TallGuyJohninBKK

Thanks for that re the pre-filling method. And also for confirming, that I'm not the only one experiencing "captcha" failure! 🙂 As I mentioned above, at least the first time around in Chrome, clearing all the cache and cookies settings in the browser solved the "captcha" problem... I didn't try repeating the process again when I got the second time round "captcha" fail. Enough of them for one day!

Stupidity is as stupidity does!!! ☹️

You mean saving the field info within the browser's memory? Plus, that's not gonna help with getting or populating a captcha code.

This is strange... Once I submitted and finished my 90-day report after clearing the cache and cookies in Chrome, then I logged out. Fine.. Now, a few minutes later, I wanted to go back, log-in again to check something. Made the attempt in Chrome, and once again, can't get the "captcha" box to populate anything.... Their system also seems very slow to load the log-in page, even though I'm using a 1 GB local fiber internet connection. I'm thinking something is wrong, or else, they're just overloaded on a Monday...

Seems like I'm noticing another change of late.... In the past, for entry fields like nationality and province, you could start typing in the entry field and that would produce a pull down menu with different choices to select. Now when I try that today, I don't get any pull down menu boxes in any of those fields. Instead, I had to type the full name of the correct info for the field, like Bangkok for the province, and then the system would in a second or two replace my typed name with one generated by their system. Originally, I kept waiting for the pull down menus to keep popping up, and they seem to be gone. They seem to have changed the technology background running the web-portal system.

Well, I spoke too soon... Today, I went to try to do my online 90-day report to BKK CW, and despite trying every browser I have on my PC (FF, Chrome and Edge), could not get the "captcha" field to populate on the Immigration website log-in page. No "captcha" code to enter, no ability to log-in. Tried with local internet, VPN internet, reloaded multiple times in each browser, both the webpage itself and the captcha field only, made sure ad-blocking extensions disabled for the site, everything I could think of, and nothing worked... Saw a prior suggestion last year from this thread to try clearing browser cache and cookies... Did that, no change. Update - clearing the cache and cookies in Firefox did no good, same blank "captcha" field box. Then tried doing the same in Chome, reloading the page, and then finally got a "captcha" code that allowed me to log-in... Whew!!!! Getting this:

Just to reinforce what the above report is about... it's exploring possible connections between COVID infections and subsequent unusual cancers -- nothing to do with COVID vaccines. As the original Washington Post report specifically says: "She [Weeraratna] said it’s also important to emphasize that the research and other recent papers focusing on covid and cancer involve acute infection or long covid; they do not suggest a link between the coronavirus vaccine and cancer — misinformation that some anti-vaccine groups have spread in recent months." https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2024/06/06/covid-cancer-increase-link/ Or, as the U.S. National Cancer Institute reports: "There is no evidence that COVID-19 vaccines cause cancer, lead to recurrence, or lead to disease progression." https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/coronavirus/covid-19-vaccines-people-with-cancer# And as the American Cancer Society reports: "There is no information that suggests that COVID-19 vaccines cause cancer. There is also no information that suggests these vaccines can make cancer grow or recur (come back)." https://www.cancer.org/cancer/managing-cancer/coronavirus-covid-19-and-cancer/covid-19-vaccines-in-people-with-cancer.html

The Thai Ministry of Public Health on Monday reported a sharp increase in new COVID hospitalizations to 2,762 last week, the highest weekly total in the past year and a tally that has now grown five-fold in the past three months. The government's latest update on rising COVID hospitalizations was, oddly, offset by modest decreases in new COVID deaths (5), COVID patients currently hospitalized in serious condition (663), and COVID hospitalized patients requiring ventilation to breathe (286). The 2,762 new COVID hospitalizations reported for last week averaged 395 per day, up 899 / 48.3% from the 1,863 reported for the prior week. That was one of the largest week-over-week increases in such cases in memory. The 5 new COVID deaths marked a decline of 1 / -16.7% from the prior week. The 663 current COVID patients hospitalized in serious condition were a decline of 75 / -10.2%. The 286 hospitalized COVID patients requiring intubation/ventilation to breathe were a decline of 30 / -9.5%. The current level of new weekly COVID hospitalizations climbed markedly to more than five times the number (501) at the start of the recent surge in mid-March, and reached Thailand's highest weekly total since early June 2023. Cumulative figures since the start of the year now are COVID hospitalizations (23,245) & COVID deaths (137). Of the 5 new official COVID deaths for the past week, the MoPH said 2 were male and 3 female. By age, 3 were ages 70 and above, and 2 were ages 50-59. The Thai MoPH in the past has adopted a relatively narrow definition of the types of deaths it will count as COVID deaths. The weekly COVID new hospitalization totals since the current surge began in mid-March have been: March 16 -- 501 March 23 -- 630 March 30 -- 728 April 6 -- 774 April 13 -- 849 April 20 -- 1,004 April 27 -- 1,672 May 4 -- 1,792 May 11 -- 1,880 May 18 - 1,882 May 25 -- 1,801 June 1 -- 1,863 June 8 -- 2,762 By comparison, Thailand's key weekly COVID indicators to start 2024 were 664 new COVID hospitalizations and 4 COVID deaths for the first week of the year. Last year, Thailand had a similar spring COVID surge that saw new weekly COVID hospitalizations peak at 3,085 in early June, so the latest weekly tally now remains only slightly below last spring's peak. Source: https://ddc.moph.go.th/covid19-dashboard/?dashboard=main

