TallGuyJohninBKK

A more even-handed assessment of the situation recently appeared as a news report in the New York Times, as follows: A U.S.-Iranian Miscalculation Could Lead to a Larger War, Officials Say U.S. forces and militias backed by Iran have launched tit-for-tat attacks, fueling concerns as Israeli forces have also clashed with Iranian-backed groups. Nov. 29, 2023 "Neither Washington nor Tehran wants the conflict in the Gaza Strip to trigger a wider war in the region, officials in both capitals say. But in the seven weeks since the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attack on Israel, Iranian-backed militias have launched more than 70 rocket and drone attacks against U.S. troops in Iraq and Syria. The Pentagon, for its part, has responded with four rounds of airstrikes, killing as many as 15 people, U.S. officials say. (more) https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/29/us/politics/israel-iran-gaza-us-attacks.html

The OP here should have been labeled in the forum for what it is... an OPINION piece instead of a NEWS report. And one authored by a professor affiliated with the libertarian Cato Institute. "Jordan Cohen is a policy analyst in Defense and Foreign Policy at the Cato Institute" "Cato advocates for a limited governmental role in domestic and foreign affairs..." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cato_Institute

Thailand's new weekly COVID hospitalizations have quietly quadrupled since early October, now having increased steadily for six of the past seven weeks, according to the latest update today from the Thai Ministry of Public Health. Although local Thai news media have basically ceased reporting on local COVID trends, the weekly COVID reports posted by the MoPH to its website show that new COVID hospitalizations reached 536 for the most recent week (Nov. 26 to Dec. 2), up from a recent low of just 124 for the week of Oct. 8-14. The most recent 536 new weekly COVID hospitalizations is Thailand's highest tally in the past 4-1/2 months, since the country reported 556 new COVID hospitalizations for the week of July 16-22. The current spike in new COVID hospitalizations is Thailand's second of 2023, but thus far remains far below the earlier spike that began after Song Kran in April. From mid-April through early June, Thailand's new weekly COVID hospitalizations rose steadily and ultimately peaked at 3,085 for the week May 28 to June 3. After that, the weekly numbers mostly steadily declined until the trend again rebounded starting in early October. Starting with the week of Oct. 8-14, Thailand's successive weekly new COVID hospitalizations have tallied at 124, 191, 206, 304, 287 (the only weekly decline in the recent period), 390, 480 and finally 536 for the most recent week. During the same period since mid-October, the MoPH reports also show that the tallies of COVID hospitalized patients considered in serious condition have more than doubled, from 38 in the mid-October period up to 88 for the most recent week. The apparent good news in all this is that officially declared COVID deaths, if the data is presumed accurate, have remained low and flat during the entire mid October to early December period, starting out at 3 per week at the start of that period and ending up at 3 for the most recently reported week. 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. The Thai MoPH posts its weekly COVID reports mostly every Monday at the following website: https://ddc.moph.go.th/covid19-dashboard/?dashboard=main A pull-down menu in the upper right corner of the website provides access to all of the MoPH's weekly COVID reports since the start of the year. The red-colored sections show the new COVID hospitalizations counts for that week and the cumulative number thus far for the year. The gray colored sections show the new officially declared COVID deaths for that week and the cumulative number for the year. The dark purple colored sections show the current number of serious condition COVID patients hospitalized for that week. According to the latest weekly report, Thailand thus far has had 36,204 COVID hospitalizations thus far this year and 826 officially declared COVID deaths. Since the start of the pandemic, the MoPH has reported a cumulative total of 4.75 million COVID hospitalizations and 34,495 officially declared COVID deaths.

Thailand MoPH Weekly COVID report for Nov. 26 - Dec. 2: --536 new COVID hospitalizations, up 56 from the prior week --3 new COVID deaths, up from 1 the prior week --88 COVID patients hospitalized in serious condition, up 6 from the prior week --45 COVID patients hospitalized requiring intubation to breathe, down 5 from the prior week https://ddc.moph.go.th/covid19-dashboard/?dashboard=main

Q: How long can a US citizen stay in Vietnam? A: US passport are allowed to hold 1 year multiple [entry] tourist visa, but the maximum stay allowed is 90 days in one visit. It means that you can't stay in Vietnam for more than 3 months at a time, and have to leave the country and return for another 3 months of stay. https://vietnamvisavoa.com/vietnam-visa-for-us-citizens-a924

Anytime you're an expat anywhere, there's always the risk that the local government might change its immigration rules at some point. However, Thailand having a relatively established history of offering in-country renewable annual retirement extensions (though they have monkeyed with the financials some) is a nice feature that I wish more other countries would offer. As I'm not a particular fan of being forced to travel internationally each year or more often just to satisfy a visa/immigration requirement.

