TallGuyJohninBKK

The AZ vaccine was never approved or EUA'd in the U.S. in the first place, so there was nothing to withdraw there. AZ was withdrawn in the U.K., because it had a very rare side effect involving blood clotting -- too rare to surface in AZ's clinical trials involving tens of thousands of people -- that began to surface after its subsequent widespread use in the U.K. and Europe. And that use was, as a result, pretty quickly suspended. And as a result, now after 3 years and 12+ billion total COVID vaccine doses later, it's the mRNA vaccines that remain in predominant and widespread use, and with an establish track record of very rare side effects that are far outweighed by the risks from COVID, according to public health authorities around the world. https://www.tga.gov.au/news/media-releases/icmra-statement-safety-covid-19-vaccines

A vaccine is no longer experimental once it has been formally approved by the jurisdiction country, as occurred around the world, including here in Thailand, with the original roll-out of the vaccines. In the U.S., the initial use of the vaccines was done under the established "Emergency Use Authorization" declaration, followed by formal approval: First Pfizer: FDA Approves First COVID-19 Vaccine Approval Signifies Key Achievement for Public Health August 23, 2021 "Today, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the first COVID-19 vaccine. The vaccine has been known as the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine, and will now be marketed as Comirnaty (koe-mir’-na-tee), for the prevention of COVID-19 disease in individuals 16 years of age and older." https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/fda-approves-first-covid-19-vaccine And then Moderna shortly thereafter: FDA Takes Key Action by Approving Second COVID-19 Vaccine January 31, 2022 "Today, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved a second COVID-19 vaccine. The vaccine has been known as the Moderna COVID-19 Vaccine; the approved vaccine will be marketed as Spikevax for the prevention of COVID-19 in individuals 18 years of age and older." https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/coronavirus-covid-19-update-fda-takes-key-action-approving-second-covid-19-vaccine That's why, I would imagine, the use of the term "experimental vaccine" may have been considered misleading and inaccurate.

No, it's just more of your non-credible, entirely unsourced and unsubstantiated conspiracy theory ramblings as illustrated by your comment above -- "the truth is coming out," "crime against humanity," "forces of censorship," etc. And no, this very site never flatly banned the term "vaccine injury" -- especially if the cited reference had any credible source, which typically, they did not. Because most so-inclined posters here rarely cite any credible source to substantiate anything that they're posting.

And yet you felt compelled to post relatively meaningless statistics above from Worldometers in your attempt to minimize the real and current extent of the ongoing COVID presence in the world. The most credible COVID statistics out there these days are new COVID hospitalizations and deaths, since those are more widely and credibly tracked and reported. But as the WHO notes, even those aren't being publicly reported in many places. Which is the reason we have this: The pandemic’s true death toll https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/coronavirus-excess-deaths-estimates

As the WHO repeats in every single update they post now, many countries -- including Thailand -- have simply stopped counting and reporting COVID cases/infections -- which renders the remaining numbers that are reported vast undercounts to the reality and bigger picture at the global level. "Globally, during the 28-day period from 20 November to 17 December 2023, 105 countries [out of about 200 total] reported COVID-19 cases and 50 countries reported COVID-19 deaths. Note that this does not reflect the actual number of countries where cases or deaths are occurring, as many countries have stopped or changed frequency of reporting." "From the available data, the number of reported cases has increased while deaths have decreased during the 28-day period, with over 850 000 new cases and over 3000 new deaths, an increase of 52% and a decrease of 8%, respectively, compared to the previous 28 days (23 October to 19 November 2023). ... "Trends in the number of reported new cases and deaths should be interpreted with caution due to decreased testing and sequencing, alongside reporting delays in many countries." https://www.who.int/publications/m/item/covid-19-epidemiological-update---22-december-2023

1. COVID vaccines are only effective against COVID, and not the flu, RSV or any other number of seasonal illnesses circulating right now that are making people sick. 2. Much of the Thai population, at this point, has at best two original COVID vaccine doses given up to two years ago, and nothing since. And about 20% of the Thai population never got any COVID vaccines at all... Which is not a recipe for comprehensive protection at the society level. Especially when doctors and public health agencies currently consider the definition of "fully vaccinated" to be at least THREE COVID vaccine doses. and many are recommending a fourth dose with the latest monovalent XBB-focused version. Lots of the Thai population never got that far, and the latest vaccine version being used in the U.S., U.K., and elsewhere isn't even available in Thailand thus far. https://ddc.moph.go.th/covid19-dashboard/?dashboard=main

