season. Any type/version of the approved vaccine can be used. without counting how many needles The Ministry of Public Health has nearly 20 million doses of vaccines available to people who want to inject and can receive the COVID-19 vaccination along with the influenza vaccine." Source:

That's what I would presume... The government/doctors aren't generally hospitalizing people here anymore just because they test positive for COVID... They have to have enough symptoms to warrant being hospitalized, and/or be in one of the high-risk groups (elderly, immunocompromised, etc) where they don't want to risk leaving them at home to be treated with outpatient meds. From the OP report: "The increase in cases also extended to inpatients suffering from lung inflammation, with the number rising to 73, up by 143% from the previous week’s 30 cases. Patients requiring ventilator support also saw a notable increment of 84%, rising from 19 to 35 individuals." Some folks with COVID here are still getting seriously ill, though the TH MoPH lately doesn't really publicly provide any identifying info of the ages or other demographic characteristics of those folks, which they used to do earlier in the pandemic. However,I believe in one report on the 5 latest COVID deaths, they did at one point say most of them were elderly and unvaccinated.

From the OP news report here: The 150% reference pertains to Thailand's weekly new COVID deaths rising from 2 two weeks ago to 5 last week... Small numbers, but the increase was more than double week over week. The greater concern numbers-wise was that new COVID hospitalizations have risen about 550% from 168 the first week of the month to 1,088 new COVID hospitalizations as of last week. Source:

A bit more explanation in this prior report from a day ago, including the Thai police connection involved. "A surviving victim, Pla, revealed in an interview with the media that she and Am were friends because her husband and Am’s ex-husband were police officers. The alleged serial killer borrowed money of 250,000 baht from her in September of last year. After she got infected with Covid-19, Am gave her herbal medicine claiming that it could treat her cough and Covid." And the woman got sick thereafter.... And meanwhile: "Am’s ex-husband, a deputy superintendent of a police station in Ratchaburi, stated that he did not see Am going to work but she always appeared to have money." https://thethaiger.com/news/national/thailands-cyanide-serial-killer-claims-another-life-14-victims-so-far

BTW, this issue above seems to have been clarified some in recent weeks amid the current Song Kran surge of new COVID cases and hospitalizations. Various reports from the Thai MoPH lately have been talking about their newly adopted policy to widely offer an ANNUAL COVID vaccine at least this year and next year, ideally ahead of the rainy season each year. MoPH has been much more active the past couple weeks in publicizing, mostly in Thai language materials, the various government hospitals in BKK and various other provinces where the COVID vaccines are being offered right now... At some locations, those seem to be the original versions of the COVID vaccines, whereas at other locations, they've specified that they also have the newer bivalent vaccines on offer.

"Covid booster shots will be available at the CentralWorld shopping complex in downtown Bangkok until May 28. The vaccination unit was set up on Saturday on the 5th floor of the complex’s Atrium Zone. The unit provides jabs every Friday, Saturday and Sunday until May 28 (closed on May 13-14 for the general election). ... People can walk in between noon and 6pm to get a free jab of the Moderna bivalent vaccine, which is effective against both the original Wuhan strain and the Omicron subvariants. ... The city administration has also set up a vaccination unit on the 6th floor in Zone D of the MBK Centre shopping mall. This unit opens from 9am to 3pm daily until May 12 and then again on the weekends of May 20-21 and May 27-28. (more) https://www.nationthailand.com/thailand/general/40027093

My point was, whatever info that's been reported by the BKK Post can NOT be cited or linked to here on the forum.... so not really a big help to anyone reading here trying to figure out what's going on.

Can't quote from or link to the BKK Post here...under forum rules...

Can you provide an English language translation of the above comment??? ????

This is now the fourth or fifth article on this case that I've read here on the forum... And unless I've missed something, none of them have.... --said anything about exactly HOW these people may have been poisoned. --said anything about what the motive may have been for this woman poisoning the victims. Did she gain financially somehow from all the deaths? --said anything about how this woman had come into contact with all the various supposed victims who were located in various different provinces.

Likewise, the OP article makes it hard to tell whether the case at hand before the court now is a CIVIL or a CRIMINAL one... I'm thinking it's a civil one of the mother suing those on the boat with Tangmo, but the OP article is pretty vague! So I'm not entirely sure on that point!

