TallGuyJohninBKK

At least for people in BKK lately, it's been taking local Immigration up to two weeks from the time you file an online report until they respond with any answer/confirmation. The upshot is.... you can only start to file the online report up to 15 days before your filing deadline. And when they drag their feet like's been occurring lately, people who have filed online on the earliest possible dates are not getting any answer from Immigration by the time their deadline arrives two weeks later. That's been forcing some people to make unnecessary and time-consuming trips out to BKK CW to do in-person reports, because their filing deadline has arrived and they have no clue of what Immigration's done with their prior online filing.

You mean the obligatory ONE just isn't enough for you??? ????

The risk of serious health outcomes from the currently circulating COVID strains are very much focused on those say age 65 and above, and/or those with a wide range of pre-existing health conditions -- which probably covers a lot of members here on this forum. However, there's also been recent evidence surfacing that even the current strains of COVID may cause other subsequent health damage to people, even if the COVID infection itself doesn't immediately make them seriously ill. For example: September 28, 2023 SARS-CoV-2 infects coronary arteries, increases plaque inflammation NIH-funded research sheds light on link between COVID-19 infection and increased risk of cardiovascular disease and stroke. "SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, can directly infect the arteries of the heart and cause the fatty plaque inside arteries to become highly inflamed, increasing the risk of heart attack and stroke, according to a study funded by the National Institutes of Health. The findings, published in the journal Nature Cardiovascular Research, may help explain why certain people who get COVID-19 have a greater chance of developing cardiovascular disease, or if they already have it, develop more heart-related complications. ... Though previous studies have shown that SARS-CoV-2 can directly infect tissues such as the brain and lungs, less was known about its effect on the coronary arteries." https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/sars-cov-2-infects-coronary-arteries-increases-plaque-inflammation

So what exactly has the rise of anti-science and anti-intellectualism as a political movement been leading to: From the American Medical Assn: earlier this year: Amid growing attacks, top cop’s message for doctors: Be prepared "There is a disturbing trend that has worsened since the COVID-19 pandemic: The rising incidence of violence, intimidation, threats and attacks directed toward physicians and the other health professionals who work to heal." https://www.ama-assn.org/practice-management/physician-health/amid-growing-attacks-top-cop-s-message-doctors-be-prepared AND Two-thirds of physicians and biomedical scientists report harassment on social media Alarming rates of personal attacks since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic June 15, 2023 "A new research letter published yesterday (June 14) in the journal JAMA Network Open found doctors and scientists are experiencing alarming rates of personal attacks on social media. Two-thirds (66%) of survey respondents reported harassment on social media, compared to an earlier pre-COVID 19 survey conducted in 2020 by the same group of scientists, which found 23.3% of physicians reported receiving personal attacks on social media." https://news.northwestern.edu/stories/2023/06/two-thirds-of-physicians-social-media-harrassment/ AND Vaccine expert Dr. Peter Hotez harassed outside Houston home after weekend of online attacks The attacks against Hotez began after he criticized a podcast hosted by Joe Rogan and featuring Democratic presidential candidate and anti-vaxxer Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Posted on June 19, 2023 "Houston vaccine expert and scientist Dr. Peter Hotez was the target of intense online attacks that culminated with two people showing up at his home Sunday, he said. "Ugh I just was stalked in front of my home by a couple of antivaxers taunting me to debate RFKJr," Hotez tweeted. "Of course I was looking my Sunday best in our brutal heat wave. What is it with people?" https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/news/health-science/coronavirus/2023/06/19/454720/peter-hotez-harassed-houston-house-joe-rogan-rfk-attacks/

As the referenced study reported: "The results, the researchers said, suggest that the complexity of the vaccination decision may make it difficult for people with lower cognitive abilities to understand the benefits of vaccination." Plenty of evidence of that here.

Lately, most of the vaccination info I've been seeing here in Bangkok is coming via the Bangkok Metropolitan Admin (local government) instead of from the national Ministry of Public Health.... Bangkok has regularly been making them available thru its network of public health centers. For example, from a Sept. 27 post: "From 1 October. C. 66 onwards. Where to get Covid 19 Vaccine Public Health Service Center, Health Center invites you to inject Covid 19 vaccine Open for walk in every Wednesday except public holidays. Time 09.00 - 15.00 hrs. At 69 Health Center For more enquiries call 0 2203 2883 during office days and hours." Source link

You might try to check with your local or regional Public Health office there in your area, as they likely would have the best info on the extent of local vaccine availability there, since the primary source of COVID vaccines here has continued to be the government.

