TallGuyJohninBKK

The ability to judge why things happen medically requires a comprehensive investigation... and initial claims of such supposed vaccine side effects have often proven to be wrong. Something happening "after" a vaccination doesn't necessarily mean the vaccination was in fact the cause. Example just from the past week: Doctors Say Phuket Boy Blinded by Staph Infection "BANGKOK (NNT) - A team of Phuket province physicians has determined that a 12-year-old boy who went blind after receiving a second dose of COVID-19 vaccine lost his sight due to a bacterial infection. The family of Nonthapat Sae Ong claimed that their child became blind after receiving the second dose of the Pfizer vaccine in November of last year. ... Doctors at Vachira Phuket Hospital determined that Nonthapat had acute sinusitis caused by an infection of the staphylococcus aureus bacteria, which then spread to his optic nerve and sphenoid sinus, resulting in his blindness. https://nbtworld.prd.go.th/en/news/detail/TCATG220510092232634

This is the latest from the TH MoPH, posted earlier today, on the progress in vaccinating youngsters ages 5-11 -- 56% have received one dose, and 22.4% have received two doses thus far in their relatively new vaccine rollout for youngsters. https://www.facebook.com/informationcovid19/photos/a.106455480972785/563767991908196/?type=3

Summary of data publicly reported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Date: 5/11/22 "The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends COVID-19 vaccination for all children and adolescents 5 years of age and older who do not have contraindications using a vaccine authorized for use for their age. ... Children Ages 5-11 Years: As of May 11, 2022, the CDC recorded: 9.9 million US children ages 5-11 have received at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccine Representing 35% of 5-11 year-olds 8.1 million US children ages 5-11 completed the 2-dose vaccination series Representing 28% of 5-11 year-olds" https://www.aap.org/en/pages/2019-novel-coronavirus-covid-19-infections/children-and-covid-19-vaccination-trends/

Not sure what great significance you find in that, considering that the Pfizer COVID vaccine underwent human clinical trials both for adults, and later for children ages 5-11, prior to being approved for use in both segments. Monday, September 20, 2021 Pfizer and BioNTech Announce Positive Topline Results From Pivotal Trial of COVID-19 Vaccine in Children 5 to 11 Years "Results are the first from a pivotal trial of any COVID-19 vaccine in children under 12 years of age In participants 5 to 11 years of age, the vaccine was safe, well tolerated and showed robust neutralizing antibody responses ... The Phase 1/2/3 trial initially enrolled up to 4,500 children ages 6 months to 11 years of age in the United States, Finland, Poland, and Spain from more than 90 clinical trial sites." https://www.pfizer.com/news/press-release/press-release-detail/pfizer-and-biontech-announce-positive-topline-results AND January 6, 2022 Evaluation of the BNT162b2 Covid-19 Vaccine in Children 5 to 11 Years of Age Conclusions "A Covid-19 vaccination regimen consisting of two 10-μg doses of BNT162b2 administered 21 days apart was found to be safe, immunogenic, and efficacious in children 5 to 11 years of age. (Funded by BioNTech and Pfizer; ClinicalTrials.gov number, NCT04816643. opens in new tab.) https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmoa2116298

I don't know whether any of the prior mRNA vaccine research efforts made it to human clinical trials or not.... I would guess not, but I really don't know.

As my prior quote noted re the past mRNA Ebola vaccine research: "The first mRNA vaccines using these fatty envelopes were developed against the deadly Ebola virus, but since that virus is only found in a limited number of African countries, it had no commercial development in the U.S. https://publichealth.jhu.edu/2021/the-long-history-of-mrna-vaccines The subsequently approved Ervebo vaccine for Ebola is of the different type that I believe is called a viral vector vaccine. The J&J COVID vaccine is also a viral vector vaccine. "The Johnson & Johnson Janssen vaccine, a viral vector vaccine, is among the COVID-19 vaccines authorized for emergency use in the United States." https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/different-vaccines/viralvector.html The main, pertinent point here being (contrary to claims above): mRNA vaccine research in general had a many years long history before the COVID pandemic came along and spurred the development of the Pfizer mRNA vaccine, which then became the first FDA approved mRNA vaccine in the U.S. It wasn't any kind of overnight scientific wonder of new biotechnology suddenly pulled out of a hat.