By comparison, the Bell Travel Service VIP buses between Suvarnabhumi and Pattaya run more often, run every day, and probably are roomier as their seating is 3-across, not 4 as with the mall buses. But the fare is 300 baht. For its part, the mall bus service appears to run only 5 days per week and much fewer trips per day, and the seating is 4 across. But the fare is only 190b, and the Pattaya drop off is convenient at the Central Festival Mall, and the pickup in BKK is at CentralWorld, equally convenient once you're already in the city. Whereas the Bell drop-off is at the North Pattaya bus station, which typically is going to require a song theaw or other paid onward travel to one's ultimate destination. https://belltravelservice.com/shared-transfer/

The details ARE mostly all there on the Klook booking website, but they don't make them especially clear or easy to find. For example, until you go to actually make a booking, you won't see on their schedule that apparently there's no service at all on Wednesdays and Thursdays! And, as best as I can tell, the option to stop at the Central Outlet Mall near Suvarnabhumi apparently only exists on a separate trip running only from Pattaya to BKK -- and not on the outbound BKK to Pattaya routes. However, despite the emphasis on the three Central Malls in their promotional material, there's absolutely no requirement that anyone making the trip have anything whatsoever to do with the malls. You can just use the bus service as a regular BKK-Pattaya route and ignore the malls entirely if you want to. It's nice and convenient that the Pattaya drop off point appears to be the Central Festival Mall at Soi 9 along the Beach Road, which is pretty much right in the middle of things and convenient to many surrounding hotels.

Keep going down that road, and see where it lands the Republican Party... Republican Party Loses One Of Its Biggest Donors: Billionaire Peter Thiel Says 'I'm Out' ... "A business associate of Thiel's said that the Republican Party's recent focus on "culture war" issues drew him away from the party, citing the party’s position on abortion and transgender people's rights as examples. The GOP should be more focused on how the U.S. can innovate and compete with China on the global market, said the source." https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/republican-party-loses-one-of-its-biggest-donors-billionaire-peter-thiel-says-i-m-out/

That's a convenient retort typically heard from people who want to ignore or dismiss the factual lessons and realities learned from the past.

Tell that to the Republican Party in Montana, USA. They didn't get the message: Montana transgender lawmaker barred by GOP from House floor Republicans barred Zooey Zephyr from the House floor for the rest of the 2023 session, acting in retribution for protests against a previous decision to silence her. "HELENA, Mont. — Republicans in Montana barred transgender lawmaker Zooey Zephyr from the House floor for the rest of the 2023 session on Wednesday, in retribution for protests against a decision to silence her for telling colleagues they’d have blood on their hands for voting to ban gender-affirming medical care for children. The punishment of the freshman lawmaker caps a weeklong standoff between House Republican leaders and Zephyr which concluded that she will still be able to vote remotely under terms of the punishment. She will be unable though to discuss proposals and amendments under consideration with the 99 other members of the Montana House." https://www.politico.com/news/2023/04/26/montana-transgender-lawmaker-barred-by-gop-from-house-floor-00094057

The Republicans really know what side their backwoods bread is buttered on. ???? If you ask me, it's a very peculiar, somewhat perverse obsession they seem to have developed... The common-thinking American might think they have bigger, more important issues to concern themselves with.

Maybe you're associating in the wrong circles... I can't speak for a whole country... But for myself, my high school and university education in the U.S. was filled with plenty of both domestic and international history and geography... Admittedly back in the 1970s, my classes were more focused on U.S. and European issues, and not so much on the places that have emerged in more recent years such as China and the Middle East. But it was a somewhat different, more western-focused world back then.

Probably when so many people around the world, admittedly mostly elderly, cease being hospitalized and dying from COVID.... and Thailand isn't headed for having 5,000 to 10,000 new COVID infections per day. Worldwide, per the WHO: "Globally, over 2.8 million new cases and almost 18 000 deaths were reported in the last 28 days (20 March to 16 April 2023)" https://www.who.int/publications/m/item/weekly-epidemiological-update-on-covid-19---20-april-2023 And in the U.S., COVID is still causing about 190 new deaths per day and nearly 1,900 new hospitalizations per day. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-data/covidview/index.html And in Thailand.... where new COVID hospitalizations are running more than 1,000 per week: Temporary Covid-19 surge may result in 10,000 daily cases A new wave of Covid-19 infections is expected to bring daily cases to 5,000-10,000, but a swift decline in numbers is predicted thereafter, according to Dr Nitipatana Chierakul, Head of the Respiratory Disease and Tuberculosis Division at the Faculty of Medicine in Siriraj Hospital." https://thethaiger.com/news/national/temporary-surge-may-result-in-10000-daily-cases-for-a-brief-period

My Thai wife got her formal education in the upcountry Thai public schools up thru a public university degree. And based on years of exposure, I'd certainly say either... 1. -- they weren't much on teaching either regional or world history or geography there, or 2. -- my wife managed to miss / not absorb whatever they did teach on those subjects... entirely! But they did have quite nifty classes on learning Thai dance and cooking... so she tells me. ????