TallGuyJohninBKK

Thailand MoPH Weekly COVID report for Jan. 21 - 27, 2024: --621 new COVID hospitalizations, down 97 from the prior week --8 new COVID deaths, down 3 from the prior week --231 COVID patients hospitalized in serious condition, up 22 from the prior week (dark purple) --154 COVID patients hospitalized requiring intubation/ventilation to breathe, up 5 from the prior week (light purple) (cumulative figures are COVID new hospitalizations (1,964) & deaths (26) since the start of the current year) https://ddc.moph.go.th/covid19-dashboard/?dashboard=main

Judge clarifies: Yes, Trump was found to have raped E. Jean Carroll https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/07/19/trump-carroll-judge-rape/ Judge in E. Jean Carroll Case: Yes, Donald Trump Is a Rapist https://newrepublic.com/post/174448/judge-e-jean-carroll-case-yes-donald-trump-rapist

I don't see any assessment in the subject study of what the alternate results would have been if the U.K. government had not responded to COVID as it did, in terms of increased illness/hospitalizations and deaths from COVID, not only among children but among everyone. That would be an interesting subject to plumb, if there were legitimate means to make those kinds of comparisons. Earlier lockdown could have saved lives of 30,000, Hancock tells Covid inquiry Tens of thousands of lives could have been saved if the UK had locked down three weeks earlier, Matt Hancock has told the Covid inquiry, as he described the operation of Boris Johnson’s Downing Street as undermined by a “culture of fear”. ... Hancock argued that in retrospect the ideal date for a first lockdown would have been three weeks earlier than the eventual date of 23 March 2020, saying this could have prevented about 90% of the death toll in the first Covid wave, or more than 30,000 lives. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/nov/30/hancock-tells-covid-inquiry-of-toxic-culture-in-johnson-government 'In normal circumstances, scientists would wait for the research to be peer-reviewed and published in a scientific journal to read the final word from the authors. But the latest headline-grabbing version, “Did lockdowns work?” has come out as a book – a “revised and extended” version of the May working paper. Its publisher is the neoliberal thinktank, the Institute of Economic Affairs, credited with coming up with many of Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng’s free market policies. The book maintains that lockdowns – as defined by the authors – prevented 3.2% of US and EU deaths in the first wave of the pandemic. But it notes that based on nine specific NPIs, lockdowns in Europe and the US reduced mortality by 10.7% in the spring of 2020 – about 23,000 in Europe and 16,000 in the US." https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/jun/05/revised-report-on-impact-of-covid-lockdowns-leaves-unanswered-questions In short, I think I'm pointing out, people can recover from childhood obesity. But once you're dead from COVID, there's no coming back.

(CNN) -- People who test positive for Covid-19 in California and Oregon are no longer expected to isolate for a set period of time — and those without symptoms don’t have to isolate at all, state policies now say. People with symptoms can return to school or work once their symptoms are improving and they’ve been fever-free for at least 24 hours, according to the state policies. These two states — which have tended to take a more precautious approach to pandemic policies — are the first to break from federal guidance from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which recommends at least five days of isolation for anyone with Covid-19. Oregon changed its isolation policy in May when the Covid-19 public health emergency lifted, and California followed suit earlier this month. ... The CDC recommends at least five days of isolation because people are likely to be most infectious during that time, and the science around that hasn’t changed. (more) https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/23/health/covid-isolation-guidance-california-oregon-break-from-cdc/index.html

Dr Clive Dix says all activities to prepare for next outbreak are ‘literally gone’ and vaccine manufacturers have been driven away "The UK is less prepared for a pandemic than it was before the Covid crisis after driving away jab manufacturers and relying on a narrow range of shots, according to the country’s former vaccine chief. Dr Clive Dix, who chaired the UK’s vaccine taskforce, told MPs on Wednesday there had been “a complete demise” of work to ensure the UK was better equipped with vaccines for the next pandemic, noting that all the activities were “literally gone”. The vaccine taskforce is widely regarded as a rare highlight in Britain’s Covid response. It was led by the venture capitalist Kate Bingham and Dix, who took over as chair in December 2020, when Britain became the first country to roll out Covid jabs." (more) https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/jan/24/uk-less-prepared-for-pandemic-than-pre-covid-former-vaccine-chief-warns