I don't see any mention in that FDA announcement to that particular FDA-approved Ebola vaccine being an mRNA vaccine. Rather, it says: "Ervebo is administered as a single-dose injection, and is a live, attenuated vaccine that has been genetically engineered to contain a protein from the Zaire ebolavirus." Elsewhere, I see Ervebo described as: "rVSV-ZEBOV is a live, attenuated recombinant vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV) in which the gene for the native envelope glycoprotein (P03522) is replaced with that from the Ebola virus (P87666), Kikwit 1995 Zaire strain.[22][24][25] Manufacturing of the vaccine for the Phase I trial was done by IDT Biologika.[26][27] Manufacturing of vaccine for the Phase III trial was done by Merck, using the Vero cell line, which Merck already used to make its RotaTeq vaccine against rotavirus.[28][29]" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RVSV-ZEBOV_vaccine#Biochemistry And instead: Comirnaty Becomes First-Ever mRNA Vaccine to Receive FDA Approval "The FDA approved the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine earlier this week, making it the first-ever mRNA vaccine or drug to receive approval from the Agency. The historic approval demonstrates that this mRNA vaccine is a safe and effective strategy to fight COVID-19." https://asgct.org/research/news/august-2021/pfizer-vaccine-approved-by-fda

See above: there had been a prior mRNA vaccine developed against Ebola. So, what happened once they figured out this technology? "The first mRNA vaccines using these fatty envelopes were developed against the deadly Ebola virus, but since that virus is only found in a limited number of African countries, it had no commercial development in the U.S. Then COVID-19 hit … what happened then? ...Thanks to decades of research and innovation, mRNA vaccine technology was ready. ... Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine is the first mRNA product to achieve full FDA approval in the U.S." https://publichealth.jhu.edu/2021/the-long-history-of-mrna-vaccines

His comment above was that it was a relatively new technology for Pfizer as a company, the two year reference, not toward mRNA technology in general, where it has been studied for decades. mRNA Vaccines Are Newly Available to the Public But Have Been Studied for Decades "mRNA vaccines have been studied before for flu, Zika, rabies, and cytomegalovirus (CMV). As soon as the necessary information about the virus that causes COVID-19 was available, scientists began designing the mRNA instructions for cells to build the unique spike protein into an mRNA vaccine. ... Beyond vaccines, cancer research has used mRNA to trigger the immune system to target specific cancer cells." https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/different-vaccines/mrna.html AND MYTH: The messenger RNA technology used to make the COVID-19 vaccine is brand new. "FACT: The mRNA technology behind the new coronavirus vaccines has been in development for almost two decades. Vaccine makers created the technology to help them respond quickly to a new pandemic illness, such as COVID-19. ... The COVID-19 vaccines from Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna were created with a method that has been in development for years, so the companies could start the vaccine development process early in the pandemic." https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/coronavirus/covid-19-vaccines-myth-versus-fact AND The Long History of mRNA Vaccines "There’s a big gap between when the first mRNA flu vaccine was tested in mice in the 1990s and when the first mRNA vaccines for rabies were tested in humans in 2013. What was happening in the interim? The early years of mRNA research were marked by a lot of enthusiasm for the technology but some difficult technical challenges that took a great deal of innovation to overcome. ... The first mRNA vaccines using these fatty envelopes were developed against the deadly Ebola virus, but since that virus is only found in a limited number of African countries, it had no commercial development in the U.S." https://publichealth.jhu.edu/2021/the-long-history-of-mrna-vaccines

Also, right now, both the U.S. and the U.K. have approved and are using the Pfizer vaccine for children: England to offer Covid jab to five to 11-year-olds https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-60406155 CDC Recommends Pediatric COVID-19 Vaccine for Children 5 to 11 Years https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2021/s1102-PediatricCOVID-19Vaccine.html

The risk of serious COVID vaccine side effects in young children is extremely rare. The heart inflammation issue that's appeared in reports is more common, though still rare, among male teenagers and young adults as opposed to ages 5-11 children, where it's even less of an issue. https://healthblog.uofmhealth.org/childrens-health/11-things-to-know-about-covid-vaccines-and-kids-hearts 11 things to know about COVID vaccines and kids’ hearts "This heart inflammation known as myocarditis and pericarditis after COVID vaccination is very rare. Most cases have also been mild and short-lived, with patients recovering after a few days. ... The risk is low, seen in less than 1 in 20,000 vaccinated children ages 12-17 (and even less frequently in other groups) with symptoms usually appearing within one to four days after the second dose. It’s important to note that while also rare, a COVID-19 infection is more likely to trigger heart inflammation than a vaccine."

