TallGuyJohninBKK

"Vitamin D is the only nutrient your body produces when exposed to sunlight. However, up to 50% of the world’s population may not get enough sun, and 40% of U.S. residents are deficient in vitamin D. This is partly because people spend more time indoors, wear sunblock outside, and eat a Western diet low in good sources of this vitamin." https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/9-foods-high-in-vitamin-d#_noHeaderPrefixedContent I eat greek yogurt here every day, but the Caroline brand I use has no nutrition label info on it, and a bottle of Thai fresh low-fat milk (Meiji) I happen to have in the frig does have such a label, but makes no mention of Vitamin D. So I'm wondering whether the Thai producers supplement their milk products with Vitamin D or not. PS - Also saw no mention of Vitamin D on my Thai almond milk package label, so apparently they're not adding it there either.... even though: "Because vitamin D is found almost exclusively in animal products, vegetarians and vegans are at a particularly high risk of not getting enough. For this reason, plant-based milk substitutes like soy milk are often fortified with this nutrient and other vitamins and minerals usually found in cow’s milk."

Thanks for that interesting article/link... I think it's a conundrum. In my case, I realized from info here on the forum that I'm probably not getting enough Vitamin D from the healthy foods I eat (since I drink almond milk instead of regular milk) along with being mostly indoors these days. So I wanted to deal with that. And then, since I won't/don't eat salmon here and don't much care for tuna, I probably could do better with Omega 3... And then there are probably a few other items as well... So by the time all was said and done, it was a choice between covering all the bases adequately with a single multi-vitamin, vs. going out and buying and keeping 3 or 4 different individual supplements that I know I should be doing better with.

That's why I take the daily counts of COVID cases hospitalized in serious condition or requiring intubation as far better (the best available) indicators of just what's really going on with COVID here at any given time, as opposed to the "official" case counts. The case counts, of course, are based on testing that is marginal at best here, and even moreso as the government has publicly pivoted away from doing RT-PCR tests in most cases and in favor of ATK tests, which aren't required to be reported and don't get counted as "official" cases anyway. But when someone has pneumonia symptoms and can't breathe enough to stay out of the hospital, they're gonna get COVID tested and counted if positive. It would be pretty hard for the government to fudge on those counts, no matter how much they long for being "endemic." So when the daily case counts for those kinds of serious hospitalizations keep rising on a daily basis, that tells me, at least, what's really going on here right now.

But direct IHerb shipments here nonetheless seem to get thru successfully? FWIW, my order was for a 200-tab bottle of Centrum Silver for Men, which I got from Amazon as the seller (so it's authentic) for $15, down from their regular price of about $17.50. Lazada prices for the same or similar product are all over the map, but the problem with many of them is, most seem to be no-name sellers of unknown authenticity. The official GSK store on Lazada doesn't even offer a 200 tablet size package of Centrum Silver for men... Instead, they only have regular Centrum Silver, a 90 tabs jar, for 969b... So half the number of tablets for about $30 US, almost double the price of Amazon (not including shipping costs, of course.) Even with import shipping, my total cost for 200 tabs would be less than the total cost of buying the 90 tablets jar from GSK on Lazada.

Continuing their recent trend, newly reported COVID cases in Thailand rose sharply for Wednesday's mid-week report, and the numbers of COVID patients hospitalized in serious condition and requiring intubation to breathe both rose again to new record highs for the year. Wednesday's update of 23,945 official new COVID cases erased the declines of the past three days that began last weekend, when official case reports typically fall in Thailand and then climb upward again by mid-week. The net result of Wednesday's update was that its 23,945 case count was higher than the comparable 22,073 count from one week ago, suggesting that there's no clear sign that Thailand's Omicron wave has yet peaked. That outlook also was reinforced by the continuing, daily increases in seriously ill COVID patients. The current count of those hospitalized in serious condition broke the 1,400 mark for the first time this year at 1,401, while the number requiring intubation broke the 500 mark for the first time this year at 507. Newly reported COVID deaths remained at 70 for a second consecutive day, just shy of the record high for the year of 74 set on March 10. https://ddc.moph.go.th/covid19-dashboard/?dashboard=main For added 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 intubated patients peaked above 5,600 and 1,100 respectively, and daily deaths topped 300 for a brief period.

On this subject, what's been people's experience lately with the mailing/Thai Customs process for buying online abroad and then having small packages ($30 or under valuation) mail forwarded here by regular mail? And how do you fill out the customs declaration in such cases? I've got an upcoming multi-vitamins shipment that I'll be sending onward after an Amazon online purchase. And I seem to remember some stories in the past of people's vitamin shipments getting held up or blocked by Thai Customs (ostensibly because the imported "health" products may not be "registered" for sale here). Of course, I'm hoping to avoid any Thai Customs grief. My regular U.S. mail forwarder and the international mail service they use has been rock solid for me thru the years. But I can't recall ever needing to mail forward vitamins here before (a new shopping priority as we get older!!! ???? )

So with an existing, home country DL, the Thai DLT folks did NOT require you to take and pass their rules of the road paper test?

