TallGuyJohninBKK

After three straight weeks of new COVID deaths exceeding 100 per day, Thailand on Monday reported its second consecutive day under 100 with another decline to 84 new deaths, along with a parallel decline in official new COVID cases to 9,331, the first time under 10,000 in months. Monday’s report by the Ministry of Public Health was a second straight day of good news for Thailand and its COVID situation, at least according to the government’s official reports. Daily deaths declined from 91 yesterday to 84 today, while new cases also fell from 11,535 yesterday to 9,331 today. More broadly, the total number of active COVID cases under care in Thailand continued falling sharply, down from 140,989 yesterday to 129,068 today. Meanwhile, the government said the number of COVID patients hospitalized in serious condition nationwide remained unchanged at 1,751. The only negative news in Monday's update was a small increase in the number of hospitalized serious condition COVID patients requiring intubation to breathe, which grew from 822 yesterday to 824 today. Before the past two days, the last time Thailand had a daily count of COVID deaths under 100 was April 9. The last time Thailand had a daily COVID cases count under 10,000 appears to have been February 4 at 9,909. 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/553035972981398 https://ddc.moph.go.th/covid19-dashboard/?dashboard=main

Didn't realize the Chinese were into ketamine... I thought that was more of a Thai party circuit thing!

Wow! You really got me with that one! ???? Clearly, Musk is overpaying. He really needs to talk to Twitter and ask for a refund... And then, go back to his original plans for starting a rival company to compete with See's Candies, or buying Coca Cola so he could add cocaine to their soft drink mix.... He's a man with lots of "bright" ideas! hehehehe ???? https://adage.com/article/digital-marketing-ad-tech-news/see-how-elon-musk-trolling-coca-cola-and-mcdonalds-twitter/2415356 https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/elon-musk-warren-buffett-sees-candies-tesla-spacex-berkshire-hathaway-2021-12

Had a weird experience with this earlier today: Did a Foodpanda food delivery order to my home, and saw that the driver was about to arrive, so I went downstairs to the street to meet him... I'm looking around for the typical motorycle guy with the pink FP box on the back, but I don't see anyone like that.... And as I'm standing there, I barely notice a Thai guy passing by on what I thought was an electric bicycle, I presumed, going home or to a nearby park.... But NO! Turned out, that guy WAS the FoodPanda delivery guy, and what I thought was a relatively small electric bicycle was instead a pretty darned small electric motorcycle! Of course, didn't make a sound when driving. I looked at the thing, and almost thought it was a toy... Kind of hard to believe it could have been street legal for Thailand's dangerous roads!

Musk is supposed to be keen on AI (artificial intelligence) kind of stuff, which is what drives Twitter's content emphasizing and de-emphasizing process.... But somehow, I'm guessing he won't much be swayed by what Twitter's own research shows about how conservative viewpoints are actually amplified more than liberal ones on their platform. Twitter algorithms amplify conservative content more than that of the political left, researchers find The review covered millions of tweets by elected officials in seven countries, as well as posts that linked to political content from news outlets "An internal evaluation of Twitter’s recommendation algorithms concluded that they amplify right-leaning political content more than left-leaning content, company researchers announced Thursday, undercutting allegations by many conservatives who contend they are being censored on the platform. Twitter researchers analyzed millions of 2020 tweets by elected officials in seven countries — Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Spain, Britain and United States — as well as posts that linked to political content from news outlets.... “Our results reveal a remarkably consistent trend: In 6 out of 7 countries studied, the mainstream political right enjoys higher algorithmic amplification than the mainstream political left,” the researchers wrote in a 27-page report." (more) https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/10/22/twitter-algorithm-right-leaning/ Examining algorithmic amplification of political content on Twitter Thursday, 21 October 2021 ... "In six out of seven countries — all but Germany — Tweets posted by accounts from the political right receive more algorithmic amplification than the political left when studied as a group. Right-leaning news outlets, as defined by the independent organizations listed above, see greater algorithmic amplification on Twitter compared to left-leaning news outlets. However, as highlighted in the paper, these third-party ratings make their own, independent classifications and as such the results of analysis may vary depending on which source is used." https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2021/rml-politicalcontent