My comment above about Riclag's mobile phone use, and the prospect of using GV either on mobile or wifi, was based on his screen image posted above:

You sho AFAIK, you should be able to receive SMSs from the U.S. sent to a Google Voice phone number just by using wifi on your phone... You don't need a mobile data connection to use GV.

As I said above, people can and will debate that.... But what I found most objectionable in all this is how the quiet policy change has ended up misleading the general public on what's going on with COVID deaths in Thailand lately. If you look at the various news reporting in the past week, it's been about how great it is that COVID deaths and cases are really declining. But almost none of those news reports actually explain that the main reason official deaths are falling is because the government simply changed its counting rules. Now why is that? Is it because the government made its counting change in such a quiet way that the media for the most part didn't notice? Or that the local media is just so sloppy that they don't pay attention to the details of what they're reporting, and just parrot whatever the government says... Or some combination of both? Either way, the general public ends up getting misled on recent COVID death reporting and the supposed decline on COVID deaths. And that, I think, is wrong.

That's what I think they could and should have done -- just like the alternate deaths report format that they used for the last three days of April, as I posted above. But, I suspect, if they had done that, various outlets that report their data to the public probably would have continued to also report the total combined figure for deaths "from" and "with". And that may not have suited the government's wishes and objectives here.

Different people can debate what should or should not get counted as an official COVID death, and what criteria to use. But, either way, I find it somewhat curious that they finally decided to very quietly make the change to effectively narrow and reduce their official COVID death counts now 2-1/2 years into the pandemic, just as they're trying somewhat to revive tourism and downgrade COVID to "endemic" status. The timing connections are intriguing, to say the least. One of their stated criteria for getting to "endemic" status is to have daily COVID deaths not exceed 0.10% of the current number of hospitalized COVID patients. Right now, with about 32,000 COVID cases hospitalized nationwide and declining almost daily, that translates into a daily COVID deaths target right now not exceeding the low 30s. With the May 1 policy change on what to call an "official" COVID death, they overnight got substantially closer to their "endemic" COVID deaths target.

No, they weren't doing that before, at least not completely, until starting May 1, as their graphic indicates. Another reinforcement of that is a trio of alternate daily death reports they issued for last three days of April, kind of like a warmup for the new counting method. See the April 30 alternate deaths report below where they begin to separate out the "from" vs the "with" deaths -- even though the official death tallies for those three days still counted the combined total of both. That then changed starting May 1. https://www.facebook.com/informationcovid19/photos/a.106142991004034/551797299771932/?type=3 Whether they had been taking any other measures behind the scenes since those original March reports to curtail the official death reporting, we have no way of knowing. Also, the Bangkok Post had one daily news report on May 2 that mentioned the change in deaths counting policy as of May 1... But apart from that, all their other daily reporting since then that I could find has made no mention of the policy change or how it's affected the daily death reports. The effect of the policy change in counting COVID deaths is to make it impossible to make any legitimate future comparisons of daily official COVID deaths from now on versus those from the past, which were counted in an entirely different way.

https://www.facebook.com/informationcovid19/posts/554503142834681 https://www.facebook.com/informationcovid19/photos/a.106142991004034/551797299771932/?type=3