Earlier this month, my turnaround time for an online report to BKK was next business day during a weekdays period. That was my first time using the "new" online system. I also got an automated confirming email from Immigration notifying me my filing had been accepted.

Newly reported COVID cases, both official and unofficial, fell on Tuesday to their lowest levels of the past week, even as serious COVID cases in hospital and patients requiring intubation to breathe both showed large increases to once again set new record highs for the year. Tuesday's official new COVID case count of 19,742 marked the first time in the past week that the case count fell under 20,000. And the number of unofficial cases, based on positive ATK tests, fell sharply to only 13,008. However, new COVID deaths at 70 remained near the daily record high for the year. And the current number of serious COVID cases in hospital (1,390) plus intubated COVID patients (476) both continued their steady upward climb to once again set new record highs for the year. Meanwhile, Tuesday's new cases tally was enough to push Thailand past the 1 million mark for official COVID cases reported since the start of the year, and 3.2 million since the start of the pandemic in early 2020. https://ddc.moph.go.th/covid19-dashboard/?dashboard=main https://www.facebook.com/informationcovid19/posts/522191586065837 For added 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 intubated patients peaked above 5,600 and 1,100 respectively, and daily deaths topped 300 for a brief period.

Funny, at other points in the past, this same history professor has written that Ukraine never should have given up its huge post-Soviet nuclear arsenal because of past Russian aggression and territorial ambitions. "In the summer of 1993, John J. Mearsheimer, a prominent international relations theorist at the University of Chicago who was no stranger to controversy, lent his voice to the issue of atomic retention. He argued in Foreign Affairs that a nuclear arsenal was “imperative” if Ukraine was “to maintain peace.” The deterrent, he added, would ensure that the Russians, “who have a history of bad relations with Ukraine, do not move to reconquer it.” https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/05/science/ukraine-nuclear-weapons.html Yes, that's exactly where we are today. It was Russia, the US and the UK who formally agreed, in exchange for Ukraine giving up its nukes, to honor its future national sovereignty. And right now and at least from 2014 onward, Russia has been blatantly reneging on that promise.

Long ago ceased eating that kind of stuff in Thailand. Same for any "ball" products that are made out from any "powder." I've never quite understood what the attraction is here for the locals to eat stuff that's been ground up into an unrecognizable pulp.... with considerable potential for adding who knows what along the way to sweeten the mix. And then have it sit outside in a cart all day in the sun at 80 to 90 degree F temperatures.

I was surprised the OP news report actually named the operator of the bus involved. Usually, the authorities and/or the media don't even do that! Don't defame me, bro!!!

I think this is one area, relatively uncommon for monopoly inclined Thailand, where real competition in the marketplace has been a huge plus. When I first came to Thailand many years back, I had a True cable internet connection that was very slow and problematic, even in the heart of Bangkok. But then somehow 3BB managed to get their fiber network up and running, and AIS ended up doing the same. And both left #$%^%$ True (owned by billionaire and CP empire owner Chearavanont) and their internet service way behind in the dust.

I also have had a less than positive experience with Surfshark, despite their appealing low price. 1. SS doesn't unlock a lot of the different major streaming services (you'll get an error message saying the service has recognized you're using a VPN or a proxy). And 2 (and this is probably a more narrow issue for me): I run a full time VPN off of my wifi router. But sometimes, I'll want to use a different city connection for a particular device, and thus try to use SS and its app on top of my router's VPN connection. And SS has an annoying system practice of then locking me out of using their service, and I have to contact their customer service to release the lock. For those reasons, I won't be extending my current sub with them when it expires.

Of course, the best way to look at things on a country to country basis is to look at per capita comparisons, cases or deaths per million population. That can be skewed somewhat by a country's reporting/testing/tracking practices, but it's at least a snapshot. Right now, Thailand doesn't look so bad compared to several other countries in Asia (South Korea, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Malaysia). And has lower current per capita COVID case counts and deaths than the UK. And has a current COVID death rate of about only one-third compared to the U.S. The chart below is from the Thai MoPH as of yesterday (with my annotations to show the points I mentioned above): https://www.facebook.com/informationcovid19/photos/a.106455480972785/521072726177723/?type=3 The comparative case count rates can be explained somewhat by testing practices, with South Korea and the UK, for example, being far more aggressive than Thailand in COVID testing. But the comparative COVID death rate comparisons are harder to explain away.

Looks like, with tomorrow's update, Thailand is likely to pass the 1 million+ official COVID cases mark for 2022. https://www.facebook.com/informationcovid19/posts/521682666116729 The good news is, Thailand's COVID case fatality rate (the share of COVID deaths out of officially reported cases) continues running at a low level of 0.21% for 2022, reflecting the Omicron variant, as opposed to its cumulative 0.74% CFR dating back to the beginning of the pandemic and reflecting last year's Delta wave.

Here's a new chart from MoPH that shows the daily official case count, serious hospitalizations and deaths over the past week. As I noted, the new case count today is higher than it was one week ago. https://www.facebook.com/informationcovid19/posts/521684556116540 And this is what you DON'T want to be seeing:

At least part of it is the weekends - weekdays factor... You need to look more broadly. The official case count actually has risen from last Monday's report (a week ago) on March 7 at 21,162, to today's 22,130 figure.

You need to look at the bigger picture, and also at the data that wasn't available earlier in the morning when this forum daily news update was posted. COVID cases in hospital and intubated patients have been increasing almost every day, and once again set new record highs for 2022 on Monday, as explained in my post above. Those numbers are increasing, not falling. But they're not available every day until AFTER the forum's daily news report is posted, so they're not in the headlines you read every day. And, it's not uncommon for Thailand's COVID case numbers to decline over the weekend periods and into Monday, which reflects Sunday's new case reporting, but then rise again during the ensuing weekdays. Remains to be seen which direction the coming weekdays will go.

Newly reported official COVID cases declined for a third consecutive day on Monday, not uncommon reflecting Sunday's weekend reporting period, while serious cases in hospital and intubated patients both rose again to set new record highs for the year. The 22,130 new official COVID cases was Thailand's lowest tally in the past five days. Likewise, the number of unofficial cases based on positive ATK cases fell to 15,650, the lowest tally in at least a week. However, daily new COVID deaths rose to a relatively high level of 69, up from 66 the day before. And the number of COVID cases in various alternate care arrangements including home quarantine also set a new record high for the year at 162,460. Serious COVID cases with pneumonia in hospital continued their steady upward climb to a new 2022 record of 1,353. And the same for intubated COVID cases, which hit a new yearly record of 453 and have risen for six of the past seven days. With Monday's update, Thailand's current number of intubated COVID cases has now tripled since the start of the year. And the number of serious COVID cases in hospital has more than doubled. https://ddc.moph.go.th/covid19-dashboard/?dashboard=main For added 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 intubated patients peaked above 5,600 and 1,100 respectively, and daily deaths topped 300 for a brief period.

Hong Kong logs 32,430 Covid-19 cases and 264 deaths as city leader concedes authorities cannot keep up with number of residents in home quarantine Some 300,000 Covid-19 patients and their close contacts are now under home quarantine https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/politics/article/3170292/coronavirus-300000-patients-close-contacts-under-home COVID-19 infections in South Korea are at their peak — the highest daily average reported — now at 284,805 new infections reported each day. COVID-19 infections in Vietnam are at their peak — the highest daily average reported — now at 238,661 new infections reported each day. https://graphics.reuters.com/world-coronavirus-tracker-and-maps/countries-and-territories/hong-kong/

I don't find many references in the news to a "BA2.2" version of Omicron as mentioned in The Nation above regarding Hong Kong. But, I did find this one March 8 reference in the UK Daily Mail, which isn't considered a particularly credible source: Mutant Omicron strain is killing 280 people a DAY in Hong Kong - and it's already in Australia Hong Kong is being ravaged by a deadly new Omicron wave sweeping the city Hundreds are dying every day with thousands dead since the middle of February All the latest cases have been of a new mutant strain of Omicron dubbed BA2.2 https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10592027/Covid-Australia-Deadly-mutant-Omicron-strain-Hong-Kong-hits-Australia.html

Not sure where the guy is getting those numbers from. The MoPH international comparisons chart released on Sunday shows very different numbers, although the order of magnitude difference between HK and TH right now is huge! Although the full version of the same chart via the weblink below shows that South Korea is actually running an even higher rate of per capita COVID cases per week, almost 39,000 per 1 million population. https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=276529164652218&set=a.245678317737303&type=3

Yikes! Now there's a BA2.2 variant of Omicron... It's getting hard to keep up... But one thing's clear -- Thailand's NOT "done" with this yet by any means. Screen visitors from HK, Britain to stop Omicron BA2.2 reaching Thailand, top health official warns Arrivals from Britain and Hong Kong must be screened for the Omicron BA.2.2 subvariant, warned Public Health Commission vice chair Dr Chalermchai Boonyaleephan. In his Blockdit post on Saturday, Chalermchai said Omicron BA.2.2 is severely impacting Hong Kong where weekly average Covid-19 infections have soared to 5,425 per million people, compared to 315 per million in Thailand. "Meanwhile Hong Kong's seven-day death rate from Covid-19 is 30 per million people, compared to 0.85 in Thailand," he said... Chalermchai also confirmed that Omicron BA.2.2 has not yet been discovered in Thailand. (more) https://www.nationthailand.com/in-focus/40013339?

And MoPH breakdown of the day's 66 official COVID deaths: --40 males and 26 females --64 Thais, 1 "English" and 1 Myanmar --Median age 75, with an age range of 4 months to 97 years --55 of the deaths or 83% were age 60 or older --9 of the deaths or 14% were under age 60 with chronic conditions --2 of the deaths or 3% were under age 60 with no chronic conditions --By province, the most COVID deaths occurred in Bangkok with 14. https://www.facebook.com/informationcovid19/posts/521074659510863