COVID Update for Sunday, May 1 Thailand on Sunday reported 91 new COVID deaths, its lowest daily total and the first time under 100 in the past three weeks, along with another decline in reported official new COVID cases to 11,535. Sunday's reported toll of new COVID deaths marked one of the sharpest daily drops in weeks, falling from the 126 reported Saturday and the tied-for-year-high number of 129 reported on Friday. Meanwhile, the 11,535 newly reported official COVID cases marked the fourth consecutive daily decline, including down from the 12,888 reported yesterday -- although it's not uncommon for Thailand to report lower case numbers during weekend periods. Also, the reported 1,751 COVID patients hospitalized in serious condition fell for a third consecutive day, down from the 1,773 reported on Saturday and 1,818 on Friday. The share of the serious COVID hospitalizations in the worst condition -- those requiring intubation to breathe -- also fell slightly from 825 on Saturday to 822 today. Overall, the total number of active cases under care continued its ongoing series of daily declines, falling from 151,567 yesterday to 140,989 today. That's down from a 183,154 number reported a week ago on April 24. The last time Thailand had an official daily COVID death toll under 100 was April 9 when 98 new deaths were reported. The last time Thailand had a lower daily deaths toll than today was April 8 with its tally of 89. 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. Sunday's update by the Ministry of Public Health was the latest sign that officials' expected post Songkran New Year's holidays surge of rising cases and hospitalizations has not materialized -- at least according to the government's official reporting. 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/552311776387151 https://ddc.moph.go.th/covid19-dashboard/?dashboard=main

Actually, using a true NO fee account like Schwab (no fees from Schwab and reimburses foreign ATM fees) is pretty much the most economical way to move money from the U.S. to Thailand... because you're getting the full VISA or MC network rate and no deductions from it anywhere along the way. Virtually any wire or other transfer service a person can use to move funds from the U.S. to Thailand through the established banking system is going to have some fees/deductions at various points in the process (wire fees on the U.S. end, receiving fees on the Thai bank end, etc etc).

And then there are these reports coming out: Breakingviews: Elon Musk probably won’t buy Twitter NEW YORK, April 27 (Reuters Breakingviews) - Four years ago, Elon Musk vowed to set up a peanut brittle company to take on Warren Buffett’s iconic U.S. confectioner See’s Candies. Then he changed his mind. It wouldn't be surprising if Musk's $44 billion deal to buy social network Twitter went the same way. ,,, There are good reasons for him to get cold feet. The biggest is Tesla. The electric-vehicle maker’s stock has fallen around a fifth since Musk first revealed his stake in Twitter, partly because Musk may sell shares to fund his new adventure. If Tesla’s stock bounces back – likely if the Twitter deal falls away – the $40 billion of recouped wealth would more than make up for the break fee." https://www.reuters.com/breakingviews/elon-musk-probably-wont-buy-twitter-2022-04-27/ AND Column: Is Elon Musk already looking to bail out of his Twitter deal? "Is Elon Musk’s spectacular $44-billion acquisition of Twitter about to fall victim to one of the greatest outbreaks of buyer’s remorse of all time? That’s what some Musk observers are asking, based on the recent action in shares of Twitter and Tesla, the electric-car maker on which Musk’s fortune is based, along with Musk’s behavior in the immediate wake of his deal for the social media platform. The economic argument against Musk’s following through on his acquisition was laid out by Reuters in an article headlined “Elon Musk probably won’t buy Twitter.” The commentary piece concluded that Musk has financial reasons to let the deal fall apart." https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2022-04-28/is-elon-musk-already-looking-to-get-out-of-the-twitter-deal

Elon Musk sells billions in Tesla stock as he prepares to buy Twitter. He raised $8.5 billion in a series of sales this week and said he didn’t have plans to sell any more. Elon Musk is amassing the funds he needs to buy Twitter, selling $8.5 billion in Tesla stock this week, according to filings released on Thursday and Friday. He tweeted that there were no further sales planned, which may come as a relief to Tesla shareholders, as the electric carmaker’s shares have fallen 20 percent since he first revealed that he had bought a 9 percent stake in Twitter in early April. Mr. Musk owned about 17 percent of Tesla’s shares before this week’s sales. Although Mr. Musk is the richest person in the world, with a net worth above $200 billion, his wealth is mostly tied up in Tesla stock. He plans to raise more than $46 billion to buy Twitter, in a mix of cash and debt.." https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/29/business/elon-musk-tesla-stock.html

I watched most of the whole video.... and was surprised by how articulate he was about things relating to his main business (considering how he often comes off on social media)... and moreso how inarticulate he was about something (Twitter) where he was planning to spend/invest $40+ billion.