Child obesity in pandemic could have lifelong effects, study says ... "Between 2019-2020 and 2020-2021, the proportion of overweight and obese Year 6 primary school children, aged between 10 and 11, went from 35.2% to 40.9%, with people from deprived areas disproportionately affected. Researchers used BMI data from the government's National Child Measurement Programme, which weighs and measures about one million Year 6 pupils annually in England. The number of overweight and obese pupils of that age decreased the following year, but it was still higher than before the Covid lockdowns. This increase represents a cohort of an additional 56,000 children, researchers from the NIHR Southampton Biomedical Research Centre and University of Southampton say - based on this snapshot. (more) https://www.bbc.com/news/health-68068199

Researchers from the University of Southampton showed that obesity rates for British preschoolers in 2020 and 2021 skyrocketed more than 45% compared to 2019 and 2020. The authors said this is the largest single-year increase in overweight and obesity prevalence in recent UK history, and will result in an additional £800 million ($1 billion US) in [lifetime] healthcare costs for now-overweight children who will likely suffer chronic diseases. The study was based on publicly available annual body mass index (BMI) data from 2006 through 2022. Two age-groups were studied, kids ages 4 to 6 years old and 10 to 11. ... While weight for children ages 4 and 5 rebounded to healthy BMIs by 2022, obesity in children ages 10 to 11 persisted and was 4 percentage points higher than expected, representing almost 56,000 additional children who were now clinically overweight. (more) https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/covid-19/childhood-obesity-rates-soared-uk-during-covid-19 "During the first year of the pandemic, school closures dramatically altered the routines of young children. Cancellation of organized sports, disrupted sleep schedules, more screen time, and deterioration of healthy eating habits likely contributed to the largest single-year increase in overweight and obesity prevalence seen in children in decades." https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1031662

The widespread adoption of work-from-home (WFH) technology during the COVID-19 pandemic dramatically changed the way Americans live and work, according to a Rutgers University–led study. ... The shift to work from home began before the pandemic. From 2003 to 2019, the rate of only-WFH full workdays increased substantially, almost solely among workers with more than a high school diploma. ... The researchers said that surveys suggest that, postpandemic, workers will roughly quadruple the time they work from home compared with before the pandemic. Some experts estimate that the full days of WFH quadrupled from 2019 to 2022. ... The authors said that these productivity gains would have likely happened eventually but were accelerated by the pandemic. (more) https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/covid-19/data-work-home-tools-boosted-productivity-widened-income-disparities-amid-covid https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1031610

I don't think we know WHAT Dr. Fauci "admitted" during his two days of closed door testimony before this House committee, because many days later, AFAICT, they still haven't made public the full and actual transcript of Fauci's remarks... But, we do know a couple of things in the meantime: 1. The Democrats on the committee have already accused the Republicans of distorting Fauci's testimony via the Republican-released "summaries", as follows: Democrats accuse GOP of distorting Fauci’s testimony from hours-long meeting 01/09/24 7:15 PM ET Democrats who took part in the two-day interview with former White House chief medical adviser Anthony Fauci said Republicans had distorted what the former government official told lawmakers on his first day. ... Dingell said the GOP statements following the first day were “disinformation.” “They did not reflect the discussion that — I was feeling at the end of the day when I left here, that it had been a respectful discussion and we had had good conversations,” Dingell said. https://thehill.com/homenews/4398661-democrats-accuse-gop-of-distorting-faucis-testimony-from-hours-long-meeting/ and 2. The Republicans' claimed notion that Fauci admitted the CDC's standards of social distancing during the pandemic were some kind of made-up standard flies in the face of the federal government's own documents, including this U.S. GAO report from May 2020 summarizing the known research on "Social Distancing During Pandemics." And the summary of that GAO report includes the following: "A CDC guideline based on historical studies of selected infections says that the area of highest risk is within 3 feet of an infected person. Some studies suggest a buffer of 6 feet may further reduce risk." [bold emphasis added] ... "The scientific basis for these recommendations comes from studies in fields such as fluid mechanics, epidemiology, and microbiology. For example, several studies estimated the velocity and distance traveled by droplets of different sizes expelled by sneezing, coughing, and breathing. These studies showed that sneezing and coughing can propel droplets more than 2 meters, with sneezing possibly propelling them further, and breathing less than 1 meter (fig. 2)." https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-20-545sp So clearly, there was some thinking and consideration and reliance on past research that went into the federal government's social distancing policy during the pandemic, contrary to the claims of these House Republicans. And 3. The individual right-wing Republicans on this particular committee -- including Marjorie Taylor Greene, James Comer, and Ronny Jackson -- have a history of putting out statements that, when reviewed by independent parties, don't exactly hold up to the known and provable facts. https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/list/?speaker=marjorie-taylor-greene https://www.factcheck.org/person/james-comer/ https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/list/?speaker=ronny-jackson https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/02/politics/ronny-jackson-dod-inspector-general-report/index.html So, even though right-wing media didn't wait, let's the rest of us wait and see what the actual Fauci transcripts really say.