Thailand Narrows Method of Counting Daily COVID Deaths, Leading to Sudden Decline in Official Death Statistics [English translation above added] Source Link With Thailand anxious to reinvigorate its COVID battered tourism industry and broader economy, the local COVID news headlines and government reporting during the past week must have seemed like a kind of salvation – daily COVID deaths declining markedly, as much as 40 percent in just a matter of days. The casual news follower might easily assume it’s a good sign reflecting the COVID situation in Thailand getting better, or perhaps medical treatments and new drugs now two-plus years into the pandemic during a better job of keeping COVID patients alive, especially during the current Omicron variant wave. But in fact, Thailand’s rapidly falling official daily COVID death numbers in recent days aren’t primarily related to either of those factors, but instead, to the Thai government very quietly changing and narrowing what it counts and reports as official daily COVID deaths starting May 1. The change is reflected in a tiny footnote added to the Ministry of Public Health’s daily COVID death reports starting May 1, where it noted that from now on, only deaths that the government considers to be “from” COVID will be tallied and officially reported, meaning those deemed to have died “with” COVID, which have been counted for the past two-plus years, will no longer be reported. The effect of the policy change has been stark: Thailand tied its year-high number of official COVID deaths on April 29 with 129 under the old policy, followed by 126 on April 30. But then when the new counting policy took effect on May 1, the daily official COVID deaths count fell to 91 on May 1, 84 on May 2, and finally 77 on May 3 – a 40 percent decline from the yearly high in just the span of four days. The change in how Thailand counts its COVID deaths comes just after the government had ominously predicted that official COVID deaths could hit up to 250 per day in the wake of the mid-April Songkran New Year’s holidays. And it comes amid the government attempting to relax current COVID restrictions along with possibly downgrading the country’s COVID outbreak to “endemic” status provided key statistics continue to improve in the coming months. The Thai government did mention the new deaths reporting policy during at least one local briefing early in the month. But the change has gone unmentioned in most local news reports in recent days, with those reports citing the rapidly declining daily COVID death numbers reported by the government, but typically giving no explanation of why they had suddenly started declining. Various news reports also continue to draw before to now comparisons between the higher daily death tolls prior to May 1 versus the now lower ones (without mentioning the new, more narrow deaths reporting method), giving the misimpression the declines were mainly due to an improving COVID situation in the country. At least in its English language communications, the Thai government thus far doesn’t appear to have publicly and clearly defined just how it’s now distinguishing between deaths “from” COVID versus deaths “with” COVID. Although earlier in the spring, Ministry of Public Health officials began talking publicly about only counting COVID deaths involving serious lung inflammation and/or respiratory system failure. At that time, MoPH said perhaps 10-30 percent of Thailand’s officially reported COVID deaths had the virus as only an incidental factor. But when the MoPH began separating out the types of COVID deaths in the past week in preparation for its new policy, they were cutting the official COVID death counts by about half, removing 60+ deaths per day that were deemed only “with” COVID. Different countries have different criteria for how and when they count and report official COVID deaths. But various research studies, including those that looked at Thailand under its prior death counting rules, had found that actual deaths caused by COVID were likely significantly higher than even the original numbers. The latest episode also isn’t the only example of Thailand taking actions that end up minimizing its official COVID statistics reporting. To start with, Thailand has a relatively low per capita rate of lab-based RT-PCR testing for COVID cases, which is the basis for Thailand's official daily counts, compared to other countries. Source link Then on top of that, the government in recent months has increasingly encouraged a shift to less expensive ATK tests, which citizens can do on their own, don’t necessarily ever get officially reported, and aren’t counted in Thailand’s tally of “official” COVID cases even if they are officially reported.

Yes, cases lately are way down in the UK, which is a good thing. Unfortunately, a lot of people are still dying of COVID every day in the UK right now -- more than 200 per day lately...and about triple the current number in Thailand for countries of approx. the same population.

Thailand on Tuesday reported a third consecutive day of new COVID deaths under 100, with yet another daily decline to 77. At the same time, official new COVID cases increased to 9,721, but current serious COVID hospitalizations fell again to 1,669, now the lowest level in more than two months. The mixed report issued by the Ministry of Public Health was highlighted by a fourth consecutive daily decline in new COVID deaths, down from 84 yesterday and a year-high total of 129 only last Friday. The current number of COVID patients hospitalized in serious condition also fell from 1,751 yesterday, continuing a steady decline. In another piece of good news, the subset of the serious condition hospitalized patients in the worst condition -- those requiring intubation to breathe -- also declined from 824 yesterday to 804 today, the lowest daily number in almost a month. The only main uptick in Tuesday’s report was the tally of official new COVID cases, which ended five consecutive days of daily declines as cases increased from 9,331 yesterday to 9,721 today. Those still were Thailand's only two days of new cases under the 10,000 mark since early February. More broadly, the total number of active COVID cases under care in Thailand continued falling sharply, down from 129,068 yesterday to 118,567 today. Before the past three days, the last time Thailand had a daily count of COVID deaths under 100 was April 9. The last times before today that Thailand had daily COVID case counts under 10,000 were yesterday and then February 4 before that. Thailand's counts of official daily new COVID cases are widely considered a vast undercount to the actual numbers of cases in the country. But the general movements up or down of the various statistics, especially daily deaths and hospitalizations, still gives some sense of the direction of the pandemic in the country. For context, during the peak of the Delta wave last fall, Thailand's daily COVID case count topped out at 23,418, but the numbers of serious hospital cases and the intubated share of those peaked above 5,600 and 1,100 respectively, and daily deaths topped 300 for a brief period. https://www.facebook.com/informationcovid19/posts/553746129577049 https://ddc.moph.go.th/covid19-dashboard/?dashboard=main