Earlier in this thread, someone posted a long TED Talks video interviewing Musk that was filmed after he had announced his plans to buy Twitter, and it was very interesting viewing... When he was asked about AI and self-driving cars and such, he was clear, eloquent, well spoken, etc etc. But when asked about why he wanted to buy Twitter and how he planned to deal with the company, he hemmed and hawed, stuttered a lot, had a hard time saying much at all... other than that he thought the vast social communication capability of Twitter was important to "democracy" in the U.S. and elsewhere -- and he wanted to add an "edit" capability for already posted tweets. Let's hope, under his future rule, that Twitter doesn't end up reverting to allowing tons of false and unsubstantiated election misinformation in future election cycles...just because Musk has said he is personally averse to Twitter permanently banning people from the service. Will a future Musk Twitter ban people who use Twitter to advocate insurrection or false COVID conspiracy/misinformation claims or Steve Bannon advocating that Dr. Fauci and FBI Director Wrap be beheaded? It's pretty hard to see how allowing that kind of misinformation to find a thriving home on Twitter once again is going to advance U.S. "democracy."

Really?... the list you're citing is YOUR self-selected list of would be insurrectionists... not Twitter's list of all those who it has banned.... Twitter has purged left-wing accounts with no explanation Dozens of activists linked to the Occupy movement are up in arms after their accounts were suspended by Twitter "Twitter accounts run by activists linked to the Occupy movement have been suspended after the social network continued its attempted crackdown on bots and fake accounts. Around 80 activists with a collective following of five million people are thought to have had their accounts suspended." https://www.wired.co.uk/article/twitter-political-account-ban-us-mid-term-elections There are generally TWO subjects that have gotten various so-called conservatives booted from Twitter -- false election / insurrection-related content, and false COVID and COVID vaccine misinformation claims. I would pretty well guarantee, if liberals were tweeting to overthrow an elected U.S. president or that COVID vaccines are some kind of microchip control conspiracy, they'd soon find themselves booted as well. You reap what you sow...

Twitter's stance on the Taliban related accounts is debatable... No one's arguing what the Taliban is about. But according to news reports on the subject, the people holding those Twitter accounts have been very careful to NOT make any tweeted comments with content that would get them banned under Twitter's content policies, because they want to remain on the platform. But at the same time, it's not hard to understand why Twitter would have banned the accounts of the others you mention above who repeatedly peddled false and unproven "stolen election" claims on Twitter despite being warned against doing so, and various among them ultimately advocated and supported the overthrow of a legally elected U.S. president through various means, including efforts to find a way to nullify the election and the violent January attack on the U.S. Capitol aimed at preventing the confirmation of Biden's election, aka, insurrection. Twitter Permanently Suspends Trump, Citing 'Risk Of Further Incitement Of Violence' ... "For years, Twitter has been under pressure from critics to limit the reach of Trump's falsehood-laced tweets. Calls for Trump to be banned from Twitter have also been long mounting. Yet officials at Twitter stood by his account, since the platform generally gives wide berth to accounts from world leaders whose posts have public value. That all changed following the violent riots that overtook the Capitol earlier this week after a deluge of posts attempting to sabotage the result of the presidential election." https://www.npr.org/2021/01/08/954760928/twitter-bans-president-trump-citing-risk-of-further-incitement-of-violence Twitter permanently suspends Steve Bannon account after talk of beheading (CNN Business)Twitter permanently suspended an account belonging to former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon after he suggested Thursday morning that Dr. Anthony Fauci and FBI Director Christopher Wray should be beheaded. His comments were made in a video posted to his Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter accounts. Bannon falsely claimed President Trump had won reelection, despite several key states still being too close to call, and said that he should fire both Fauci and Wray. He then said he would go further: "I'd put the heads on pikes. Right. I'd put them at the two corners of the White House as a warning to federal bureaucrats. You either get with the program or you are gone." https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/05/tech/steve-bannon-twitter-permanent-suspension/index.html And the Capitol insurrection led to a revised Twitter policy against repeated and deliberate election misinformation: MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell has been banned from Twitter (CNN Business) Mike Lindell, the CEO of MyPillow, was banned from Twitter Monday night, according to a Twitter spokesperson. Twitter made its decision based on a new policy it enacted after the Capitol insurrection whereby people who repeatedly share election misinformation can be permanently banned. "The account you referenced has been permanently suspended due to repeated violations of our Civic Integrity Policy," the spokesperson told CNN. https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/26/business/mypillow-ceo-mike-lindell-intl-hnk/index.html While I realize the Taliban issue makes a nice attempted political talking point, I'm assuming that Twitter actually enforces their Twitter policies against what people do and say via their Twitter accounts, and not merely on the basis of who they are or what they represent outside of Twitter.

