TallGuyJohninBKK

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. ????

The website you're quoting from has nothing to do with the Thai government, contrary to what you claim in your post. And if you look at the top of the webpage you linked to, you'll see the snippet -- "This website is managed by Siam Legal International - a law firm in Thailand" Another giveaway would be the fact that the "HTTPS://www.thaiembassy.com" website you're quoting from has a "dot-com" domain, which means it's hosted by a commercial entity like a law firm, instead of the typical "go.th" domain for a Thai government agency. Of course, it also says at the very bottom of the webpage -- "This is NOT the official website of the Thai Embassy."

Weird... I was by the Soi 5 Foodland mid-afternoon today... When I came in, the large U-shaped Took Lae Dee counter there was almost empty of customers. When I departed a half hour or so later, there was a group of a half dozen 30ish/40ish African males all hanging around just inside the door, not shopping, not sitting at TLD, not sure what exactly they were doing....

The WaPo reported that, in one of the redacted Tucker messages filed in connection with the Dominion lawsuit, Tucker had referred to Fox's senior communications exec, who's a woman, with the four-letter "c---" vulgarity. This is the same Fox exec, according to various news reports, who supposedly kept/keeps personal "gotcha" dossiers on their various on-air talent just in case they and their employer ever end up at odds. "And while Carlson leveled plenty of critiques of Fox top brass in documents that were made public, some of the most sensitive and damaging material remains hidden, these people said. In one redacted exchange, according to people familiar with the documents, he referred to a woman who is a senior communications executive for Fox as a “c---.” (Carlson used the same sexist vulgarity to describe a female Trump-affiliated lawyer in an message previously made public by the court.)" https://www.washingtonpost.com/media/2023/04/26/tucker-carlson-rupert-murdoch-fired/ Of course, that supposedly wasn't the first time he had used that epithet against a woman: "More recently, Carlson’s staff culture had come under scrutiny, after a former booker for his show sued Fox News for discrimination, claiming that she endured sexist treatment while working for him, and messages revealed in the lawsuit showed Carlson referring to Sidney Powell, a female attorney affiliated with Donald Trump, as a “c---.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/media/2023/04/24/tucker-carlson-leaves-fox-news/

I understand the appeal (electoral and otherwise) of what you're saying... But really, I'm totally and excessively sick and disgusted with hearing anything about that guy. Wish he'd just disappear off the face of the planet, or off to Russia instead, and never be heard from again!

And none of this off-topic diversion on U.S. government agency funding sources that you have drawn this discussion into has anything to do with the thread topic here, which is: Daily Covid-19 cases in Bangkok spike

Because Congress many years back passed a law to specifically set up that source of additional user fee funding... back before when it typically was taking the FDA 10 years or so to make approval decisions on new drugs/devices. The added user fee funding allowed the FDA to substantially shorten those timeframes, helping save many lives. "Federal law authorizes the FDA to collect user fees to supplement the annual funding that Congress provides for the agency. User fees help the FDA fulfill its mission of protecting the public health and also facilitate timely availability of innovative FDA-regulated products without compromising the agency’s commitment to scientific integrity, public health, regulatory standards, patient safety, and transparency." ... Importantly, there is no direct connection between a fee paid for an application and the review outcome for that application. Rather, the user fees, including application fees, are pooled, and used to help fund the payroll and related costs to deliver on program goals. " https://www.fda.gov/industry/fda-user-fee-programs/fda-user-fees-explained Funding to help expedite a slow process "Since the FDA's inception after the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act, taxpayer dollars were the principal source of the agency's funding. But this all changed with the emergence of HIV in the 1980s, when the demand for experimental medicines clashed with the agency's sluggish approval process. This process – due to being underfunded and understaffed – typically took 10 years at this point." https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2021/08/27/fact-check-some-fdas-budget-does-come-industry-funding/5572076001/

The only people who ever seem to think about, or talk about, FEAR in relation to COVID are the predictable COVID deniers, who keep trying to ignore the fact that COVID has claimed 7 million lives "officially" since the start of the pandemic, with numerous estimates that the real number is closer to 15 to 20 million COVID deaths. The rest of us are just trying to get on with our mostly normal lives, heeding the guidance from public health agencies and experts, and trying to do the smart and prudent things that will minimize our risks of ending up in the hospital or dead, like the unfortunates in the OP here. I have no COVID fear, only knowledge and awareness.

