TallGuyJohninBKK

I think I've been pretty consistent and common sense about such things, which isn't hard: 1. We don't eat out nearly as much now as we used to pre-COVID. 2. When we do eat out now, I always keep my N95 mask on at all times, except when actually eating, including while waiting for the food and after eating. 3. When we do eat out now, we typically try to do so at times when customer traffic isn't busy and sit as far away as possible from other seated tables. 4. And I'm up-to-date with the latest XBB-variant COVID vaccine, unlike most people in Thailand. I'm in my 60s, so I'm in the age range where I'd be at increased risk for bad COVID outcomes, were I to come down with an infection. So I behave accordingly, as I always have.

Did it ever occur to folks here that Cambodia, even more than Thailand, might not be looking for, testing for, or wanting to acknowledge whatever COVID activity is occurring in the country, considering its current government and their history on such things? "Cambodia's initial response was slow - during the initial outbreak in China, few international travel restrictions were introduced, Cambodian citizens were not evacuated from Wuhan and Prime Minister Hun Sen downplayed the threat. ... The pandemic has had a severe impact on the economy, notably the tourism[42][43] and garment[20][44] sectors, with projections of a lasting increase in poverty, debt and unemployment." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_in_Cambodia Cambodia has a population of about 17 million, about one-fourth the number of Thailland. Last week, Thailand reported 2,762 new COVID hospitalizations and 5 deaths. I don't know whether Cambodia has simply ceased publicly reporting any COVID data, like many countries have, or whether they're actually claiming they have little-to-no COVID. I would find the latter pretty hard to believe. "NOTE: As of April 13, 2024, the Coronavirus Tracker is no longer being updated due to the unfeasibility of providing statistically valid global totals, as the majority of countries have now stopped reporting." https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/cambodia/

Nope, the flu and flu deaths didn't disappear, except perhaps just for 2020 when COVID disruptions overwhelmed everything. Note the influenza lines and columns below in BLUE for flu, seasonal as always. https://www.cdc.gov/respiratory-viruses/data-research/dashboard/illness-severity.html https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/past-seasons.html

Except for the hundreds every week who who still die from COVID even now, week after week ongoing: US: https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#trends_weeklydeaths_select_00 UK: https://ukhsa-dashboard.data.gov.uk/ Just because most newspapers and other media don't regularly report these deaths any more -- like they used to earlier in the pandemic -- doesn't mean they're not still occurring.

Unproven connection yet... But a concern that the scientists are studying... There is established medical knowledge that other viral infections can and do trigger cancer development... From the above WAPO report as posted here on AN: "Since the 1960s, scientists have identified various infectious agents, such as HPV, Epstein-Barr, and hepatitis B, as contributing to 15 to 20 percent of all cancers worldwide. However, establishing a connection between COVID-19 and cancer will likely take years of research."

Just a single N95, as the guy supposedly was wearing, was the best thing to do when close around others and wanting to reduce one's risks. N95 respirator gets top billing in stopping SARS-CoV-2 viral leakage into the air https://aseannow.com/topic/1329236-n95-respirator-gets-top-billing-in-stopping-sars-cov-2-viral-leakage-into-the-air/

yes, but not the kind you think... "Recent studies have unveiled a troubling connection between Covid-19 and cognitive decline, suggesting that even mild infections can lead to a measurable reduction in intelligence [emphasis added]. This revelation, supported by extensive research from institutions around the world, has sparked concern among scientists and the general public alike. These study findings and the implications for individuals and society are worrisome and unsettling. " https://aseannow.com/topic/1328665-covid-19-will-make-you-stupid/ AND Long COVID Brain Fog: What It Is and How to Manage It "Brain fog” is one of the most debilitating problems experienced by people with Long COVID, a condition in which COVID-19-like symptoms continue or develop after the acute infection has passed. People who experience brain fog say they have an inability to think clearly, are forgetful, and can’t focus their attention or find the right words in a conversation. An estimated 7% of adults—or about 17 million people—in the United States reported having Long COVID in March 2024, based on data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Estimates vary as to exactly how many of those people struggle with cognitive function, but in one study of people with Long COVID, close to half reported having poor memory or brain fog." https://www.yalemedicine.org/news/how-to-manage-long-covid-brain-fog