No, that lifestyle would not be for me... But, it seems to work OK for others, and I have seen first-hand reports of Americans now making their homes in Vietnam relying on those kinds of rinse and repeat visas.... just as many used to do here in Thailand.

FWIW.... "Penang is unique among Malaysian states in that no single religion commands an absolute majority among the populace." "In addition, Penang is home to a sizeable expatriate population, especially from Singapore, Japan and various Asian countries, as well as other Commonwealth nations. Over 8% of Penang's population consisted of foreigners, reflecting the well-established allure of Penang amongst expatriates.[157" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penang

I thought Vietnam recently had launched, for Americans, repeatable 90-day tourist visas... supposedly easily obtained, but it seems as though holders still have to exit the country every 90 days regardless.

I've never been to Penang... But I had gotten the impression that it is more Indo-Euro-Asian international than Muslim per se... unlike Malaysia at large?

...

Presumably, that's what the website meant when they referred to Portugal residency leading to "EU citizenship".

"Between 1959 and 2016, US life expectancy increased by almost 10 years, from 69.9 years in 1959 to 78.9 years in 2016, with the fastest increase (highest APC) occurring during 1969–1979 (APC=0.48, p < 0.01) (Figure 1). Life expectancy began to advance more slowly in the 1980s and plateaued in 2011 ... The NCHS reported that US life expectancy peaked (78.9 years) in 2014 and subsequently decreased significantly for three consecutive years, reaching 78.6 years in 2017.2,9 ... "By 2014, midlife mortality was increasing across all racial groups, caused by drug overdoses, alcohol abuse, suicides, and a diverse list of organ system diseases." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7146991/ And then COVID starting in 2020 dropped U.S. life expectancy rates off a cliff, as shown above. As the above quoted PBS report notes, the current U.S. life expectancy rate (even with the latest rebound for 2022) is back to what it was 20 years ago.

Of course, Paxton was only acquitted by fellow Republican state Senators in Texas in an impeachment case that the state House members from both parties originally had brought against him. To convict him would have required a two-thirds Senate vote in the Republican-controlled state Senate, which didn't happen. All the other pending legal actions against Paxton remain. Kinda similar to how U.S. Senate Republicans, by blocking the required two-third majority votes, acquitted fellow Republican Donald Trump in his two impeachment proceedings. But what then ensued thereafter was the filing of 91 felony counts in four separate now-pending criminal cases. ----------------------------------------------- "Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton was impeached on May 27, becoming the state's first statewide official to be impeached since 1917." ... "The impeachment also underlines the conflict between Paxton and a number of other Republicans, many of whom voted in the state House for his impeachment." ...the House voted to impeach Paxton in a bipartisan 121-23 majority vote." https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/texas-ag-ken-paxton-impeached-controversy/story?id=99826087 Even a lot of his fellow Republican lawmakers in the Republican controlled House considered him guilty and wanted him out.

Yup... from the full Wash Po report that went beyond the excerpt above: "The rise in certain chronic diseases in the United States — and slower progress in combating others — put the nation in a vulnerable position when the novel virus arrived. A scattered and politically polarized response to the pandemic played a role in the dire death toll that followed, as did resistance to vaccination and other public health measures. No other wealthy country experienced so high a rate of death per capita from covid." AND " In articles this year, The Washington Post has explored the many reasons this country lags peer nations in life expectancy, and a major finding is that chronic conditions such as heart disease, obesity, diabetes and cancer play an underappreciated role in suppressing life spans." https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2023/11/29/life-expectancy-2022-united-states/

And for the Europhiles amongst us, the OP's entry on Portugal, in a separate listing, has the following add-on: "You can get a retirement visa with €760 in monthly retirement or pension income, which is equivalent to approximately $830. After five years, you can convert your residency for EU citizenship and enjoy easy travel across Europe." https://expatsi.com/communities/retirees/10-countries-where-you-can-retire-with-2000-month/

Jing, I was intrigued by how many of the different location entries on their list have a phrase in the description similar to the following: "You can get a retirement visa in XXXXXXX if you have [$800 to $1,500+] /month in retirement income." If their info is accurate, I didn't realize there were so many countries with reasonably affordable retirement visas... Such as: --Bulgaria if you have about $800/month in retirement income. --Portugal if you have about $800/month in retirement income. --Costa Rica if you have $1,000/month in retirement income. --Panama if you have $1,000/month in retirement income --Indonesia if you have about $1,500/month in retirement income.

