TallGuyJohninBKK

Oddly, coincidence or not, Pentagon FCU also has recently done a similar re-do of their website... and ever since the new version began, I've been totally unable to log-in there with a Firefox browser.. Called Pentagon customer service, and was told their new website doesn't support Firefox anymore.... What kind of @#@#@ are they pulling? Do these places ever consider the impact of such things on their customers?

Those are a Thai made model with a generally good reputation among users here. They used to sell their own HEPA filters directly online from their website, but not sure they still do. FWIW, I've read some info in the past that Hatari's HEPA filters may not be of the higher quality so-called True HEPA variety. They say their HEPA filters "Filters fine dust particles, allergens and other foreign particles as small as 0.3 micron" -- but they don't specify to what efficiency rate 99%, 99.5%, 99.97%, the latter being what's called True HEPA. "Filters meeting the HEPA standard must satisfy certain levels of efficiency. Common standards require that a HEPA air filter must remove—from the air that passes through—at least 99.95% (ISO, European Standard)[4][5] or 99.97% (ASME, U.S. DOE)[6][7] of particles whose diameter is equal to 0.3 μm, with the filtration efficiency increasing for particle diameters both less than and greater than 0.3 μm.[8 ... "Products that are marketed to be "HEPA-type," "HEPA-like," "HEPA-style" or "99% HEPA" do not satisfy the HEPA standard and may not have been tested in independent laboratories. Although such filters may come reasonably close to HEPA standards, others fall significantly short.[26] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HEPA Model AP12R1: https://www.hatari.co.th/en/product/UHJvZHVjdDo3NQ%3D%3D https://www.hatari.co.th/en/category/air-filters One other downside to Hatari is that they're primarily a fan manufacturer, not an air purifier manufacturer.... I think they've only ever had a single air purifier model offered at any given time.

I buy carbon prefilters from Amazon in the U.S. and have them mail forwarded here... In the past, I've often bought a particular size made by Honeywell for a particular large/house sized Honeywell purifier I have at home. But these days, there are multiple quality suppliers of those sheets on Amazon... It's kind of a commodity product, unless you need one of an unusual size. FWIW, I've never really looked to see if the same are available here in Thailand. The Honeywell ones fit my Honeywell purifier, and the leftover/trim from those I hand cut to fit in the rear of my Thai purchased smaller Sharp unit. Examples: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B003UH9I2G/ https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01MQR1W51/ PS - One of the disadvantages of the Xiaomi units, IMO, is that their filters are of the one-piece cartridge style... as opposed to having separate HEPA and pre-filter and-or carbon sheets... To me, being able to replace/clean the separate pre-filter and cheap carbon filters more often allows you to extend the life of your more expensive HEPA filter.... vs having to replace it more often when you're using the all-in-one variety. The manufacturers, if it wasn't already obvious, generally make their money off the HEPA filter replacement sales more than off the original units. And one interesting feature that Xiaomi has had, at least on past models, was an electric mechanism on their units that checks to insure that the installed HEPA filter is one made by Xiaomi, as opposed to any third-party source.

As I said above, depends on usage.... For me here in Bangkok, air pollution is really only a major problem during the burning season, typically Nov-Dec to Mar-April. That's the period when there's the most gunk in the air, and accumulating on your HEPA filter... Also, there's steps you can take to extend the life of the HEPA filter. For example, my Sharp unit came with a back cover that serves as a pre-filter, keeping the larger particles away from the HEPA filter. And that back pre-filter can be easily removed and rinsed clean indefinitely. Also, I added my own hand-cut carbon filter sheets inside my Sharp unit between the pre-filter and HEPA filter. And the carbon filter sheets also catch stuff that makes it thru the pre-filter, further protecting the HEPA filter. Those carbon filter sheets are relatively cheap. They cannot be washed. But they can be vacuumed with HEPA hand vac or HEPA house vac to extend their life.

I've had one of those Thai-purchased Sharp models (FP-F30 TA and similar) at home in BKK for the past several years, and it's worked flawlessly and effectively. But their units in that price range, I believe, are only sized for a room of about 20 sq mt... So great for a bedroom and such, but not a single unit for an entire home or larger condo.