The facts as posted and linked above still say COVID, even now, is worse than the flu: AND Data reported by the U.S. CDC for the latter part of December: "COVID was responsible for 3.3% of all deaths last week" "Across all age-groups, flu made up 0.5% of all the nation's deaths last week" https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/influenza-general/us-covid-markers-rise-flu-activity-intensifies

I think we've pretty well already sussed out that fact... But meanwhile, in the real world, the truth is, this time of year is the high season for a variety of respiratory illnesses, including COVID, the flu, RSV and others.... But that doesn't mean they're all the same and interchangeable with each other.

But more reliable than doing nothing, especially if you repeat the at-home type tests several times as generally recommended, or get an RT-PCR test from your doctor, which are very accurate. Or failing that, try to avoid making posts and claims about your supposed COVID symptoms when you don't really know you had COVID.

No, it's not... not even close: Data reported by the U.S. CDC for the latter part of December: "COVID was responsible for 3.3% of all deaths last week" "Across all age-groups, flu made up 0.5% of all the nation's deaths last week" https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/influenza-general/us-covid-markers-rise-flu-activity-intensifies AND https://www.cdc.gov/respiratory-viruses/data-research/dashboard/illness-severity.html

So your comments above regarding your symptoms would seem to be based on your guess that what you have is COVID... And not on any real confirmation that what you have is actually COVID -- as opposed to a cold, the flu or who knows what else. Which renders you judgments above about the severity of your symptoms pretty much irrelevant to the discussion here of actual COVID.

I don't see anywhere in your above post where you indicated that you actually tested positive for COVID -- as opposed to coming down with any number of other possible maladies.

The U.S. COVID death count numbers cited above all involve either COVID being listed on the death certificate as the primary cause of death, or as a contributing cause. Getting run over by a bus wouldn't count in the U.S. Also, by the time people get to be older, almost everyone has some kind of comorbidity condition. But that doesn't change the facts when the attending doctor decides that COVID was the primary cause of death, or, a contributing cause among other factors. Likewise, the UK COVID death stats I posted above, as detailed on the source website, also only involve cases where the person's death certificate mentioned COVID-19 as the cause, or one of the causes.

There are rational, fact-based reasons to suspect Thailand's COVID death counts are on the low side, as I explained above, including the comparisons with the U.S. and the U.K..... But I have no basis to suggest how much of an undercount the official stats may be. "So yes, I believe Thailand's official single digit COVID death counts are suspect, especially considering the relatively lower levels of medical capability in the outlying, more rural areas where people may die at home and quickly be cremated, without any official judgment of cause ever being reached."

I believe, Thailand's reporting of COVID deaths is suspect as best. The health authorities here have previously publicly detailed a very narrow scope of what they'll consider a COVID death...basically focusing on respiratory problems, and excluding all the other various health problems that can be caused by COVID. If you look at a country with better medical infrastructure like the U.S. -- though not necessarily healthier -- you can see COVID currently generating these kinds of death tallies -- about 1,600 confirmed COVID deaths per week, meaning COVID was judged either as a primary or contributing cause. If you consider that Thailand has a population about one fourth the size of the U.S. and if the death rate was the same -- excluding variations in population age and other demographic characteristics -- that would yield about 300 - 400 COVID deaths per week here.... https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#trends_weeklydeaths_select_00 In the UK, with a population about equal to that of Thailand, official COVID deaths right now have been running 200 - 300 per week. https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/deaths?areaType=overview&areaName=United Kingdom So yes, I believe Thailand's official single digit COVID death counts are suspect, especially considering the relatively lower levels of medical capability in the outlying, more rural areas where people may die at home and quickly be cremated, without any official judgment of cause ever being reached.

That COVID is continuing to sicken sizable numbers of people and kill a portion of those particularly among the elderly, in Thailand and around the world -- contrary to those who keep trying to deny those facts. And, regarding your comment above, that even in its current form, COVID is putting far more people in hospitals and killing more people than the flu does. Data reported by the U.S. CDC for the latter part of December: "COVID was responsible for 3.3% of all deaths last week" "Across all age-groups, flu made up 0.5% of all the nation's deaths last week" https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/influenza-general/us-covid-markers-rise-flu-activity-intensifies AND https://www.cdc.gov/respiratory-viruses/data-research/dashboard/illness-severity.html

That, if true, seems very surprising and strange.