Of course, the vaccines DON'T harm your immune system, but instead help it recognize and respond to the COVID virus. And, even the older COVID vaccines, if newly administered now, still provide some protection against serious illness from COVID. AFAIK, for the OP, we've heard nothing as yet publicly from the brand new Thai government and its new Health Minister as far as plans to acquire the newest, monovalent COVID vaccines for Thailand that are now being rolled out in the U.S., U.K., and elsewhere. In past go-rounds here, it's often fallen to initial COVID vaccine donations from other better off countries like France, Switzerland, the U.S. and South Korea to give Thailand access to the latest vaccines, before the Thais have acquired them on their own.

That what my guess would be....as to explaining the reason for her sudden, public about face. But what kind of mindset would have led her to make such an insensitive, moronic comment in the first place..... might make for a quite interesting inquiry.

Right.... ???? From the OP: "Peter J. Hotez, MD, PhD, is the founding dean of The National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, as well as director of the Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development. He is an elected member of the Institute of Medicine of National Academies as well as the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. A pediatrician and an expert in vaccinology and tropical disease, Hotez has authored hundreds of peer-reviewed articles and editorials as well dozens of textbook chapters."

Smart people first in line for COVID-19 vaccines, study suggests September 9, 2023 "Intelligent people get their COVID-19 vaccines much faster, suggests a study of more than 750,000 people in Sweden published in the Journal of Health Economics. ... 140-day difference between groups A total of 80% of the most intelligent people were vaccinated within 40 days of vaccine availability, while it took 180 days for those with the lowest cognitive ability to reach that level. The results, the researchers said, suggest that the complexity of the vaccination decision may make it difficult for people with lower cognitive abilities to understand the benefits of vaccination." (more) https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/covid-19/smart-people-first-line-covid-19-vaccines-study-suggests Cognitive ability, health policy, and the dynamics of COVID-19 vaccination 4 September 2023 "We examine the relationship between cognitive ability and prompt COVID-19 vaccination using individual-level data on more than 700,000 individuals in Sweden. We find a strong positive association between cognitive ability and swift vaccination, which remains even after controlling for confounding variables with a twin-design. The results suggest that the complexity of the vaccination decision may make it difficult for individuals with lower cognitive abilities to understand the benefits of vaccination." (more) https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167629623000796

And the recent developments with COVID vaccine refusal have likely only worsened an already existing Red State-Blue state mortality divide: People in Republican Counties Have Higher Death Rates Than Those in Democratic Counties A growing mortality gap between Republican and Democratic areas may largely stem from policy choices July 18, 2022 ... “In 2001, the study’s starting point, the risk of death among red and blue counties (as defined by the results of presidential elections) was similar. Overall, the U.S. mortality rate has decreased in the nearly two decades since then (albeit not as much as in most other high-income countries). But the improvement for those living in Republican counties by 2019 was half that of those in Democratic counties—11 percent lower versus 22 percent lower." https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/people-in-republican-counties-have-higher-death-rates-than-those-in-democratic-counties/

More to the point: America’s Surprising Partisan Divide on Life Expectancy Centuries-old settlement patterns — and the attitudes they spawned about government — are to blame for differences in longevity between red southern states and bluer parts of the country 09/01/2023 ... "If you live pretty much anywhere in the contiguous U.S., you can expect to live more than 78 years, unless you’re in the Deep South or the sprawling region I call Greater Appalachia, a region that stretches from southwestern Pennsylvania to the Ozarks and the Hill Country of Texas. Those two regions — which include all or parts of 16 deep red states and a majority of the House Republican caucus — have a life expectancy of 77, more than four and a half years lower than on the blue-leaning Pacific coastal plain. In the smaller, redder regional culture of New France (in southern Louisiana) the gap is just short of six years." https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/09/01/america-life-expectancy-regions-00113369

How Many Republicans Died Because the GOP Turned Against Vaccines? Party leaders are unquestionably complicit in the premature deaths of their own supporters. December 23, 2022 ... "We know that unvaccinated Americans are more likely to be Republican, that Republicans in positions of power led the movement against COVID vaccination, and that hundreds of thousands of unvaccinated Americans have died preventable deaths from the disease. The Republican Party is unquestionably complicit in the premature deaths of many of its own supporters, a phenomenon that may be without precedent in the history of both American democracy and virology." https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2022/12/covid-deaths-anti-vaccine-republican-voters/672575/

Anti-vaxxers loathe Dr. Peter Hotez. In his new book, he mourns their unnecessary deaths Sept. 19, 2023 ... "In a new book, published today, Hotez describes the expansion of the anti-vaccine trend to COVID-19 vaccines, and now to scientific expertise more broadly. In "The Deadly Rise of Anti-Science: A Scientist's Warning," Hotez outlines the parallels he sees between this push and the anti-intellectualism promoted during the Nazi and Stalin periods of the 20th century. Hotez compares the mass murders under those authoritarian regimes to the at least 200,000 Americans who died after COVID-19 vaccines were introduced, but who refused to get protective shots because they had been convinced not to." https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2023/09/19/peter-hotez-new-book-vaccines/70884219007/

I'm not endorsing or supporting the various coups and military takeovers... Just stating as a matter of clear facts, what Thaksin did has been clearly established and the various violations of law proven. It's not like the Thai courts railroaded an innocent man because they were doing the work of the coup makers.... If anything, it was the opposite, in that Thaksin's influence kept him from being successfully prosecuted for a long time. The verdict of any reasonably just court would have been the same in any event regarding Thaksin...unless he had managed to successfully buy off the judges as he tried to do. "BANGKOK (Reuters) - Thailand’s Supreme Court jailed a lawyer and two legal advisers of ousted Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra on Wednesday after an apparent attempt to bribe court officials with $60,000 (30,400 pounds) hidden in a paper grocery bag. Pichit Chuenban and two associates representing Thaksin and his wife in a pending land-deal case were responsible for the 2 million baht left in the bag at the Supreme Court compound earlier this month, the court ruled. The bag was found on the day that Thaksin, ousted in a coup in 2006, and his wife were due to appear on charges of violating graft laws that prevent serving politicians and their spouses from striking deals with state agencies." https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-thailand-thaksin-lawyers/thailand-jails-thaksin-lawyers-in-snack-box-case-idUKBKK26086720080625

As far as my Roth IRAs are concerned, AFAIK, all the funds that went into them originally (other than as conversions which also were taxed as they occurred) were taxed by the U.S. when earned as income.

Except that the Thai banks that operate the ATMs where expats make withdrawals are NOT the ones who actually process those transactions.... but instead, those transactions and all the details associated with them are processed by the VISA or MC card networks.... So I don't think the ATM operating Thai bank has access to all the same kind of transaction details for such things as they do/would if the ATM transaction was pulling from any Thai bank account.

That's a very good question.... and the same question would apply for folks whose only incoming funds are sourced from U.S. government pensions, including ex-military, I'd presume.

Can you clarify what you mean with the above comment? In terms of following advice from the local RD... Are you saying you did the Thai tax filing, included the social security amount, and then claimed it as exempt or Are you saying you did the Thai tax filing, and did NOT include any Social Security amounts in it, because they are exempt?

This whole thing would seem to be headed toward getting very messy... So let's say for example, under their proposed regime, an American transfers some money from their U.S. checking account to a Thai bank via wire transfer.... The Thai banking system clearly can identify that to the sender's name, via them being the owner of the receiving Thai account. BUT... how is the Thai RD going to know what the SOURCE of those transferred funds is? Did they come from a tax exempt Social Security deposit into your U.S. account? Or from a tax exempt government pension payment into your U.S. account? Or from taxable dividends and interest earned elsewhere but moved into your checking account. And is the RD really going to be asking expats to prove/document at tax time the SOURCE of the funds transferred in for each and every bank transfer that might be made during a year??? Or are they going to basically assume that everything incoming is taxable, and then leave it to the expats to prove to the RD that this or that source was NOT taxable? Messy!!!

My thinking exactly! ????

Regarding foreign card ATM withdrawals from a Thai bank ATM, clearly the Thai bank could know the transaction involved a foreign card and foreign account.... And they might even be able to know the source bank if they really dug in to what clearly is gonna be massive numbers of foreign card ATM withdrawals that occur every day in Thailand. But how would they be able to separate out the tourist ones from the expat ones? As Sheryl notes above. And beyond that, I'm not sure the Thai bank on its end automatically knows the owner of the foreign ATM card involved in the transaction. Yes, the person's name is on the card, but dunno if that info gets captured by the Thai bank as part of the transaction, especially because foreign card withdrawals actually are processed by the VISA or MC card networks, and not the ATM owning Thai bank itself.

I haven't read the whole U.S. treaty -- every time I've tried, my eyes glaze over and I fall asleep... So I'm relying on the OP's summary above.... Interesting complexity for Americans -- dividends and interest may be taxable if remitted into Thailand under the OP's reading.... But what if the source of those divs and interest is from a Roth IRA retirement account in the U.S., which by U.S. law has tax-free distributions in the U.S.? Would Thailand here be trying to make tax-free U.S. distributions from a U.S. Roth IRA account suddenly taxable in Thailand if remitted there???

So in your own words, you're "firmly in [the] camp" of one documented corrupt crook and criminal.... over a different corrupt crook and criminal.... Proud of you.... ????