Thailand MoPH Weekly COVID report for June 2 - 8, 2024: --2,762 new COVID hospitalizations, averaging 395 per day, up 899 / 48.3% from the prior week --5 new COVID deaths, down 1 / -16.7% from the prior week --663 current COVID patients hospitalized in serious condition (pneumonia symptoms), down 75 / -10.2% from the prior week (dark purple) --286 current COVID patients hospitalized requiring intubation/ventilation to breathe, down 30 / -9.5% from the prior week (light purple) The current level of new weekly COVID hospitalizations climbed markedly to more than five times the number (501) at the start of the recent surge in mid-March, and reached Thailand's highest weekly total since early June 2023. The latest weekly tallies of serious condition COVID hospitalized patients and those requiring ventilation to breathe both declined last week, falling from what had been year-high totals in the past several weeks. Cumulative figures since the start of the year are COVID hospitalizations (23,245) & COVID deaths (137). Of the 5 new official COVID deaths for the past week, the MoPH is reporting that 2 were male and 3 female. By age, 3 were ages 70 and above, and 2 were ages 50-59. The Thai MoPH in the past has adopted a relatively narrow definition of the types of deaths it will count as COVID deaths. https://ddc.moph.go.th/covid19-dashboard/?dashboard=main The latest MoPH report on new weekly COVID hospitalizations showing a week-over-week increase of 899 new hospitalizations marks one of the largest weekly increases in memory. The weekly COVID new hospitalization totals since the current surge began in mid-March have been: March 16 -- 501 March 23 -- 630 March 30 -- 728 April 6 -- 774 April 13 -- 849 April 20 -- 1,004 April 27 -- 1,672 May 4 -- 1,792 May 11 -- 1,880 May 18 - 1,882 May 25 -- 1,801 June 1 -- 1,863 June 8 -- 2,762 By comparison, Thailand's key weekly COVID indicators to start 2024 were 664 new COVID hospitalizations and 4 COVID deaths for the first week of the year. Last year, Thailand had a similar spring COVID surge that saw new weekly COVID hospitalizations peak at 3,085 in early June, so the latest weekly tally now remains only slightly below last spring's peak.

Couple points on comments above: 1. I've been getting my regular reminder emails from BKK CW about my upcoming 90-day reports without fail for the past several cycles at least, including one that arrived on-time just this weekend. 2. Turnaround time for online filings to BKK CW from submission to approval, for me, has been running 3-5 days for recent submissions. 3. It's been standard practice at BKK CW for some long time now to require an IN PERSON 90-day report filing any time the filer has a new passport, just for the first 90-day report trying to use the new passport, and then OK to resume with online reports after that. Question - did I read correctly above, and in fact are people now encountering this at BKK CW, that they've now changed their policy to also require IN PERSON 90-day reports after a person returns from international travel?

If you consider the above-cited COVID deaths of some 300 people per week in the U.S. lately -- many of which could have been prevented -- to be a "nothingburger," I guess that says a lot about the value you place on human life.