You might have noticed over the past four years that medical science has the ability to test for and confirm the presence (or lack thereof) of a COVID infection. All the COVID hospitalizations reported by the Ministry of Public Health have confirming tests done to diagnose the infection as COVID... otherwise the cases wouldn't be reported as COVID. When it comes to hospitalizations, at least, they're not confusing COVID with air pollution related illness.

Those are the typical, most common symptoms of the latest variant. But as the last weekly COVID report from the Thai government clearly shows, the current version of COVID still has the ability to put SOME people seriously ill in hospital and also kill a small number of those.

"New COVID hospitalizations in Thailand rose to 664 for the week of Dec. 31 to Jan. 6, up 11.8% from 594 the prior week, and reaching the highest new COVID hospitalizations count in the past six months since early July. Last week also marked the first time the weekly new COVID hospitalizations tally had topped 600 since mid-July."

Thailand's latest seasonal COVID wave continued its now three-month-long upward surge with more significant increases in reported new COVID hospitalizations and counts of seriously ill COVID patients in hospital during the first week of 2024, according to the latest report from the Thai Ministry of Public Health. New COVID hospitalizations in Thailand rose to 664 for the week of Dec. 31 to Jan. 6, up 11.8% from 594 the prior week, and reaching the highest new COVID hospitalizations count in the past six months since early July. Last week also marked the first time the weekly new COVID hospitalizations tally had topped 600 since mid-July. Likewise, the count of currently hospitalized COVID patients considered in serious condition rose to 144 for the latest week, up 20% from 120 the prior week, and reaching the highest count in the past five months since early August. COVID deaths reported by the Thai government, meanwhile, remained at low levels with only 4 reported for the latest week, up from 3 the prior week. The weekly COVID deaths reported by the Thai government have remained consistently at single-digit levels since 12 were reported for the first week of August. The current year-end spike in COVID hospitalizations followed a prior spike that ran from mid-April to early June, the post Thai New Year period, with new hospitalizations then peaking at 3,085 for the week May 28 to June 3. After that, the weekly new COVID hospitalization numbers generally declined and hit recent lows in October, bottoming out at 124 for the week of Oct. 8-14. Since then, the latest upward surge has seen new weekly COVID hospitalizations increase fivefold through the first week of January. Thailand stopped publicly reporting COVID infection/case data last fall, as have many countries, so tallies of COVID new hospitalizations have become one of the key indicators that public health officials these days use to monitor the successive up and down waves of COVID infections. According to the latest weekly report, Thailand has had 39,121 COVID hospitalizations and 852 officially declared COVID deaths since the start of 2023. Since the beginning of the pandemic, the MoPH has reported a cumulative total of 4.75 million COVID hospitalizations and 34,521 officially declared COVID deaths.

Thailand MoPH Weekly COVID report for Dec. 31, 2023 - Jan. 6, 2024: --664 new COVID hospitalizations, up 70 from the prior week --4 new COVID deaths, up 1 from prior week --144 COVID patients hospitalized in serious condition, up 24 from the prior week --89 COVID patients hospitalized requiring intubation to breathe, up 15 from the prior week https://ddc.moph.go.th/covid19-dashboard/?dashboard=main

Except as the WebMD article you quote notes: "there is no good scientific evidence to support most of these uses. There is also no good evidence to support using chlorine dioxide for COVID-19." AND "The US FDA has warned consumers to avoid chlorine dioxide supplement products due to the risk for serious safety issues and death."

And the upshot of Gorski's article: "the extrapolation used in this paper is problematic, but it is nonetheless likely true that rampant HCQ use probably did lead to a substantial number of deaths early in the pandemic. I would also add that the cult of HCQ, in which many later decided not to get vaccinated against COVID-19 because they mistakenly believed that HCQ and ivermectin were safe, inexpensive, and highly effective treatments, likely killed many more who might not have died if they had been vaccinated." ... "I tend to agree that the study likely does underestimate HCQ-associated deaths, but I also have to concede that the imprecision in the estimates doesn’t allow me to assume that."