Or just trying to stay out of the hospital... or the morgue. Study says social distancing and COVID vaccines saved 800,000 U.S. lives https://aseannow.com/topic/1329439-study-says-social-distancing-and-covid-vaccines-saved-800000-us-lives/

It's very good that Thailand is still reporting very low COVID death numbers, though also worth mentioning that this latest weekly report included two COVID deaths in the 50-59 age range, and other recent weekly death reports have listed people from even younger age groups. The latest weekly report also listed 663 people hospitalized in serious condition with COVID, and 286 requiring ventilation in order to breathe -- both close to year-high numbers for 2024. In my book, anyone dismissing those kinds of impacts has long missed the boat. No one should want to be hospitalized in serious condition or have to be relying on a ventilator to breathe -- especially when many of those cases could have been avoided/prevented. Also regarding COVID deaths in Thailand, there's been no clear trend over time. The weekly COVID death numbers bounce around a lot. A few weeks ago, the weekly official COVID numbers were 12, 11 and 16... A few weeks before that, they were 3, 4 and 3. https://ddc.moph.go.th/covid19-dashboard/?dashboard=main

The COVID weekly new hospitalization numbers in Thailand have been rising long before the schools recently reopened, and even before Song Kran, dating back to mid-March... See the above detail by week.

A bit more detail on the above OP's reporting: "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. [emphasis added] ... 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"

The Impact of Vaccines and Behavior on US Cumulative Deaths from COVID-19 Andrew Atkeson, Department of Economics, UCLA Stephen Kissler, Department of Computer Science, University of Colorado Boulder "We estimate that the combination of changes in behavior to slow the spread of COVID-19 and the delivery of vaccines to a substantial majority of the American population by mid-2021 saved close to 800,000 American lives relative to what would have occurred had vaccines not been developed. We argue that the duration and magnitude of this behavioral response – and thus its overall success in delaying infections – came as a surprise, relative to both our historical experience with pandemic influenza and tomodel-based projections based on that experience. Thus, we take from our experience with COVID-19 over the past four years the important public health lesson that behavior change can be a powerful force for slowing the spread of a dangerous infectious respiratory disease for a long time. At the same time, these behavioral changes to slow the spread of COVID-19 came at a tremendous economic, social, and human cost." (more) https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/2_Atkeson-Kissler_unembargoed.pdf

Before the first COVID-19 vaccine became available, Americans radically changed their behavior to avoid getting the virus by social distancing and wearing masks. New research from CU Boulder says that change, along with vaccines, saved more than 800,000 lives. The cost — and the payoff — of social distancing Social distancing allowed 68 percent of Americans to get vaccinated before they contracted the virus, which meant they had much better survival rates than people who contracted the virus before getting vaccinated. Without the behavioral changes, the paper’s authors estimate there would have been 60,000 more deaths each day during the peak of the pandemic. Before the pandemic and in its early stages, epidemiologists and other health officials didn’t anticipate that Americans could sustain behavioral changes for as long as they did. They also didn’t know the impact those changes would have both on the number of lives saved and the economic and social costs of social distancing. (more) https://www.cpr.org/2024/05/15/cu-boulder-study-says-social-distancing-and-covid-vaccines-saved-nearly-a-million-lives/ https://www.colorado.edu/today/2024/05/09/social-distancing-plus-vaccines-prevented-800000-covid-deaths-great-cost

Science & Tech Spotlight: Social Distancing During Pandemics U.S. GAO-20-545SP Published: May 13, 2020 "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. Other studies examining droplet dispersion in sneezing and coughing found they can go more than 6 feet. Also, viral material may persist in the air within a room for up to 3 hours. ... 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 Even early on in the pandemic, the science and past research were providing some answers about what kind of protections were needed to protect people and limit the transmission of the COVID virus. And the guidance the CDC adopted for social distancing, the CDC's 6 foot standard, was within the parameters laid out by that past research.