Partial excerpt of member @Eaglekott 's latest daily report on per capita COVID case numbers by province, ranked by most official cases per 100,000 population: Chonburi has the highest per capita rate among the various farang-prominent provinces, followed closely by Samut Prakan.

Looks like the U.S. is heading toward hitting the ignominious mark of 1 million cumulative COVID deaths sometime in the coming month or so. https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#datatracker-home ‘Without a word for what we know’: The unfathomable loss of a million U.S. Covid deaths "We’re now approaching a million officially counted Covid deaths in the U.S. alone. The journalistic response I was taught is to do a kind of imaginative arithmetic. Picture 17 Dodgers Stadiums, packed full of fans, each one mysteriously, wondrously alive, a slow evening of baseball distracting them from divorces and diagnoses and conversations they wish they’d navigated differently. Now picture them all gone. Picture some 5,500 commercial airplanes crashing in a little more than two years." https://www.statnews.com/2022/04/25/one-million-covid-deaths-united-states/

MoPH also had an interesting graphic yesterday showing the daily number of international arrivals since March 1 through April 27 (I'm presuming these numbers are just for air arrivals), and the share of those positive for COVID via either RT-PCR or ATK testing. The blue bars show the numbers of daily international arrivals. The red line shows the corresponding COVID positive test results for them over the same period. Again, I'm assuming the test results' positivity rates are those taken once people arrived in country, and not those pre-departure. The Thailand Pass system had been requiring pre-departure RT-PCR COVID testing, and those testing positive before departure wouldn't be allowed to fly. If nothing else, it gives a good look at how the daily international travelers arrivals have been trending lately. https://www.facebook.com/informationcovid19/photos/a.106455480972785/550525793232416/?type=3 And related:

Just noticed, yesterday, the MoPH began using a new format for COVID deaths reporting, separating out people who it says "died from" COVID vs those its says died "with COVID". Again, these numbers below are from yesterday. They haven't posted the similar report for today's deaths as yet. But it appears, they're still going to continue reporting the total of both categories in their total daily COVID deaths count. I haven't seen any public explanation in English of what criteria they're using to distinguish between the two categories. Although about a month back, they were talking about only classifying deaths from COVID as being those with primary respiratory symptoms like pneumonia -- even though COVID actually can kill people through various other means including strokes, kidney failure, liver failure, etc etc. https://www.facebook.com/informationcovid19/posts/550530806565248 https://www.facebook.com/informationcovid19/photos/a.106455480972785/550525206565808/?type=3

And, the latest news on the revised rules for international traveler arrivals, including that the Thailand Pass system will continue in revised form beyond May 1, despite prior speculation that it might be scrapped: https://www.thaipbsworld.com/thailand-pass-to-stay-pm-to-oversee-situation-after-end-of-test-and-go/

Dr. Yong from Chula University is out today with updated testing results on the COVID variant circulating in Thailand, and his testing shows it's pretty much all the BA2 Omicron variant for now: https://www.facebook.com/yong.poovorawan/posts/7542642815778270 The BA2 variant is considered to be somewhat more likely to evade vaccine protections and become more transmissible than its BA1 predecessor, and thus is believed at least partly responsible for rising case counts in the United States and elsewhere: https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/omicron-infection-what-are-the-symptoms#Tips-for-prevention

Even as official COVID cases and lately even serious hospitalizations continue to mostly decline, Thailand on Friday once again tied its year-high record of 129 new COVID fatalities – now the country’s 20th consecutive day with 100 or more daily new COVID deaths. Friday’s update by the Ministry of Public Health marked the fourth time this month Thailand’s official daily COVID deaths had hit the 129 peak for 2022, with the prior instances having occurred on April 19, 21 and 23. Daily deaths now have risen for the past three consecutive days. Meanwhile, the tally of official new COVID cases declined for the second consecutive day from 14,437 yesterday to 14,053 today. And, the number of serious condition COVID hospitalizations declined from 1,827 yesterday to 1,818 today, its lowest daily total of the past week. In addition, the subset of serious COVID hospitalizations in the worst condition -- those requiring intubation to breathe, also declined again, from 850 yesterday to 815 today, although part of that decline may be related to today's increase in new fatalities. Overall, the total number of active cases under care continued its ongoing series of daily declines, falling from 158,768 yesterday to 155,910 today. 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/550969339854728 https://ddc.moph.go.th/covid19-dashboard/?dashboard=main