Once you have a COVID infection (symptomatic or not), generally, public health folks say you shouldn't be vaccinated again at least for several months thereafter. If I recently had COVID-19, do I need a 2023–2024 vaccine? "If you recently had COVID-19, the CDC recommends waiting about three months before getting this updated vaccine." https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/coronavirus/covid-19-vaccine-what-you-need-to-know

No. Depending on your age, contracting COVID can still make someone, especially older people and those with health conditions, seriously ill, as well as trigger various potential follow-on health problems including so-called Long COVID. The current vaccines don't provide 100% protection, but they do provide significant protection against serious COVID illness/hospitalization and death, and also reduce the risks of Long COVID. At the same time, the risks of serious adverse reactions to the COVID vaccine have been shown to be very rare. In general, public health authorities vastly advise that getting vaccinated is the best way to protect against COVID, even though it's also true that a person once infected with COVID does tend to be protected against reinfection for some months thereafter. "Getting a COVID-19 vaccine is a safer, more reliable way to build protection than getting sick with COVID-19. COVID-19 vaccination helps protect people by creating an immune response without the potentially severe illness or post-COVID conditions that can be associated with COVID-19 infection." https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/vaccine-benefits.html AND Is natural immunity better than a vaccine? "Natural immunity is the antibody protection your body creates against a germ once you’ve been infected with it. Natural immunity to the virus that causes COVID-19 is no better than vaccine-acquired immunity, and it comes with far greater risks. Studies show that natural immunity to the virus weakens over time and does so faster than immunity provided by COVID-19 vaccination." https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/coronavirus/covid-19-vaccine-what-you-need-to-know

Still no sign / word of the newer monovalent COVID vaccines approved last fall becoming available in Thailand. Lately, the Thai government, with new COVID hospitalizations at their highest levels in about six months, have been promoting use of the older Pfizer bivalent vaccine which, for example, is no longer authorized for use in the U.S., per the U.S. FDA: "September 11, 2023 As part of today’s actions, the bivalent Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccines are no longer authorized for use in the United States." https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/fda-takes-action-updated-mrna-covid-19-vaccines-better-protect-against-currently-circulating

Vax rates in the U.S. for the newer, monovalent COVID vaccines are inching upward, as per the latest survey data from the CDC: "The percent of the population reporting receipt of the updated 2023-24 COVID-19 vaccine is --11.0% (95% confidence interval: 10.1-11.8) for children and --21.5% (20.8-22.1) for adults 18+, --including 40.9% (39.2-42.7) among adults age 65+. Reported on Friday, January 19th, 2024" https://www.cdc.gov/respiratory-viruses/data-research/dashboard/vaccination-trends-adults.html

There's a reason they have/do: As Covid-19 hospitalizations climb, rates among seniors and children raise concern September 22, 2023 "But a new analysis of federal data from the American Academy of Pediatrics showed hospital admissions among children are rising faster than average. Nearly 1,200 children were admitted to the hospital with Covid-19 during the week ending September 9, marking a five-fold increase over the past three months. ... Admissions among children remain below previous pandemic peaks. There were about 1,800 new pediatric admissions in a week at the height of last winter’s wave, and more than 6,500 weekly admissions during Omicron, the AAP analysis shows. Children accounted for 6% of all Covid-19 hospital admissions during the week ending September 9, federal data shows. And children under 5 were the most at risk, with about half of all pediatric Covid-19 hospitalizations among those younger than 5, according to the AAP analysis." https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/22/health/covid-hospitalizations-seniors-kids-vaccines/index.html

Yes, and presumably that posted info is correct... the driver has been vaccinated... It's not making any claim as to what is the result of that... Although, science continues to be clear that people who are UP-TO-DATE on their vaccinations have lower risks of death and serious illness from COVID...