Do you mean Mint is pushing out an over-the-air FIRMWARE update to your model phone that will disable its 2G and/or 3G functionality? OR, do you mean that the mobile towers they use in the U.S. (T-Mobile) are sunsetting their 2G and 3G services as long promised? ------------------------- AFAIK, you don't generally need a VOLTE phone in order to send/receive text messages... VOLTE is for actual VOICE calls that go over the LTE data network, instead of the older 2G and 3G mobile networks that are being phased out in the U.S. As long as your phone with the U.S.-based Mint Mobile SIM can still make a roaming mobile data network connection to some Thai mobile provider, you still should be able to receive SMS messages sent from the U.S. to your Mint Mobile SIM. The only issue I can think of is IF Mint Mobile is pushing a firmware update to your phone model that disables its prior 2G and 3G functionality, that might be a problem, because a lot of the T-Mobile network mobile companies in the U.S. seem to have their international roaming agreements with foreign providers be only for 2G and 3G service, instead of LTE. So, if your phone model doesn't support wifi-calling when abroad, as you said, AND if Mint actually is disabling 2G/3G on your phone AND they don't have LTE international roaming agreements in place withany of the various Thai providers, then that might be a problem.....

A wave of banned far-right influencers and extremists tried to rejoin Twitter after Musk announced his buyout "A slew of far-right figures previously banned from Twitter — including former Trump adviser Roger Stone, white nationalist Mike Peinovich, and conspiracist Jim Watkins — tried to rejoin the platform after Elon Musk agreed to buy the platform. All of them were suspended again almost immediately. Musk's agreement to buy Twitter for $44 billion was celebrated by numerous right-wing influencers, conspiracy theorists and QAnon adherents online. Many appeared to believe that Musk's promises to promote "free speech" on the platform would mean accounts previously banned for violating the platform's hate speech or misinformation policy would be reinstated." (more) https://www.insider.com/far-right-influencers-banned-twitter-elon-musk-buyout-extremism-2022-4 A far-right activist banned from Twitter for fundraising to 'take out' a BLM activist was told by an Elon Musk associate he may get his account back 'soon,' report says Charles Johnson was banned from Twitter in 2015 after fundraising to "take out" a BLM activist. Johnson asked an Elon Musk associate when he could get his account back, WSJ reported. "Hopefully soon," Jared Birchall replied, according to the WSJ. https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-associate-far-right-activist-get-twitter-account-back-2022-4

Now with the news carrying numerous reports about Musk trying to buy Twitter, it seems that a lot of the people who have been banned in recent years for various offenses are coming out of the woodwork with the expectation that they're somehow going to be reinstated. AFAIK, Twitter has various levels of censure for violating the service's terms/rules, with the most severe being a PERMANENT SUSPENSION, which means losing the ability to Tweet and having your Twitter page/account removed from public view. (They also have a whole range of lesser responses to rule violations.) https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/enforcement-options "Permanent suspension: This is our most severe enforcement action. Permanently suspending an account will remove it from global view, and the violator will not be allowed to create new accounts. When we permanently suspend an account, we notify people that they have been suspended for abuse violations, and explain which policy or policies they have violated and which content was in violation. Violators can appeal permanent suspensions if they believe we made an error. They can do this through the platform interface or by filing a report. Upon appeal, if we find that a suspension is valid, we respond to the appeal with information on the policy that the account has violated."

It seems that the invading Russian forces in Ukraine aren't just troops and hired mercenaries... but they're also common looting THIEVES! Russian troops stole $5M worth of farm vehicles from a John Deere dealership, which remotely locked the thieves out of the equipment "Russian troops occupying the Ukrainian city of Melitopol stole nearly $5 million of farm vehicles from a John Deere dealership and shipped some of them more than 700 miles to Chechnya, CNN reported, only to find they had been rendered useless by a remote-locking system that prevented the thieves from turning the equipment on. ... Melitopol – a city in the country's southeast – has been under Russian occupation since early March. Other recent reports from the area have said invading troops looted a museum of gold artifacts and stole hundreds of thousands of tons of grain from the region. " https://www.businessinsider.com/russian-troops-locked-out-of-stolen-john-deere-farm-equipment-2022-5