This summary in the full text of the OP article seems a pretty decent recap of the new rules effective May 1: Still the potential for a mandatory 5-day quarantine IF you happen to be unlucky enough to be determined to have come in contact with an infected person.... And, at least in this report, they don't seem to be clarifying just what their "vaccinated" rule means -- two doses only, or two doses plus a booster. I believe Anutin the other day said 3 doses are going to be required in order to avoid having to do the pre-departure RT-PCR test, but I I haven't seen that explicitly confirmed elsewhere as yet.

Yes! hehehehehe... The card you cited is one CU that used to offer a couple credit cards with those features.... I promise! So some members here have used those cards in exactly that way here in the past. Re your other question no, doing the cash advance transaction shouldn't have anything to do with whether or not you have an account at a particular Thai bank. But as with all things Thai banking related, YMMV based on what the local bank staff think they're allowed to do and/or what they know how to do. Also, best to confirm the Thai bank isn't going to charge you any fee of their own for doing the advance. I seem to remember in the past I think it was SCB that might have begun charging their own fee for card cash advances.

I think you're assuming too much, based on the peculiar wording that Chonburi is using... wording that isn't used by the Thai MoPH elsewhere. There's no factual indication that MoPH here is currently counting COVID deaths that in fact were CAUSED by other factors. Just the fact that someone has pre-existing conditions when they die doesn't mean that those pre-existing conditions were the cause of their death. People who may be overweight, have high blood pressure, have kidney disease that's common in Thailand, etc etc. don't automatically and necessarily die from those things. Instead, they may be more suseptible to worse outcomes when something else comes along to imperil their health, and that something else is COVID. If it's COVID that ultimately triggers the final demise of someone with pre-existing conditions, then it's COVID that properly should get listed on the death certificate, along with whatever other contributing causes were present. And more broadly, all the research that's been done during the pandemic pretty much universally agrees that the official counts of COVID deaths in the world and individual countries generally are a significant undercount to those that have actually occurred. So in reality, it's more a case of the official counts UNDERCOUNTING the overall reality of COVID fatalities, even if there are some isolated instances where deaths aren't properly classified.

The willingness of local amphur or khet staff to register wills for foreigners seems to be highly variable... almost like their willingness to register mixed marriages -- some make it relatively easy; some throw up endless complications and requirements beyond all reason. When I first inquired at our local khet office in BKK, we went and talked with the officer in charge of wills, explained our situation and what we wanted to do, and after some back and forth, he replied with what would have been a relatively painless process to register a will with them. Didn't do it at the time, but went back a year or so later. That guy was gone and a new officer had taken his place. Then, the new guy basically wasn't willing to register my will unless I jumped through all kinds of hoops including getting listed on a tabien ban (which is a status I don't have).

It's a way of getting funds from your U.S. account -- assuming you have the right kind of credit card -- and avoiding BOTH the 220b Thai bank ATM withdrawal fee on foreign cards AND being able to exceed the 20-30K baht per transaction withdrawal limits on Thai ATMs. Not many U.S. bank or CU credit cards have the right features for this, and those are: 1. no foreign currency fee; and 2. no flat fee or percentage of withdrawal fee on cash advances. But if you have a credit card like that, they're great to use here for bank counter withdrawals. You just walk into your Thai bank branch with the suitable U.S. credit card, tell them you want a cash advance for X amount of baht, they'll typically swipe your card thru a card machine and do a debit for the amount just like if you were making a purchase, and then hand over the baht to you. I don't think Thai banks have a particular limit on the amount of that kind of transaction, or if they do, it's likely high enough to not usually matter. Then when you get back home, just do an immediate payment to your credit card account for whatever amount was debited, and you're done. No fees by the Thai bank and no fees by your U.S. card issuer, except for perhaps a very tiny amount of interest. The issue with all this, however, is most U.S. bank issued credit cards, especially those from the larger mega banks, typically have foreign currency conversion fees of 3% or more, and often even higher fees associated with cash advances, like $10 per advance or 4% of the amount, whichever is greater. And oftentimes, the card issuer will have BOTH of those fees, so you'll really get reamed by their fees... unless you have a credit card that doesn't charge them.