This is what the US FDA said in December 2020 when granting its first emergency use authorization for the original Pfizer COVID vaccine against the original version of the coronavirus... and it's a whole lot more reserved than the posted claims above. Don't see them saying the vaccine would "stop the virus." FDA Evaluation of Available Effectiveness Data ... "The vaccine was 95% effective in preventing COVID-19 disease among these clinical trial participants with eight COVID-19 cases in the vaccine group and 162 in the placebo group. Of these 170 COVID-19 cases, one in the vaccine group and three in the placebo group were classified as severe. At this time, data are not available to make a determination about how long the vaccine will provide protection, nor is there evidence that the vaccine prevents transmission of SARS-CoV-2 from person to person." [emphasis added] https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/fda-takes-key-action-fight-against-covid-19-issuing-emergency-use-authorization-first-covid-19 Now, later as the pandemic evolved, with earlier variants, the science clearly showed that COVID vaccination DID, especially in the months post vaccination, significantly reduce (not prevent) the risks of becoming infected. As as the virus continued mutating and become better at evading the then current vaccines, that protection against infection waned, and it also waned once people got many months or years past their latest vaccination.

Yes, public officials at times mis-speak, and typically, those errors end up getting corrected, as they should... As with the following example from relatively early in the pandemic: Researchers pushed back after the C.D.C. director asserted that vaccinated people “do not carry the virus.” April 1, 2021 "The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Thursday walked back controversial comments made by its director, Dr. Rochelle P. Walensky, suggesting that people who are vaccinated against the coronavirus never become infected or transmit the virus to others. ... “Dr. Walensky spoke broadly during this interview,” an agency spokesman told The Times. “It’s possible that some people who are fully vaccinated could get Covid-19. The evidence isn’t clear whether they can spread the virus to others. We are continuing to evaluate the evidence.” The agency was responding in part to criticism from scientists who noted that current research was far from sufficient to claim that vaccinated people cannot spread the virus." https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/01/health/coronavirus-vaccine-walensky.html The circumstances of COVID and its continuing mutations / variants has been a moving target since the beginning. The Omicron effect Omicron was quickly identified as being significantly more transmissible than Delta, the preceding variant of concern. Within 4 weeks, as the Omicron wave travelled around the world, it replaced Delta as the dominant variant. Countries which had so far been successful in keeping COVID-19 at bay through public health and social measures now found themselves struggling. For individuals, the greatest price was paid by those who were at risk of severe disease but not vaccinated, and we saw hospitalizations and deaths rise in a number of places around the world." https://www.who.int/news-room/feature-stories/detail/one-year-since-the-emergence-of-omicron

Much better thus far today: https://aqicn.org/station/thailand/bangkok/chulalongkorn-hospital/#/z/12

It's a typical take by the right-wing Heritage Foundation outlet. Yes, there were times when public officials mis-spoke and the public health guidance changed over time. But what that fails to reflect is that what science knew and understood about the coronavirus changed over time, both because it was an entirely new variant where a lot was simply unknown at the beginning, and because the original variant and its attributes then significantly changed over time. Lying is when you know something to be the case and knowingly say the opposite or something different. it's not lying to change your guidance or recommendations over time as the known facts and circumstances change.