And another one...similar to the junk above. I'm now clearly sensing a BAD "junk science" pattern here, with the latest example being the OP study's cited "research letter" below -- not a peer reviewed study -- posted by a trio of Danish researchers that also seems to have been discredited. 15. Schmeling M, Manniche V, Hansen PR. Batch-dependent safety of the BNT162b2 mRNA COVID-19 vaccine. Eur J Clin Invest (2023) 53:e13998. doi: 10.1111/eci.13998 ----------------------------------- Findings above reviewed by the prestigious Paul-Ehrlich-Institut in Germany, which is the German government's vaccine safety monitor Statement from the Paul-Ehrlich-Institut: No batch-specific increases of reports of suspected vaccine side effects after COVID-19 vaccinations with Comirnaty As of 18 August 2023 "The Paul-Ehrlich-Institut cannot confirm any batch-specific increases of reports of suspected vaccine side effects after COVID-19 vaccinations with the mRNA vaccine Comirnaty (BioNTech/Pfizer) [emphasis added] based on the analysis of the data from the prospective observational study with the SafeVac 2.0 app. A disproportionate increase of the number of adverse events reported in relation to certain Comirnaty batches used in Germany, as stated by the authors of a published research letter with data from Denmark (Schmeling et al. [1]), is not discernible in the evaluation of the SafeVac 2.0 data for the entirety of app-reported adverse events nor specifically for serious adverse events. ... United Kingdom In June 2022, the United Kingdom Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) published its evaluation of its spontaneous reporting scheme (Yellow Card) and the resulting response to the question of a link between suspected adverse event reports and certain batches of COVID-19 vaccine as part of a Freedom of Information Act request. These evaluations did not reveal any safety concerns related to individual batches. [emphasis added] ... Notes to the publication by Schmeling et al. [1] There are methodological deficiencies that severely limit the significance of the results in the published evaluation by Schmeling et al. [1]. [emphasis added] https://www.pei.de/EN/newsroom/positions/covid-19-vaccines/statement-covid-19-vaccines-no-batch-specific-increases-suspected-side-effects.html ---------------------------------- And regarding one of the other co-authors of the OP cited Schmeling research letter -- Vibeke Manniche -- and again dismissing their general findings: Analysis of adverse event variation between Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine batches doesn’t indicate safety problems "Manniche also previously spread COVID-19 misinformation that was debunked by Danish fact-checking group TjekDet. In March 2020, Manniche called COVID-19 pandemic measures hysterical and falsely claimed that COVID-19 wasn’t actually spreading, writing on several occasions that there was no coronavirus epidemic on the way. In February 2021, she baselessly asserted that the Danish population had already achieved herd immunity. Neither Campbell nor Manniche’s claims are sufficiently supported by the published research letter, as we will explain below. https://healthfeedback.org/claimreview/analysis-adverse-event-variation-pfizer-covid-19-vaccine-batches-doesnt-indicate-safety-problems-contrary-john-campbell/

If the authors of the OP cited study are using these kind of garbage, discredited anti-vax "studies" as the basis for their findings, one has to wonder just how credible their own work and conclusions may be... Must confess -- never before heard of the author of the OP cited study -- Botond Z. Igyártó.