Not quite, as the U.S. Census Bureau has explained: "Throughout 2020, as mandates changed and more became known about the virus, we saw spikes and dips in deaths that reached a peak by November and December during the holiday and winter months, when people were more likely to gather indoors. Deaths began to drop In January 2021. By April that year, the United States saw a decline in deaths corresponding to increases in vaccinations. And that June, death levels returned to near June 2019 levels. [emphasis added] This decline was short-lived, though, as the Delta variant caused another spike in deaths in July and August. Deaths dropped slightly in the fall, but then the Omicron variant emerged just as holiday travel picked up in December 2021." https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2022/03/united-states-deaths-spiked-as-covid-19-continued.html

It's misleading, to say the least, to present a chart that shows the CUMULATIVE COVID deaths count in the U.S. (which is going to continue growing over time regardless) and try to claim that says anything about how COVID deaths occurred during different specific periods of time. The following CDC chart does show how COVID deaths in the U.S. rose and fell during different specific periods of time. Quite a different chart and quite a different look. Source:

1. It's the publisher of the cited study, along with other experts, that is disavowing / denouncing the "misreporting" of the study by The Telegraph and other often right-wing publications that claimed the study's non existent link between vaccines and excess deaths, not just fact-checkers who have likewise rebuffed those unsupported claims. From the publisher's above-cited/linked statement: "Various news outlets have claimed that this research implies a direct causal link between COVID-19 vaccination and mortality. This study does not establish any such link." 2. As for people "putting 2 and 2 together," oh yes they have..... There were COVID excess deaths during the pandemic before COVID vaccines were rolled out predominantly in 2021, and there continued to be excess deaths after, as the study correctly reported. But as above-cited/linked Health Feedback reported: "The overwhelming cause of excess deaths between 2020 and 2022 was due to COVID-19 itself. There are many possible explanations for the remaining excess deaths that were not directly caused by COVID-19; however, the evidence is clear that the vaccines saved millions of lives and they are not associated with excess deaths." ... Conclusion The available evidence shows that COVID-19 vaccines saved millions of lives. Although many countries experienced excess deaths up to 2022, this total would have been far higher without the vaccine rollout."

https://leadstories.com/hoax-alert/2024/06/fact-check-bmj-did-not-attribute-excess-deaths-since-covid-19-pandemic-to-vaccines.html

Second fact-checking report rejecting news reports that the BMJ published study had linked pandemic excess deaths with COVID vaccinations: No, scientists have not concluded that COVID-19 vaccines may have contributed to persistent excess deaths June 7 2024 The Verdict Misleading A study into excess deaths does not draw a causal link between COVID-19 vaccines and excess deaths, nor is it designed to. ... The report discussed in The Telegraph article is a real, peer-reviewed study published in BMJ Public Health Journal. However, the study does not draw any causal link between COVID-19 vaccines and excess deaths, nor was it designed to do so. ... The verdict An article from The Telegraph claims that scientists have found that COVID-19 vaccines may be linked to an increase in excess deaths. However, this is a misleading interpretation of a study that found that Western nations continued to report excess deaths after COVID-19 containment measures and vaccines had been introduced. The researchers did not draw a causal link between COVID-19 vaccines and excess deaths. We have, therefore, rated this claim as misleading. " (more) https://www.logicallyfacts.com/en/fact-check/misleading-no-scientists-have-not-concluded-that-covid-19-vaccines-may-have-contributed-to-persistent-excess-deaths

Journal article suggesting Covid-19 vaccines contributed to excess deaths skewed: S’pore experts Jun 08, 2024 SINGAPORE – Covid-19 mRNA vaccines may have contributed to the 3.1 million excess deaths – that is, the number of deaths beyond what would be normal – in 47 Western countries between 2020 and 2022, suggested an article in a journal. But experts in Singapore disagreed with the article published on June 3 in the BMJ Public Health journal, one of more than 60 titles published by the British Medical Journal. They said the piece was “unbalanced” and that correlation is not the same as causation. The Ministry of Health (MOH) said it is aware of the article. Its spokesman told The Straits Times: “MOH has studied excess deaths in Singapore from 2020 to 2022. Our studies showed that the excess deaths could be accounted for by deaths directly due to Covid-19, or due to underlying medical conditions which were made worse by Covid-19 infections.” (more) https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/journal-article-suggesting-covid-19-vaccines-contributed-to-excess-deaths-skewed-s-pore-experts

Jeffrey S Morris, Professor of Public Health and Preventative Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, wrote on X: “[T]his study does not accurately represent the existing understanding about sources of excess deaths, downplaying the COVID-19 deaths that are clearly the driving factor throughout 2020-2022, as I will show, and implicitly magnifying the potential role of vaccines beyond what is supported by the data. “Also, many popular media articles about this study, including the Telegraph article […] blatantly misrepresent the content of the paper. “They make it sound as if the paper was primarily about vaccines, which it is not, or provides evidence for vaccines being a potential driving factor, which it does not.” https://healthfeedback.org/claimreview/covid19-vaccines-lowered-excess-deaths-during-pandemic-contrary-headline-the-daily-telegraph/ https://twitter.com/jsm2334/status/1798835958806405575