I've never heard of this name/brand at all when it comes to air purifiers. There's probably a reason it's "very cheap."

There are several important features anyone looking to buy an air purifier in Thailand should consider: 1. It should be a HEPA or True HEPA purifier, meaning it's rated to remove 99.97% of PM2.5 down to 0.3 microns in size. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HEPA 2. It should be sized large enough to accommodate the room or open living space where it will be used. In other words, don't buy a purifier rated for handling a 20 sq mt room when the area you need to purify is 40 or 80 sq mt. 3. Make sure and identify for the model you're considering that there is a local and reliable supply of replacement HEPA filters for the unit in question, as HEPA filters typically need to be replaced every one year or so...depending on useage patterns. And the purifier you buy will be useless to you in the future if you can't source quality replacement filters sized for your unit. Some of the reputable brands offered here include Hatari, which makes a relatively low cost model, Sharp, which also makes some affordable room sized purifiers, and Xiaomi, particularly their later 3 and 4 series models.

I wonder how this new tourist insurance scheme is going to classify the constantly occurring tourist hotel/condo balcony falls? Covered, or, excluded risky behavior? Same with riding/traveling on Thai island speed boats? Covered or excluded risky behavior? It would be interesting in the coming year/years to find out, if we ever do, what kinds of cases were accepted for coverage vs. what kinds of ones were denied/rejected.

There seem to be TWO different versions in the opening two news reports above of what is actually required to be eligible under this scheme, with very different implications. The first is the one you quoted above -- have to have a tourist visa, which excludes a lot of tourists who come via other means, including visa exempt. And then the other, second news report above has the following broader definition: "They must be visiting Thailand with a tourist visa or for tourism purposes." I have no idea which version is the actual one the Thai government plans to follow with this. But there's a pretty big difference between those two different versions.

Thailand MoPH Weekly COVID report for Feb. 4 - Feb. 10, 2024: --537 new COVID hospitalizations, down 178 from the prior week --5 new COVID deaths, down 3 from the prior week --344 current COVID patients hospitalized in serious condition, up 96 from the prior week (dark purple) --169 current COVID patients hospitalized requiring intubation/ventilation to breathe, down 7 from the prior week (light purple) (cumulative figures are COVID new hospitalizations (3,216) & deaths (39) since the start of the current year) https://ddc.moph.go.th/covid19-dashboard/?dashboard=main

The reference isn't intended to discredit him, after all, his finding to not file any criminal charges pertained to a Democrat President, making the outcome all the more significant. It does, however, accurately reflect his career history and political leanings as a Trump appointed U.S. attorney and, before that, a long association with and support of various Republican and right-wing judges and political figures. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_K._Hur "After law school, Hur was a law clerk for Judge Alex Kozinski of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit from 2001 to 2002 and for Chief Justice William Rehnquist of the U.S. Supreme Court from 2002 to 2003.[2]" "On November 1, 2017, Hur was nominated by President Donald Trump to be the next United States Attorney for the District of Maryland.[6] ... He was sworn in on April 9, 2018.[9] "Hur has made donations to the campaigns of at least three Republican political candidates, for less than one thousand dollars combined.[24]"

Worth noting that the partisan opinions expressed in the above weblink were made in mid-2023 -- many months before the Republican-aligned special counsel decided that no criminal charges would be brought against Biden for any violations of federal law.

The OP article talks about the Chinese guy being arrested in the Din Daeng area of central Bangkok... So presumably, the 5 convicted and now imprisoned Immigration officers were operating within the Chaengwattana IO jurisdiction. PS - as is too common with Thai news reports here... zero mention of whether these 5 will remain in custody, or have been or will be released on bail pending potential appeals.

Things have sort of washed clear on the TurboTax ITIN problem I cited above in recent days... TurboTax reps, in their support forum, have basically acknowledged their online system for the current 2023 returns cycle had an error that caused the system to say perfectly valid ITIN numbers were invalid. They've now recognized the error, and say they are in the process of correcting it. My wife's valid ITIN, which TT last week judged invalid, is now accepted as valid again.