Rise in U.S. life expectancy is ‘good news,’ but gains aren’t enough to wipe out COVID losses "Life expectancy in the United States rose in 2022, the first increase since the COVID pandemic began, according to new federal data. But those gains were not enough to compensate for the years of life lost to the virus, which remains one of the nation’s top causes of death. ... But COVID is still the fourth leading cause of death in the U.S., Arias said. And these gains weren’t enough to overcome the backslide in life expectancy – 2.4 years — since 2020 and the start of the pandemic. These latest estimates offer a stark reminder of how much further the nation must go to recover from that crater of loss: Life expectancy is now “what it was 20 years ago,” Arias said." (more) https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/rise-in-u-s-life-expectancy-is-good-news-but-gains-arent-enough-to-wipe-out-covid-losses

Per the Washington Post: "Newly published data on life expectancy in the United States shows a partial rebound from the worst phase of the coronavirus pandemic, but drug overdoses, homicides and chronic illnesses such as heart disease continue to drive a long-term mortality crisis that has made this country an outlier in longevity among wealthy nations. Life expectancy in 2022 rose more than a full year, to 77.5 years, in data released Wednesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. More than four-fifths of this positive jump was attributable to a drop in COVID-19 deaths. ... In 2019, U.S. life expectancy at birth stood at 78.8 years. That figure cratered to 76.4 in 2021, the lowest since 1996. That was due partly to the extraordinary wave of COVID deaths in January and February of that year as the United States had only begun to roll out vaccines." (more) https://www.unmc.edu/healthsecurity/transmission/2023/11/29/new-cdc-life-expectancy-data-shows-painfully-slow-rebound-from-covid/

The one other part to be clear about, from everything I've read on the subject, is that the current main armed groups fighting against the junta primarily aren't common idealist locals seeking to restore democracy, but instead, are rival ethnic militia groups that supposedly are heavily into protecting their interests in drug running, gambling, financial and cyber scams and other bad stuff. "Beijing has not changed the nature of its relationship with the ethnic armed organizations in the north, and these are not turning against China. ... To achieve those goals, China has always played all sides in Myanmar’s internal conflicts and it is therefore not, it should be remembered, in China’s interest to see the emergence of a strong, peaceful, democratic and federal Myanmar." ... "This time the rough and tumble has been caused not by drugs but by telecom fraud that is being carried out in areas controlled by ethnic armed organizations across the border in Myanmar. ... The main targets for the scams have been people and institutions in China, and Chinese officials believe that capital outflows as a result of the scams amount to at least US$40 billion. It was clear that the Chinese authorities had to take action. And they did." https://www.irrawaddy.com/opinion/guest-column/has-china-lost-control-of-ethnic-armies-in-myanmars-war-torn-borderland.html

Maybe you missed this... But Paxton's case is a civil lawsuit, not a criminal proceeding. There are no convictions in civil cases, and thus no "repeat offender status" involved. "Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has sued Pfizer, Inc."

Just because the NYT has a different tally/ranking than the CDC doesn't mean the CDC tally is wrong... And in fact, it's just the opposite. The CDC data is more up-to-date, more accurate, and they are the official record keeper of such things for the U.S. Specifically, for starters, as the NYT webpage clearly shows but your post failed to make clear, they stopped updating their state info in March 2023, whereas the CDC data has continued to be updated thru current time, meaning the NYT data you posted is incomplete and eight months out-of-date: And indeed, if you dig into the data, the CDC thus not surprisingly has HIGHER/LARGER COVID death count totals for the U.S. overall and Texas individually than the numbers used by the NYT, as follows: From the CDC spreadsheet file supporting their COVID deaths state rankings: versus the NYT tally for Texas: Thus, the CDC is counting 8,696 additional COVID deaths for Texas that the NYT isn't counting -- the difference between the CDC Texas number of 103,214 and the out-of-date NYT number of 94,518. Just as the CDC's cumulative COVID deaths tally for the U.S. is 1,156,484 versus the 1,135,343 tally reported by the NYT, meaning the NYT once again has an undercount of 21,141 COVID deaths nationally. In short, the CDC data is a more complete, accurate and up-to-date counting than that from the NYT... not to mention, it's also the CDC and the related National Center for Health Statistics that keep the official records of such things for the U.S. ------------------------------------- Then, as for the differences in where the two sources list Texas in the rankings of per capita COVID deaths, apart from the NYT data being eight months out of date, the following may be another factor in that particular variation. As clearly listed in my original report above of the CDC rankings and data on per capita COVID deaths by state, those rates are AGE ADJUSTED, allowing more meaningful state to state comparisons. And that is the standard and preferred method of making such comparisons. From all indications, the NYT is just using raw data and not adjusting for age differences between the different state populations. The CDC is, as the headline of their chart clearly shows: Provisional COVID-19 Death Rate per 100,000 Population (Age-Adjusted) Reported to the CDC, by State/Territory – United States From the CDC: Death Data "Rates were age-adjusted to the 2000 standard population using the direct method (see https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr70/nvsr70-08-508.pdf)." And using age adjusted data is the standard means of making such comparisons across different geographic areas such as states, as the CDC explains below: "Age-adjusted death rates also are better indicators of relative risk when comparing mortality across geographic areas or between sex or race subgroups of the population that have different age distributions." https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr70/nvsr70-08-508.pdf And from elsewhere on that point from other sources: Age-adjusted Rates "Age adjusting rates allows fairer comparisons to be made between groups with different age distributions... The age-adjusted rates are rates that would have existed if the population under study had the same age distribution as the "standard" population. Therefore, they are summary measures adjusted for differences in age distributions." https://health.mo.gov/data/documentation/crude-aarate.php --------------------------- What is age-adjustment? "Age-adjustment is a statistical process applied to rates of disease, death, injuries or other health outcomes which allows communities with different age structures to be compared. Why do we do age-adjustment? "Almost all diseases or health outcomes occur at different rates in different age groups. Most chronic diseases, including most cancers, occur more often among older people.... Age-adjustment is a statistical way to remove confounding caused by age." https://www.health.ny.gov/diseases/chronic/ageadj.htm