And yet here you are...

You seem to have missed, or decided to ignore, the other part about there also being nearly 1,100 new COVID hospitalizations in the most recent week reported by the Thai government -- a figure that's the highest weekly tally thus far in 2023, and up about 550% in the several weeks since the first week of April. Among those, dozens are seriously ill with pneumonia type symptoms, and dozens more are unable to breathe and have had to be intubated because of COVID. Those are the kinds of figures and results that are going to make news anywhere, rightfully so. April 2-8, 2023 April 16-22, 2023 Now 278 COVID deaths and 6,571 COVID hospitalizations in Thailand since the start of the year. https://www.facebook.com/informationcovid19/photos But glad to see the Thai MoPH is calling attention again to the COVID vaccinations issue and the problem with large populations of the unvaccinated: "The Department of Disease Control has expressed significant concerns over the more than two million senior citizens still unvaccinated for Covid in the country. Dr Tares Krassanairawiwong, Chief of the Department, emphasised the importance of immediate vaccination for this age group to reduce the risk of severe illness or death from the disease. He cited that out of the five recorded deaths during April 16-22, four were unvaccinated senior citizens."

The problem with that notion in Thailand is... here.... even convicted murderers with life sentences have, in the past, later had their sentences reduced / commuted by the authorities -- sometimes several times in succession -- and have ended up eventually being released from prison. I don't generally favor the death penalty... But in Thailand, unfortunately, a life sentence seems to not necessarily mean an actual life sentence. And I really wouldn't want this guy out walking around anytime in the future. https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/se-asia/thai-serial-killer-released-from-prison-arrested-again https://www.jpost.com/national-news/thai-king-pardons-israeli-who-murdered-ex-wife-291629 https://thewest.com.au/news/australia/hells-angles-biker-antonio-bagnato-to-be-freed-for-a-minute-then-re-arrested-over-a-new-murder-ng-1d97cd157ad27446a5e3d9d13fa0537e

BTW, FWIW, the CDC Foundation's website indicates that Pfizer's donations to the foundation in recent years since the emergence of COVID have been minimal: 2022 -- $1,000 to $9,999 2021 -- $25 to $999 Source The CDC's annual government-funded budget is about $13 Billion. https://www.cdc.gov/budget/fact-sheets/

The funding raised in that article was NOT going to the government agency CDC, but instead was going to the CDC Foundation, a separate, independent nonprofit entity. The CDC Foundation has no role in approving or regulating the Pfizer or any other vaccine. And the CDC officials who do have a role with the vaccines do not have any role with the CDC Foundation, which is run by non-CDC outsiders. BTW, the COVID and other vaccines are primarily regulated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), moreso than the CDC. "The CDC Foundation is an independent nonprofit and the sole entity created by Congress to mobilize philanthropic and private-sector resources to support the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s critical health protection work. ... Thanks to our donors, we have launched approximately more than 1,300 health protection programs and raised over $2 billion to support CDC's work over the past two decades." https://www.cdcfoundation.org/our-story

I've seen some very pleasant looking young ladies wearing face masks when out in public... No complaints here.

Hmmmm.... There's lots of good reasons why no one should want repeat COVID infections, even if they think they emerged unscathed. Below is just one of the many... COVID-19 can cause brain shrinkage, memory loss - study March 8 (Reuters) - COVID-19 can cause the brain to shrink, reduce grey matter in the regions that control emotion and memory, and damage areas that control the sense of smell, an Oxford University study has found. The scientists said that the effects were even seen in people who had not been hospitalised with COVID, and whether the impact could be partially reversed or if they would persist in the long term needed further investigation. ... Even in mild cases, participants in the research showed "a worsening of executive function" responsible for focus and organising, and on an average brain sizes shrank between 0.2% and 2%." https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/covid-19-can-cause-brain-shrinkage-memory-loss-study-2022-03-08/ It's what colloquially has become to be known as post-COVID "brain fog" -- one of many various kinds of symptoms that can and do linger in patients after COVID, even among those who were asymptomatic in their original infection.