"Worldwide, there were more than 11,000 reported deaths from COVID between mid-December 2023 and mid-January 2024, and more than half of those deaths occurred in the U.S. In that same time frame, nearly one million cases were reported to the World Health Organization globally (although reduced testing and reporting means this is likely a vast undercount)." And those numbers above are not real worldwide totals, but instead as the WHO has cautioned, tallies from just a few dozen countries (including the U.S.) that are still regularly tracking and publicly reporting that kind of data. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/rampant-covid-poses-new-challenges-in-the-fifth-year-of-the-pandemic/ "Overall, the updated Covid-19 vaccines provided 54% protection against symptomatic infection among immunocompetent adults who were recently vaccinated compared with those who did not receive an updated vaccine, according to the report published Thursday by the CDC." https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/01/health/updated-covid-vaccine-effectiveness-jn1/index.html

TRENTON, N.J. (AP) — A federal appeals court shot down claims Monday that New Jersey residents’ refusal to wear face masks at school board meetings during the COVID-19 outbreak constituted protected speech under the First Amendment. The 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals issued a ruling in two related cases stemming from lawsuits against officials in Freehold and Cranford, New Jersey. ... “A question shadowing suits such as these is whether there is a First Amendment right to refuse to wear a protective mask as required by valid health and safety orders put in place during a recognized public health emergency. Like all courts to address this issue, we conclude there is not,” the court said. (more) https://apnews.com/article/covid-mask-free-speech-lawsuits-new-jersey-108abf877288999f34d1c604b731d34c

And yet here you are voluntarily choosing to read news articles in the forum's COVID subforum... Hmmm...

"All of the COVID interventions have been politicized and with huge amounts of misinformation and disinformation that spreads faster than viruses. And misinformation, disinformation and politicization kill." --Maria Van Kerkhove, interim director of the WHO’s Department of Epidemic and Pandemic Preparedness and Prevention https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/rampant-covid-poses-new-challenges-in-the-fifth-year-of-the-pandemic/

Updated COVID-19 vaccines effective against variants, new data show ... "Overall, VE was 54% (95% CI, 46%-60%) among people who had recently received an updated COVID-19 vaccine. The researchers found that VE for people aged 18 to 49 years was 57% (95% CI, 48%-65%) and for people aged 50 years and older was 46% (95% CI, 31%-58%). Additionally, VE was 58% (95% CI, 48%-65%) among people tested for COVID-19 between 7 to 59 days after receiving an updated vaccine. It was 49% (95% CI, 36%-58%) among people tested for COVID-19 between 60 to 119 days after receiving an updated vaccine. (more) https://www.healio.com/news/infectious-disease/20240201/updated-covid19-vaccines-effective-against-variants-new-data-show

(CNN) — A shot of the latest Covid-19 vaccine can help cut the chances of getting a symptomatic infection by half, early data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggests. ... Overall, the updated Covid-19 vaccines provided 54% protection against symptomatic infection among immunocompetent adults who were recently vaccinated compared with those who did not receive an updated vaccine, according to the report published ... by the CDC. ... Generally, the goal of the US Covid-19 vaccination program is to prevent severe disease, but measuring vaccine effectiveness against symptomatic infection offers an extra early look at how well the vaccines are working. ... During the week ending January 13, there were nearly 31,000 Covid-19 hospitalizations and more than 1,800 deaths, according to CDC data. (more) https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/01/health/updated-covid-vaccine-effectiveness-jn1/index.html

Biden health officials press pharmacies on Paxlovid affordability The Biden administration is pressing pharmacies to ensure that patients with COVID-19 are not being charged thousands of dollars for Paxlovid. Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Xavier Becerra met virtually this week with CEOs from Walgreens, CVS, Walmart and Kroger, as well as trade group leaders, to discuss the importance of pharmacist education and clear, accurate communication to patients about the costs of the COVID-19 treatment. ... The Biden administration negotiated with Pfizer on ways to ensure the drug is affordable. Individuals on Medicare and Medicaid will be able to access Paxlovid for free through the end of 2024 through a patient assistance program, and uninsured individuals can receive Paxlovid for free through 2028. (more) https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/4454284-biden-health-paxlovid-covid-19/