The air quality levels in the CM region aren't so bad right now... just at the lower end of the 'unhealthy for sensitive groups range" colored orange (100+ AQI) ...but were a lot worse and in the red / unhealthy range (150+ AQI) last night and earlier today. https://aqicn.org/station/thailand-chiang-mai-อาคารกิจกรรมนักศึกษา-อมช.-มช.-ต.สุเทพ-อ.เมือง-จ.เชียงใหม่/#/z/13 Just wait till the seasonal burning gets going in full swing....

Interesting how the political history of Myanmar as laid out above somewhat resembles that of Thailand -- long-time military rule, relatively brief turns into local forms of democracy, and then more military coups and back into junta rule. Basically, Myanmar is in the midst of an ongoing civil war, with the government junta being opposed by a range of armed factions with their own interests. The ordinary citizens I believe generally favor democracy, but thru the years, many have been arrested, imprisoned and otherwise persecuted. The general consensus seems to be that the current ruling junta likely isn't going to last much longer. But what's going to follow their exit seems pretty unclear, and China seems to be playing a considerable role there as well. And it's not like China is any kind of protector and advocate of democratic governance. BTW, one of the most striking things there that's easily visible is how the current junta there can't even keep the lights on in big cities such as Yangon, forcing many businesses to rely on generators to be able to stay in operation. Blackouts Lengthen in Yangon as Power Crisis Worsens in Myanmar October 2, 2023 "Power outages in Myanmar’s commercial capital Yangon, including in its once thriving industrial zones, are worsening, with residents and business owners saying the length of blackouts has at least doubled since mid-August. Blackouts are normally rare in the rainy season, usually from June to October, when hydropower dams fill and electricity production increases. Forty percent of Myanmar’s electricity is generated by hydropower. ... In Yangon, the duration of planned electricity cuts varies from one township to another. However, on average, electricity cuts have doubled in duration from four hours a day in residential areas to a minimum of eight hours a day. Blackouts in some neighborhoods are much longer, residents say." https://www.irrawaddy.com/news/burma/blackouts-lengthen-in-yangon-as-power-crisis-worsens-in-myanmar.html

And just to give some voice to Paxton's accused: "In a statement, Pfizer said its representations about its vaccine have been "accurate and science-based," and that it believed Paxton's lawsuit had no merit. Pfizer also said its vaccine has "demonstrated a favorable safety profile in all age groups, and helped protect against severe COVID-19 outcomes, including hospitalization and death." Infectious disease experts have said relative risk reduction is a more meaningful way to judge a vaccine's efficacy than absolute risk reduction. Relative risk shows how well a vaccine protects recipients relative to a study's control group." https://www.reuters.com/legal/pfizer-is-sued-by-texas-over-covid-19-vaccine-claims-2023-11-30/ AND "A Pfizer spokesperson told Forbes “the company believes that the state’s case has no merit and will respond to the petition in court in due course.” Contra The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that the vaccine effectiveness at reducing symptomatic cases was around 92.4%, and around 94.3% for preventing hospitalization, according to a 2021 assessment. Efficacy did drop from the original 95% figure given by Pfizer, but largely after more variants of Covid that the vaccine wasn’t created to protect against began to circulate. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have continued to recommend Pfizer’s vaccine and call it effective, and the World Health Organization has said Pfzier’s vaccine has “very high efficacy against severe disease and moderate efficacy against symptomatic” cases." https://www.forbes.com/sites/mollybohannon/2023/11/30/texas-ag-sues-pfizer-over-covid-vaccine-effectiveness/?sh=6db52ea514fb