TallGuyJohninBKK

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.

You have some source for that claim, as pertains to the specific submarine involved here, and the specific ship being discussed in the OP here that it sank? And beyond that, why from a military perspective would it be important to sink mere transport ships.... as opposed to actual warships, especially if there was knowledge that the transport in question here was filled with Allied prisoners of war. That proposition sounds very dubious.

I've read the full article. I don't see anything in it that even remotely suggests the claim you're making above.

There's no national or province-wide mandate from the "state" here in Thailand regarding face mask wear. So the premise of your broad-brush comments regarding Thailand is flawed/faulty from the start. There are, however, widely held recommendations from public health agencies in many countries around the world (including Thailand) that face mask wear is a good method of reducing people's risk of exposure to COVID.

The world has been full of potential Herman Cain Award winners, until they suddenly disappear into the COVID void: "r/TheHermanCainAward is a subreddit which boasts more than 500,000 members. Its purpose? To "award" those who've died from coronavirus complications after publicly expressing COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy, misinformation, or pandemic-denying memes online." https://www.wbur.org/endlessthread/2022/04/08/herman-cain-award "The award is named after American businessman and political figure Herman Cain, a Republican politician who died of COVID-19 complications after attending a 2020 Trump Tulsa rally in support of then-President Donald Trump without wearing a face mask.[ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herman_Cain_Award

A 550% increase in new weekly COVID hospitalizations in Thailand since the start of April is more than a so-called surge. Now at the rate of 1,000+ new COVID hospitalizations per week, as detailed in this thread.

The U.S. is currently reporting nearly 1,900 new COVID hospitalizations every day, and about 190 new COVID deaths per day. And more than 14,000 new COVID cases per day, during a time when reporting and testing are way down. Obviously, you're immune from danger.... https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-data/covidview/index.html

WOW, that's a World War II horror story that I've never heard before.... Perhaps it's not a prominently featured episode in the U.S. history books used in my schools. How could the submarine crew have known it was mainly Allied prisoners instead of Japanese soldiers/sailors aboard their target?

Next time I fly back into BKK, who exactly do I need to talk with about arranging and making payment for a special police escort, complete with motorcycle riders flashing their lights and sirens, to bring me back home?

I don't have a problem here... I mean, let's let them do the things they're actually good at and qualified for...like being lackeys. ????

And part of the reason for that is -- the government doesn't effectively enforce rules against excessive, uninterrupted work hours by drivers, and thus the companies don't effectively enforce it either. Thus you get bus drivers who have been driving too long without enough rest or enough sleep, and often end up taking some form of drugs to stay awake... particular on those long, interprovincial night trips.

Let's hope you don't fall victim to the following: Long COVID or Post-COVID Conditions "Some people who have been infected with the virus that causes COVID-19 can experience long-term effects from their infection, known as Post-COVID Conditions (PCC) or Long COVID." ... "Post-COVID Conditions can include a wide range of ongoing health problems; these conditions can last weeks, months, or years." ... "While most people with Post-COVID Conditions have evidence of infection or COVID-19 illness, in some cases, a person with Post-COVID Conditions may not have tested positive for the virus or known they were infected." https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/long-term-effects/index.html Some of those post-COVID symptoms can include: Tiredness or fatigue that interferes with daily life, fever, respiratory and heart symptoms, difficulty breathing or shortness of breath, cough, joint and muscle pain, chest pain, fast-beating or pounding heart, neurological symptoms, difficulty thinking or concentrating (sometimes referred to as “brain fog”), headache, sleep problems, dizziness when you stand up, change in smell or taste, etc etc.

That too... ????

I've been fully vaccinated and boosted with a bivalent vaccine, always when a mask when outside, and I've never had COVID or been sick from it AFAIK.... Science says the odds are more in my favor than in yours. "All vaccinated groups had overall lower risk of dying from COVID-19 and testing positive for COVID-19 compared with people who were unvaccinated. People who were vaccinated with an updated (bivalent) booster dose had lower rates of dying from COVID-19 and slightly lower rates of testing positive for COVID-19 compared with people who were vaccinated but had not received an updated booster dose." https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#rates-by-vaccine-status

I've seen it said before, by Thais, that the reason the bus drivers often flee in these kinds of circumstances, particularly involving fatalities, is that they fear they'll be attacked by the survivors and/or family members of the injured/deceased... Kind of like when Thai police do their infamous re-enactments involving the suspects in major crimes, and the surrounding villagers and family members involvved often try to fight their way past police to attack the suspects. The driver, from my farang perspective, may also want to buy some time so that whatever alcohol and/or drugs may be in their system have a chance to decline by the time they end up being drug/alcohol tested by police.