Yes, you're definitely missing SOMETHING! As presumably you and most people well understand by now... as the coronavirus mutated from its original version over the past several years, the effectiveness of the original vaccines against it, and now even the newer vaccines, changed. In today's world, being vaccinated and boosted with the latest shots in the past 4-6 months provides some protection against merely becoming infected with COVID, pretty good right after the vaccination and then waning with time. But more importantly, the same vaccines still provide very good protection against serious illness, hospitalization and death from COVID... Someone who's been fully vaccinated and boosted, still even today, is far less likely to become seriously ill from COVID than an unvaccinated person. And that's the whole point, to keep people out of the hospitals, not suffering from serious COVID illness or dying. Even with the current Omicron variants, adults age 18 and above who are fully vaccinated and then boosted with the newer bivalent vaccines have overall a SIX TIMES lower risk of dying from COVID in February 2023 than the same group of unvaccinated adults, according to the U.S. CDC. Those rates above are overall for all adults age 18 and above, as the chart indicates. The actual death numbers from COVID, of course, are larger in older adults in their 60s, 70s, 80s and beyond, and smaller in the various younger age groups. Though the protective benefits of vaccinations vs being unvaccinated hold equally true when you look at only the older age groups, such as the following: Adults ages 50-64: Adults ages 65-79: And younger too: Adults ages 30-49: https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#rates-by-vaccine-status .

Air pollution has been shown to be a risk factor, one among many, for people having worse COVID symptoms... But that's clearly not what drove a sudden explosion of COVID cases and resulting hospitalizations in the past two weeks. Bad air pollution in Thailand had been driving people to see doctors and increasing related hospitalizations long before the past couple of weeks in April, as previously reported in the Thai news. The Thai MoPH has already attributed the surge in new COVID cases and hospitalizations to the mass socializing of Song Kran, students from the reopening of schools, and, I believe, the recent increased levels of tourism. And another interesting reason cited by the MoPH: "The number of people contacting the virus during the Songkran celebrations rose because the government no longer requires people to wear masks and pass through a screening process before entering crowded venues, he said." https://www.nationthailand.com/thailand/general/40026704

You seem to have missed, or at least didn't feel worth also mentioning, that Thailand had 1,088 new COVID hospitalizations in the one week being reported here.... It just so happens that's the highest weekly total of new COVID hospitalizations for Thailand since the start of 2023, and up about 550% from the 168 new COVID hospitalizations reported for the first week of April. And, they now have 73 of their newly hospitalized COVID patients with serious pneumonia, up from 30 the prior week. --and they have 35 COVID patients newly hospitalized who have been intubated because they're otherwise unable to breathe, up from 19 the prior week. https://ddc.moph.go.th/covid19-dashboard/ But go ahead, keep trying to minimize it anyway....

Now who's next? There are quite a few others still at Fox who shared in Carlson's flights into misinformation lunacy.

Lemon had been digging himself a hole lately, as the Raw Story article explains regarding some of his recent antics... But it does go to show the difference between a place like CNN, that still aspires to maintain a proper work environment while also pursuing responsible journalism, vs. a propaganda spewing sexist nuthouse like Fox which allowed its loonies to run amok in the asylum for years with little apparent intervention, because it suited Rupurt Murdoch's finances.

So the OP is getting a 60-day visiting the wife extension, and hopefully able to use that time to satisfy the financial / bank deposit requirements of a subsequent retirement extension?

Yep, one part of it...but not the other references to the contrary.

That article specifically says the commanders of the Allied ships/submarines that did the sinkings of the Japanese transports didn't know, and had no way of knowing, that Allied prisoners were onboard, calling the prisoners' loss of life "accidental" and "unintentional." There's a vague claim that higher-up "Allied commanders" supposedly knew more, but as far as I could see, there's no source or verification of just what that knowledge was and how, if at all, it pertained to the specific sinkings discussed in the article. From the OP article here, the Japanese specifically chose to NOT mark those ships in any way to indicate that prisoners were aboard.... Had they been marked as prisoner transports, I very much doubt they would have been sunk.