And likewise with the following cited pre-print study that has been widely discredited: 3. McKernan K, Helbert Y, Kane LT, McLaughlin S. Sequencing of bivalent Moderna and Pfizer mRNA vaccines reveals nanogram to microgram quantities of expression vector dsDNA per dose. OSFpreprint (2023). doi: 10.31219/osf.io/b9t7m ----------------------- COVID-19 Vaccines Have Not Been Shown to Alter DNA, Cause Cancer October 26, 2023 "Small amounts of DNA from the manufacturing process may remain in the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines. Purification and quality control steps ensure any leftover DNA is present within regulatory limits. There isn’t reason to think that this residual DNA would alter a person’s DNA or cause cancer, contrary to claims made online." ... "We reached out to Kevin McKernan, an author on both preprints, to better understand his views. Rather than replying to our email, he posted a screenshot of it on X, formerly known as Twitter, and included responses there. McKernan, who has an undergraduate degree in biology, is the founder of Medicinal Genomics, a company that markets test kits and genomics-related services to the cannabis, hemp and mushroom industries." ... Experts say there isn’t reason to think that any small pieces of leftover DNA, including SV40 DNA, in the vaccines would be harmful. “It is very unlikely that any residual DNA would integrate into a person’s genome and if it did it would be even much less likely to cause cancer,” Barry Milavetz, a molecular biologist who studies SV40 at the University of North Dakota, told us in an email. https://www.factcheck.org/2023/10/scicheck-covid-19-vaccines-have-not-been-shown-to-alter-dna-cause-cancer/ AND Return of the revenge of “vaccines permanently alter your DNA” In a new twist on the “vaccines permanently alter your DNA” trope that antivaxxers love, a microbiologist named Kevin McKernan is falsely claiming that contaminating plasmid DNA from COVID-19 vaccines can get into the nucleus during cell division and “permanently alter your DNA” to horrible effect. "Last week, I discovered a new antivax scientist named Kevin McKernan, whose message had been recently amplified by long time quack tycoon Joe Mercola. At the time, his false claim was that SV40 promoter sequences in plasmid DNA contaminating the Pfizer and Moderna mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines were somehow putting people at risk for cancer. In my deconstruction, I pointed out that this claim was an even more ridiculous variation on an old antivax claim that oral polio vaccines from the late 1950s to 1963 that had been discovered to be contaminated with SV40 virus were responsible for a wave of cancer. They weren’t, but this antivax claim keeps coming back from the grave (going back a decade, at least), ready to party. This time is no different, except that the claim is even more ridiculous than the movie from which I adapted that tagline to describe it." https://www.respectfulinsolence.com/2023/06/06/return-of-the-revenge-of-vaccines-permanently-alter-your-dna/ https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/editorial-staff/david-h-gorski-md-phd-managing-editor/ https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/science-based-medicine/

Worth noting that at least several of the footnoted citations this article bases its claims on have been roundly dismissed as bogus anti-vax propaganda... Such as: 48. Fraiman J, Erviti J, Jones M, Greenland S, Whelan P, Kaplan RM, et al. Serious adverse events of special interest following mRNA COVID-19 vaccination in randomized trials in adults. Vaccine (2022) 40:5798–805. doi: 10.1016/j.vaccine.2022.08.036 ------------------------------- "But experts have been highly critical of the Vaccine paper, and an abundance of other data contradict it. Experts and fact-checkers, including FactCheck.org, have said it has numerous problems. One of the authors of the paper, Dr. Joseph Fraiman, an emergency medicine physician in Louisiana, joined a panel of contrarian experts gathered by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in December to falsely suggest the shots were too risky. As we’ve written, the paper was also cited in a report that falsely claims COVID-19 vaccines caused 310,000 excess deaths in 2021 and 2022. " https://www.factcheck.org/2023/05/scicheck-covid-19-vaccine-benefits-outweigh-small-risks-contrary-to-flawed-claim-from-u-k-cardiologist/ AND Peer review fail: Vaccine publishes antivax propaganda disguised as “reanalyses” of Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccine clinical trial data In order portray COVID-19 vaccines as dangerous, Peter Doshi has now managed to get poorly designed and performed “reanalyses” of the clinical trial data used by the FDA to grant emergency use approval of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines published in two reputable journals, The BMJ and Vaccine? What happened? https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/peer-review-fail-vaccine-publishes-antivax-propaganda/ AND Fact Check: Moderna, Pfizer Vaccines Do NOT Show Increased Risk Of Serious Adverse Events Of Special Interest In Randomized Trials https://leadstories.com/hoax-alert/2022/07/fact-check-moderna-pfizer-vaccines-do-not-show-increased-risk-of-serious-adverse-events-of-special-interest-in-randomized-trials.html

Which browser you getting that in, Pib?

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.