TallGuyJohninBKK

https://www.bangkokhospital.com/en/page/covid-19-vaccine-expat-registration

It's pretty interesting that western scientists for quite some time have clearly been saying that antibody measurements post vaccination alone are NOT synonymous with immunity / protection / vaccine efficacy results. But the Thai virologists keep churning out the antibody test findings time after time, and AFAICT, never even mention the cautions advised in the west. And I'm sure it's just a coincidence that their antibody test results usually end up being an endorsement of one kind of another of the Sinovac vaccine.... ????

For anyone interesting in signing up directly with Medpark Hospital in BKK for their Pfizer vaccines, just be aware, they are tied into the online MoPH Intervac database there, and will check your vaccination history, if any, online prior to the final clearance to be vaccinated there. If you've had a single or double AZ vaccination previously thru the Intervac site under the same passport number, they'll see that and decline to give you any Pfizer vaccine there. And that's after you've made an online appointment with them, they've confirmed the online appointment and sent you a confirming email. Apparently, mixing vaccine doses of Sinovac and AZ is OK for the Thai government and its vaccine program, and also mixing using the U.S. donated Pfizer vaccine as booster shots for Thai government medical staff who've already been given two Sinovac doses. But when it comes to the U.S. Pfizer vaccine doses, the MoPH is not going to allow any mixing for foreign nationals, regardless.

Thailand hasn't had less than 239 daily deaths for the past five days. And in those same most recent five days, two of the five have been record high daily deaths above 300 -- 312 on Aug. 18 and 301 on Aug. 19. Aug 17 -- 239 Aug. 18 -- 312 Aug. 19 -- 301 Aug. 20 -- 240 Aug. 21 -- 261

The number of Thai provinces reporting more than 100 new COVID cases per day has almost doubled over the past month, according to MoPH data. As of July 20, 24 of Thailand's 77 provinces were reporting more than 100 new cases that day. As of yesterday, Aug. 20, that number had risen to 45 provinces. Back in July, the MoPH was publicly reporting an almost daily map showing the number of provinces with more than 100 new cases per day. Here was their map for July 20: But by the start of August, with daily cases climbing and spreading more into outlying provinces, MoPH pretty much ceased publicly reporting that kind of map. However, it's possible to calculate those same kinds of numbers now using MoPH data reported elsewhere. Here's the new cases summary for yesterday, Aug. 20, by region and province, showing 45 of 77 provinces with more than 100 new officially reported cases for the day. https://www.facebook.com/nbtworld/photos 45 100+ New Case provinces for Aug. 20: Central -- 15 of 22 provinces Northeast -- 11 of 20 provinces North -- 0 of 9 provinces South -- 9 of 14 provinces East -- 6 of 7 provinces West -- 4 of 5 provinces

From everything I've read from the scientific circles, antibody levels alone don't entirely equate to a vaccine's effectiveness in preventing symptomatic infection or worse outcomes like hospitalization or death. The means by which the various vaccines combat the COVID virus are more complicated and involved than just antibody measurements, or at least, that's what the scientists outside Thailand seem to be saying. "The recent NYU study, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, focuses on antibody measurements (in a lab setting), but that’s just one of many aspects of the immune system that contribute to protection against Covid, according to Shane Crotty, professor at the La Jolla Institute for Immunology who studies how the immune system remembers infections and vaccines. “Your immune system is complicated, and doesn’t just have one weapon,” Crotty says. “You’ve got neutralizing antibodies, other kinds of antibodies, you’ve got memory B cells and T cells.” Think of your immune system like a football team, Crotty suggests. “If you were just paying attention to the wide receivers’ statistics, those are useful numbers, but you’re missing all the things that the other teammates are doing that are actually influencing the outcome,” he says. https://www.cnbc.com/2021/07/28/vaccine-effectiveness-for-delta-immune-system-explained.html

I just realized, because of Joe's response above, that my prior post was unintentionally misleading, and thus I've corrected it. To be clear, what I said above about registering with the Expatvac website was/is correct. But since doing that registration and having it accepted on Aug. 9, I've heard nothing further from them in the past 10 days in terms of any follow-up or scheduled appointment from that process. The part where my prior post went astray was I do indeed have an appointment for a vaccination tomorrow, but it didn't come via the Expatvac website. Rather, the actual appointment came via a direct registration via Medpark Hospital in Bangkok. I got tired of waiting and the lack of a response via the Expatvac process, so I struck out on my own to go the Medpark route.

It's OR, not and. To qualify right now, you need to be age 60 or older OR have one of the listed chronic health conditions or be pregnant, both down to the age of 18.

I submitted my passport facepage and extension stamp as two separate image files to the Expatvac site with my original submission, and my registration was accepted. I got no rejection email. But just to be clear, I uploaded the two images at the same time by selecting both images together and then clicking upload. I didn't upload one, and then try to go back and upload the second one separately.

Bangkok province COVID summary for the day: 79 new COVID deaths and a cumulative case fatality rate of 1.67%. https://www.facebook.com/informationcovid19/photos/a.106455480972785/389369182681412/?type=3 And daily case totals for the past week, as reflected in the line graphic above: https://www.facebook.com/informationcovid19/photos/a.106455480972785/389369692681361/?type=3

Thailand tomorrow is going to pass the mark of 1 million officially recorded COVID cases since the start of the pandemic in early 2020. Stands at 989,859 today, most of those occurring just since this spring, with the 960,996 subtotal just since April 1. https://www.facebook.com/informationcovid19/photos/a.106455480972785/389369596014704/?type=3

Government today says Bangkok province has now reached 80% of its population having received at least one COVID vaccine dose, but only 17.9% having been fully vaccinated with two doses. Those numbers are based on a government chosen 7.7 million population figure for Bangkok province that's less than the 8.3 million tallied in the 2010 Census, and far less than the current population estimate of about 10 million. The document below also notes that only 1,355 first and second dose (U.S. donated) Pfizer vaccine doses were given in Bangkok yesterday, and only 12,744 cumulatively thus far, as opposed to almost 80,000 third shot doses given thus far to government medical workers. The foreign nationals setaside portion of the Pfizer doses is some unknown portion of the first and second dose totals. Elderly Thais, pregnant Thais and some other Thai nationals such as diplomats and Thai students needing to travel abroad also are eligible for those doses. https://www.facebook.com/informationcovid19/photos/a.106455480972785/389369952681335/?type=3

Despite Prayut's ever optimistic tone, it sounds like the medical community is continuing to prepare for things to get worse: From the MoPH today via Google Translate: "Busarakham Hospital prepares to open 32 semi-critical wards [beds](Ruby) Caring for critically ill patients. Construction is expected to be completed within 10 days. At present, Busarakham Hospital There are 3,526 patients in hospital out of a total of 3,700 beds, which is considered the full potential of the hospital. Of these, 3,196 were pale yellow, 221 yellow and 109 red, of whom were on ventilators. 103 high-flow oxygen and 6 intubation due to increased red patients and from the analysis of the data, it was found that High-flow ventilator (semi-critical) patients had a 63% chance of survival, while intubation (critical) patients survived 26 percent. We have been closely supervised. will help reduce the entry into a crisis. Reduce intubation increase the chance of survival." https://www.facebook.com/informationcovid19/posts/389411062677224 The above report contains an interesting comment regarding the current 1,169 critical COVID patients currently in Thai hospitals on ventilators: " intubation (critical) patients survived 26 percent" Also, by way of background, Busarakham Hospital used to be the name for the large field hospital established at Impact Muang Thong Thani... But I believe that facility has since closed, and MoPH has transferred its patients and apparently name to one of the new airport field hospital locations, AFAIK.

Among the 14 foreigner deaths, also 11 from Myanmar and 1 from Cambodia... (They deserve to get counted also!) Also among the deaths, 3 more pregnant women and one health care worker in Bangkok, a nurse, who apparently had received two doses of the Sinovac vaccine. 45 of the deaths or 15% were neither elderly nor had any chronic medical conditions. Some of the provinces, apart from the 79 deaths reported for Bangkok, also had double digit deaths: Lopburi -- 22 Samut Prakan -- 21 Chonburi -- 20 Ayutthaya -- 16 Samut Sakhon -- 15 Pathum Thani -- 11 Saraburi -- 10 I noticed yesterday the CCSA spokeswoman was claiming in Thai media reports that the daily death toll numbers weren't accurate on a DAILY basis because some provinces were slow in updating their deaths and ended up aggregating together multiple days deaths. I don't know how much that issue may impact the numbers being reported above in today's COVID deaths report.

They don't know any better, because they're not here in TH, and they're tracking 200+ countries worldwide. We know better, because we know what's going on with the third dose booster shots for government medical workers. But you continue to repost faulty/flawed info/projections knowing they're faulty/flawed. Counting THIRD dose booster shots given to medical workers does NOTHING to advance the rate of the population that's been fully vaccinated with TWO doses.

RT-PCR testing has DECLINED! https://ddc.moph.go.th/covid19-dashboard/

Seems like a bit of nationalistic vaccine cheerleading on the part of the BBC on behalf of the UK-developed AZ vaccine. So the upshot of the report is, the Pfizer vaccine starts out after two doses at 93% effectiveness at preventing symptomatic COVID infection from the Delta variant, while the AZ vaccine starts out at about 71%. And then according to the article/research, after four to five months later, the effectiveness of the Pfizer vaccine has fallen to about the same level as AZ, which the article says has effectiveness that remains more or less constant at its lower level. So my problem with the article and the conclusions drawn from that study is -- they seem to ignore the reality of the fact that for a four to five month period after vaccination, a two-dose regimen of the Pfizer vaccine is still going to have substantially better protection against Delta variant infection compared to the AZ vaccine. Various governments are already talking about the need for subsequent booster shots. So, if I had the option to get a vaccine that starts out at 93% protection, why would I instead choose the AZ vaccine that starts out at only 71% protection and, according to the article, never really increases from there?

So you're repeating/reposting the same faulty projections today that you posted yesterday, and I then showed were based on flawed info??? Flawed because that website appears to be including in their tallies the third dose booster shots Thailand recently has been giving its government medical workers. Those doses don't count toward increasing public vaccine coverage because they're essentially do-overs of already two-dose vaccinated people, but they have artificially inflated the recent daily vaccine dose numbers Thailand is reporting. And the website you're citing is using those inflated, wrongly counted recent daily vaccination totals as the basis for their faulty projections regarding when Thailand will reach the point of having 70% of its population fully vaccinated with TWO doses.

Thanks for clarifying your source on that... They seem to be using a running 7 day average, where as my projection used a broader past month average. They also seem to be including in their count the medical booster doses of recent days, which really don't count toward increasing the public vaccination rate. If you backed out the medical staff booster doses, their most recent 7 day average would come down quite a bit. And the resulting projection date for a 70% fully vaccinated rate would extend out beyond their mid-Feb. guesstimate.

Just now when clicking to register.... FWIW, I was talking to my Thai insurance agent a bit ago, and she said she'd been trying to register a foreign client on the site since 9 am this morning using that person's Myanmar passport number, and hasn't ever been able to get the CRA system to accept it.

At the current rate of vaccinations, they won't reach 100 million doses until after March 2022 -- that's assuming the current rates continue into the future. For the past month, the government did less than 10 million total doses, getting them to about 23 million total doses as of now (excluding the nearly 500,000 third dose do-over shots thus far for medical staff, which don't increase the public vaccination rate). At the current pace, they'll be under 30 million doses by the end of August. And then if you figure 10 million doses a month moving forward into the future, they'd be at about 70 million doses by year end -- thus failing to meet their stated year-end goal of 100 million doses. And then another three months at 10 million doses a month to get to 100 million doses by the end of March 2022. Of course, the vaccinations rate COULD increase in the months ahead, or it COULD decrease. So the only thing to project on right now is what's their current rate of vaccinations. And meanwhile, the original whole 70% herd immunity notion that the government's goal was based on has gone out the window as a result of the Delta variant, with the latest predictions saying an 85% or higher vaccination rate might be necessary to stop the spread. https://www.facebook.com/informationcovid19/posts/387338812884449

Here we are some eight months after mRNA COVID vaccines were first approved for use, and not a single Thai government-sourced mRNA vaccine dose has been administered to the Thai public thus far, at least that we know of. (The U.S. government-donated Pfizer vaccines don't count under the "Thai government sourced" category.) The government bet on a vaccine strategy for Thailand and they bet wrong -- big-time. And so what are they doing now to make amends.... buying more Sinovac doses from China.

One thing about having a record 312 official COVID deaths in a single day. It tends to make your critical care hospitalization numbers look better, at least temporarily: With today's update, the changes over the past day: --Total active cases fell from 210,032 to 207,553 (-2,479). --COVID patients in traditional hospitals fell from 54,939 to 51,551 (-3,388). --COVID patients in serious/critical condition fell from 5,536 to 5,458 (-78). --COVID patients in serious/critical condition on ventilators fell from 1,169 to 1,155 (-14). https://ddc.moph.go.th/covid19-dashboard/

Last weekend, the "fall back" numbers of reduced weekend case reporting were in the mid-high 19,000s (on Sun. and Mon. Aug. 8-9). Then during the week we peaked at a pandemic record high of 23,418 on Fri., Aug. 13. This weekend, the "fall back" numbers of reduced weekend reporting were in the 21,000s (21,882 on Sun. and 21,157 on Mon. Aug. 15-16). We haven't had a day under 21,000 since Tues., Aug. 10. The march continues... Also, today's report of 5,626 COVID patients hospitalized in serious/critical condition set another record high, the fifth consecutive day of record highs in that tally. Month Comparison: July 16 -- 9,692 cases, 67 deaths, 3,367 in serious/critical condition Aug. 16 -- 21,157 cases, 182 deaths, 5,626 in serious/critical condition

No, they're not. Not even close. Not enough wearing masks consistently. Not honoring social distancing. Businesses not complying with the non-lockdown restrictions. It's no wonder the deaths and cases keep rising. Not enough vaccinations. And not enough changes in public behavior to limit the spread of the virus.