“We’re still in a pandemic,” says a lead COVID official with the World Health Organization Throughout the past four years, Maria Van Kerkhove, now interim director of the WHO’s Department of Epidemic and Pandemic Preparedness and Prevention, has helped lead the agency’s response to COVID. Scientific American spoke with Van Kerkhove about entering the fifth year of a pandemic that many want to ignore despite its permanent impact on lives around the world. How would you describe the overall state of COVID at this point in the pandemic? COVID’s not in the news every day, but it’s still a global health risk. If we look at wastewater estimates, the actual circulation [of SARS-CoV-2] is somewhere between two and 20 times higher than what’s actually being reported by countries. The virus is rampant. We’re still in a pandemic. There’s a lot of complacency at the individual level, and more concerning to me is that at the government level. Lack of access to lifesaving tools such as diagnostics, therapeutics and vaccines is still a problem. Demand for vaccination is very low around the world. The misinformation and disinformation that’s out there is hampering the ability to mount an effective response. So we feel there’s a lot more work to do... (more) https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/rampant-covid-poses-new-challenges-in-the-fifth-year-of-the-pandemic/

Ratios of excess natural-cause deaths to reported COVID-19 deaths across US counties from March 2020 through August 2022. In panel A, darker counties represent counties with higher ratios of excess natural-cause mortality to reported COVID-19 mortality. A new study provides the most compelling data yet to suggest that excess mortality rates from chronic illnesses and other natural causes were actually driven by COVID-19 infections, disproving high-profile claims that have attributed these deaths to other factors such as COVID vaccinations and shelter-in-place policies. Nearly 1,170,000 people have died from COVID-19 in the United States, according to official federal counts, but multiple excess mortality studies suggest that these totals are vastly undercounted. ... Now, a new study led by Boston University School of Public Health (BUSPH) and the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn) provides the first concrete data showing that many of these excess deaths were indeed uncounted COVID-19 deaths. ... Importantly, these findings also disprove political assertions or public beliefs that have attributed mortality during the pandemic to COVID-19 vaccinations or shelter-in-place policies. (more) https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-02-analysis-reveals-excess-deaths-attributed.html The study: Excess natural-cause mortality in US counties and its association with reported COVID-19 deaths Significance Official COVID-19 mortality statistics have not fully captured deaths attributable to SARS-CoV-2 infection in the United States. While some excess deaths were likely related to pandemic health care interruptions and socioeconomic disruptions, temporal correlations between reported COVID-19 deaths and excess deaths reported to non-COVID-19 natural causes suggest that many of those excess deaths were unrecognized COVID-19 deaths. ... Increases in reported COVID-19 deaths correlated temporally with increases in excess deaths reported to non-COVID-19 natural causes in the same and/or prior month. This suggests that many excess deaths reported to non-COVID-19 natural causes during the first 30 mo of the pandemic in the United States were unrecognized COVID-19 deaths. https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2313661121

Tens of thousands of Americans are hospitalized with COVID-19 every week. Thousands die from it every month. And yet, an antiviral treatment proven to lessen the chances of severe outcomes is going underused. The drug, Paxlovid, is lauded by experts as a powerful tool that can prevent hospitalization and death from COVID-19. But the high price and doctors’ hesitation to prescribe the pills mean the five-day treatment isn’t getting to everyone who would benefit from it. “When you read in your local newspaper that in this hospital, they’ve got this many COVID patients, most of those are preventable hospitalizations,” said Dr. Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at Johns Hopkins University who sees Paxlovid as a useful tool to treat COVID-19. (more) https://apnews.com/article/paxlovid-cost-covid19-f03f3732e14fbbcb0fe33220db67c9f1

That's ONE reason cited by the special counsel, among many different reasons depending on the particular records, for not bringing charges against Biden, not the sole or primary reason by any means. It's just the reason the right-wing anti-Biden folks choose to fixate on. Others (as sourced and explained in posts above) include: Biden cooperated with investigators and voluntarily returned the records when the issue arose, whereas Trump did none of that and fought tooth and nail to stymie and obstruct the investigation. Some of the materials Biden kept he'd have a good legal argument were his personal property (the handwritten notebooks). The circumstances of the handling of some of the records leave doubts that Biden's actions were willful, etc etc.