Air readings Tuesday night VERY BAD in Bangkok... Smog season was a bit late in arriving this year: https://aqicn.org/station/thailand/bangkok/chulalongkorn-hospital/

The latest scientific data on COVID vaccines continue to show that people who are UP-TO-DATE on their COVID vaccinations (which is defined as having had at least 3 shots, including last year's bivalent booster shot) have lower rates of either being hospitalized from COVID or dying from it... vs. the unvaccinated. On the other hand, people who had only the original standard two vaccinations or fewer several years ago now -- at this point are said to have much less protection against COVID hospitalization and death... And some studies I've seen suggest that those long ago vaccinated folks at this point are little different than being unvaccinated. Just like having had a flu vaccine shot two or three years ago is going to do little if anything to protect a person from the current year's (ever mutating) flu virus... Which is why there are newly formulated flu vaccines each year... just like there are periodically reformulated COVID vaccines. People have to stay current with their vaccinations if they want to have optimal continuing protection. It's not a one (or two) and done deal, in either case. https://healthpolicy-watch.news/fda-chief-warns-us-immunity-is-at-risk-as-more-people-decline-vaccinations/

The WHO is just out with their latest status report on COVID globally. And while they do report data on total cases and deaths for their past month period, December 11 to January 7, the overall reported global numbers are increasingly meaningless as more and more countries cease regularly reporting key data. However, with this latest monthly update, perhaps in part because of the above, the WHO has begun calling out separate charts on the numbers of countries that are regularly and consistently reporting 1) new COVID hospitalizations (22 countries) and 2) new COVID ICU admissions (18), to give a sense of those comparable trends. Thailand is not on either list, because Thailand has never regularly reported new COVID ICU admissions, and although Thailand does report new COVID hospitalization numbers each week, for some reason, those end up being reported in the WHO's reports as new "cases" instead of new hospitalizations. From the report: "The highest numbers of new cases were reported from India (15 079 new cases; 1.1 new cases per 100 000; +843%), Indonesia (8610 new cases; 3.1 new cases per 100 000; +399%), and Thailand (2327 new cases; 3.3 new cases per 100 000; +17%)." [That total roughly equates to a month's worth of Thailand's new COVID hospitalizations reports.] Nonetheless, several neighboring SE Asian countries (along with a few others) that do report such data are showing up on either the new COVID hospitalizations and/or new COVID ICU admissions lists with significant increases for the early December to early January periods vs the month prior period, as I've highlighted in YELLOW on the charts below. New COVID hospitalizations "Among the 22 countries consistently reporting new hospitalizations, 8 (36%) countries registered an increase of 20% or greater in hospitalizations during the past 28 days compared to the previous 28-day period: Indonesia (1337 vs 149; +797%), Malta (79 vs 21; +276%), Brunei Darussalam (588 vs 161; +265%), Malaysia (9312 vs 4137; +125%), Greece (6366 vs 3792; +68%), Singapore (2619 vs 1719; +52%), United Sates of America (128 073 vs 84 981; +51%), and Ireland (1353 vs 967; +40%)." New COVID ICU admissions "Among the 18 countries consistently reporting new ICU admissions, eight (44%) countries showed an increase of 20% or greater in new ICU admissions during the past 28 days compared to the previous 28-day period: Indonesia (164 vs 18; +811%), Malaysia (135 vs 15; +800%), Singapore (77 vs 38; +103%), Estonia (18 vs 10; +80%), Ireland (20 vs 13; +54%), Netherlands (120 vs 86; +40%), Greece (120 vs 88; +36%), and Czechia (182 vs 146; +25%)" https://www.who.int/publications/m/item/covid-19-epidemiological-update---19-january-2024

The U.S. has its version of tossers as well:

That's what I thought too... looking at the OP photo... It may be kinda the same thing as the Thai habit of referring to dumpy old apartment buildings as "mansions".

Unfortunately, the above ThaiPBS World article contains several noteworthy factual errors, as follows: --The report of 11 new COVID deaths last week is up from 7 the prior week, not 4. Four was the count from two weeks prior. Dec. 31 to Jan. 6: Source link: Jan. 7 - 13: Source link Jan. 14 - 20: Source link: Also, not sure where they're getting their 12.9% increase in hospitalizations calculation from. By my count/math, the increase from 625 new hospitalizations two weeks ago to 718 last week is an increase of 14.9%. --also, the 11 new reported COVID deaths are not just among the 718 new COVID hospitalizations from last week as the article states, but instead, among the much larger pool of ongoing COVID hospitalizations, which the MOPH does not publicly report a weekly count for. --Likewise, the counts of serious condition/pneumonia symptom COVID cases and those requiring ventilators are not just among the 718 new COVID hospitalizations from last week, but again, among the larger pool of ongoing COVID hospitalizations.