COVID vaccines saved millions of lives – linking them to excess deaths is a mistake June 6, 2024 ... The major cause of the excess deaths reported in the first two years of the BMJ Public Health study was deaths from COVID. But by 2022, excess deaths exceeded COVID deaths in many countries. Possible explanations for these excess deaths include longer-term effects of earlier COVID infections, the return of infections such as influenza that had been suppressed during the COVID control measures, adverse effects of lockdowns on physical and mental health, and delays in the diagnosis of life-threatening infections as health services struggled to cope with the pandemic and its aftermath. We do need to look very carefully at how the pandemic was managed. There is still considerable debate about the effectiveness of different behavioural control measures, such as self-isolation and lockdowns. Even when such interventions were effective at reducing transmission of COVID, what were the harms and were the gains worth the harms? Nevertheless, we can be confident that the excess deaths seen in recent years were not a consequence of the vaccination campaign. (more) https://theconversation.com/covid-vaccines-saved-millions-of-lives-linking-them-to-excess-deaths-is-a-mistake-231776

"In June 2024, researchers from the Netherlands published a study in the journal BMJ Public Health looking at excess mortality across 47 countries from January 2020 to December 2022. They identified that excess deaths were high during this period[1]. In its coverage of this study, the Daily Telegraph published an article with the headline “Covid vaccines may have helped fuel rise in excess deaths”. This article was widely shared online by people with a history of sharing misinformation, claiming that it was mainstream media recognition of the harms of COVID-19 vaccines. As this review will explain, the study provided no evidence that vaccines were responsible for these excess deaths and that the Telegraph’s headline runs contrary to findings from previous studies, which showed that COVID-19 vaccines saved millions of lives." ... The study didn’t analyze the impact of vaccination, nor did it examine the relationship between mortality and vaccination status. There is therefore no evidence from these findings to support the Telegraph headline’s claim that vaccines may have contributed to excess deaths... (more) https://healthfeedback.org/claimreview/covid19-vaccines-lowered-excess-deaths-during-pandemic-contrary-headline-the-daily-telegraph/ Also: BMJ, the publisher of the British Medical Journal and publisher of BMJ Public Health where the cited study was published, issued a public statement responding to news outlets' "misreporting" of the study, and clarifying that the study did not establish a causal link between COVID vaccination and excess mortality. Link: https://bit.ly/3RfBJGA https://twitter.com/bmj_company/status/1798751750046019666 Other experts in the field also weighed in with similar views rejecting the claims made by The Telegraph article and similar media reports elsewhere.

Jim, your observations above are both very helpful and instructive, and much appreciated! 🙂

No, COVID is not just like the flu in the extent of illness and death caused, even in current times. Source:

I'm looking at issues pertaining to existing U.S. IRAs and Roth IRAs.... In the U.S., earnings and distributions from Roth IRAs are not taxable in perpetuity, period. Earnings from regular IRAs can grow tax deferred in perpetuity at present, but a person once they're in their early 70s would have to start taking modest annual taxable distributions. So when Thailand says they want to tax all income worldwide for Thailand residents, do they mean all undistributed earnings or only distributions from IRA accounts? And if they want to start Thailand taxing earnings and/or distributions from my various IRA accounts, it's not clear to me whether those would be protected by the U.S.-Thai tax treaty and-or whether I'd be entitled to a dollar for dollar offset on my U.S. taxes for Thai taxes imposed on my IRAs, considering there are differing tax rates involved.

"In only the fall and winter months last season, Covid sent more than half a million people in the US to the hospital and killed 40,000, according to data presented at the meeting. The people most likely to get seriously ill or die were unvaccinated, Link-Gelles said, and among the children who were hospitalized, half had no underlying conditions." https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/05/health/fda-vaccine-advisers-covid-shot/index.html AND "COVID-19 vaccination reduces the risk of symptomatic disease and hospitalization by about 50% compared to people not up to date on vaccination. Over 95% of adults hospitalized in 2023-2024 due to COVID-19 had no record of receiving the latest vaccine." https://www.cdc.gov/respiratory-viruses/background/index.html#:~:text=Over 95% of adults hospitalized,of receiving the latest vaccine AND Still about 300 people per week dying of COVID in the U.S., better than before, but still....: Source: