wensiensheng

It seems the thai virologist has just caught up to where a lot of countries were 3 months ago. Living with Covid as an endemic virus has been a constant topic of discussion. Even Australia started to take off their lockdown blinkers and accept that Covid is here to stay. herd immunity has unfortunately turned out to be an urban myth in the case of Covid.

Nobody wears masks on the beach in Phuket. Nobody. The only caveat to that is that I haven’t been to all the beaches for every minute of every day, but everyone that I have been to, nobody wears a mask. Maybe it’s just an early morning thing, but I’d put money on them all being the same. the risk of catching Covid is less than minimal.

I’ve had one for 18 months. Love the looks, sound, speed and interior. So just about everything ????. I think it’s a lot of car for the price. It used to sell at over 5 mn baht, now only 4mn. Yes there is depreciation but not as much as you would think and way less than something like a Ford Mustang. it’s a car that wants to be driven though. Pooling round in traffic at 30-40kph isn’t really it’s thing.

Yup, like everything, it’s best to keep an open mind until it actually happens. Perhaps your daughters school is opening it up to all secondary students and will see what take up they get? Once they know numbers it will be easier to decide how to phase the class times.

Just a little bit more on this, I just heard from my daughters school in Phuket that the sandbox scheme can only be for 50% of a schools secondary students. Different schools are using different ways to use up the 50% “allocation”. My daughters school is going to open for all year 10, 11 and 12 students. year 8 and 9 are not included at this point. However, if the take up from years 10,11 and 12 is low, then they may open it up to years 8 and 9 and see what demand there is. apparently one other school is considering opening up all classes to 50% capacity on a first come first served basis and another school considering opening for years 8 and 9 on Monday through Wednesday and the older years on Thursday and friday, or something along those lines. The critical point is seemingly that no more than 50% of secondary students can be in school at the same time. But schools can mix and match as they wish. digressing slightly, my daughters school also told me that the names of all students above the age of 12 have been forwarded to the provincial government for an allocation of Pfizer vaccine. Once it’s approved, parents will be offered the choice of taking it up, or not. No precise timescale on it, but estimation was two weeks.

Indeed. And how does Thailand then turn the clock back on the booster shots applied using the not recommended route? sometimes it pays to think ahead, not just what’s expedient for today.

When you say “people” are confusing the two terms, is it not correct to say that it is the term subcutaneous that is used by the Thai medical official in the OP? if so, it’s somewhat concerning that a Thai “expert” is confused.

Apart from the obvious medical issue of this not being a recommended method of injection, there is a potential wider issue. other countries do not utilize, recommend this method of injection. So they are hardly likely to accept thai residents entering their borders if they have been vaccinated in this way. Trouble is, there is no way of knowing who had the recommended injection method and who had the not recommended method. So likelihood is that no one from Thailand will be accepted. It could turn into a major issue for those wishing to travel.

if this is blah blah blah 4.0, does that mean that three previous attempts failed?

Whenever I look at the Phuket numbers I end up scratching my head. 5 deaths yesterday, but no change in the number of “red” patients. Was it 5 out and 5 in? Or deaths from another color group who skipped the red stage? If so, is that an increasing trend or just an anomaly? One didn’t even have a case number! What is the timeline from contracting Covid, to death for the 5 unfortunate souls? Seemingly, there are still a lot of unvaccinated old people in Phuket given how many were unvaccinated out of the 5 deaths. And of course, to top it off, no information on where the 200 odd new cases were found. and the vaccination program rolls on in ad hoc, haphazard fashion. Booster shots of sinovac given to double jabbed sinovac people, unannounced Pfizer boosters on demand at Central and the cream on the cake, the new style injections of AZ with 20% of a dose, which is specifically not recommended by the manufacturer. With so many moving parts and experiments going on at the same time, the ability to assess and increase the effectiveness of the Covid response, is virtually nil. I’m marking time till I get my second AZ on 7th October (by normal method or I ain’t having it) and then I can just sit back and watch this absolute chaos unravel.

Madness. There is no medical basis for this.

People in rural provinces don’t count. C’mon, get with the program.

It’s all a disorganized mess in many respects, although the actual process of getting vaccinated once inside and in a queue, appears fine. From what I have read and heard, plus my own experience, that is the case in many centers. Inside organized, outside chaos.

No money in it? Bureaucratic cock up? Heck they forgot to log their claim to the Prear Vihir (spelling?) temple in the dispute with Cambodia over land borders and it got awarded to Cambodia by default. I suppose they will get round to registering their AZ eventually.

Yeah, maybe the announced plan to administer a 20% dosage in a different fashion to normal, has backfired and British expats pay the price. Despite the month long “study” of a few people, it’s not approved anywhere else. but why should the Thai government care about the UK not recognizing their medical practices in administering vaccines? They probably care about getting off the UK red list for visitors to Thailand, but the other way round is unlikely to be a priority. No money in it for them.

Isn’t it about 5% or so positivity rate? Still high bearing in mind these are folks going out and about in the community. No mention of contact tracing I note. and a huge shortfall on testing numbers. Perhaps nobody wanted to be tested for fear of being interned?

You make all good points about Phuket as a, in effect, pilot project. but that isn’t what it was sold as by various tourist related associations and TAT itself. The focus was on numbers of tourists that would come and how much money they would spend. The other valuable lessons that could be learned were ignored, and continue to be ignored to this day. Otherwise why would arrivals be subjected to such stringent conditions when they account for so few cases?

I take your point and personally, I agree with you. But that isn’t the governments policy. I posted in another thread that the guy who does my garden in Phuket was double vaxxed with sinovac some months ago. He’s just had a booster shot of …..sinovac. So in that sense the government is doubling down. the problem is the focus on quantitative numbers of vaccinations, and not qualitative numbers of vaccinations. In other words, heading down a blind alley with foot pressed firmly on the accelerator. Well, it’s the path they chose.

Opening up, in the sense that venues are open, results in more cases no matter the level of vaccination. That’s proven from Israel to UK to Singapore. but more cases is ok, if people are protected by way of vaccinations because hospitalizations should be low. But in Thailand hospitalizations stay high because they hospitalize all cases, asymptomatic and symptomatic, and only when hospital beds are full do they start filling community centers with asymptomatic people. in Phuket, with its high vaccination rate, they need to start seeing the wood from the trees and hospitalize only truly sick people. Others can isolate, or not, but cases should not now be the focus imho

He makes a point that is correct at a single moment in time, but has ignored events that preceded that moment. he should consider: 1. Thailand could have ordered other vaccines prior to there being a back log. The government did not do so. 2. the government did not order other vaccines because they put their faith in a start up company producing AZ vaccine in quantities required to meet anticipated needs. The company could not meet its production targets 3. the government under anticipated the volume of AZ vaccine that would be required. As a result they under ordered and had to subsequently try and increase the order. Since the start up company couldn’t even meet the original order, they couldn’t meet the increased order. 4. only when the government realized how much vaccine would actually be needed, and compared it to how much vaccine they would likely receive from their local AZ supplier, did they cast around for other vaccines to make up the shortfall. At that point there was a back log of orders and sinovac was the only one immediately available in sufficient quantities to make a difference. 5. integral to the poor decision on required amounts of vaccine and the urgency with which it would need to be deployed, was a relaxed attitude to the ability of the government to control the virus. Having beaten it back twice previously, a sense of complacency assumed that it could be beaten back again and vaccines deployed in a leisurely fashion. Not enough attention was paid to both alpha and delta outbreaks in other countries, and what could/would happen in Thailand when those variants took hold here. whether other governments could have done better is open to debate but the under estimation of required vaccine amounts, initial reliance on a sole start up supplier and laissez faire attitude toward being able to control future outbreaks, were with hindsight, serious errors.

See my post above

The guy who does my garden had two sinovac shots a few months back. Yesterday he had his booster shot of…….a 3rd sinovac shot. I thought boosters were meant to be Pfizer, but he says he had another sinovac If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. Anyone up for a 4th sinovac shot?

Whenever I read of Thailand buying millions of this or that vaccine, I am somewhat heartened that perhaps the government have finally seen the light and are purchasing various types of vaccine and that there is plenty of supply. But then at every turn I also read of Thailand trying to squeeze out extra doses from vials and now this experimental injection method, trialed just a month ago, afaik without recommendation from the drug manufacturer and afaik not utilized in any other country. maybe this idea they have is a great one? So why aren’t proper trials being done and the manufacturer being approached to get their approval? Or WHO approval sought? That way thailand would be seen as an innovator, rather than a cowboy operator going off half cocked.

Expand their influence in other countries? I can’t see that happening, unless it’s being done via the medium of thai cuisine. Edit: just read your response to another poster in which you references central owning land in Europe. Owning land doesn’t confer influence and the amount they own is minuscule in the grand scheme of things. And that’s a different scenario to what’s proposed anyway. Look at what Tesco used to own in Thailand before selling.

So the proposal is; if you are resident in Thailand, are fully vaccinated, take a test that is negative and register your phone on a tracking app, you can enter Phuket. not exactly the most lax conditions. Why not just do it?