RickBradford

27 minutes ago, Robin said:

The easiest way to reduce the numbers of Covid patients is not to go looking for them, except among migrants.

That's one way to reduce the number of Covid cases (rather than "patients").

You could combine that with not talking about "Covid deaths", since the definition of a "Covid death" varies so much from country to country, and is generally so vague as to be useless.

For example, the UK records a Covid death as a "death in a person with a laboratory-confirmed positive COVID-19 test and died within (equal to or less than) 28 days of the first positive specimen date."

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/916035/RA_Technical_Summary_-_PHE_Data_Series_COVID_19_Deaths_20200812.pdf

With that rule, you could have a heart attack, be flattened by a bus, or knifed to death up to 4 weeks after a positive test, and still go down as a "Covid death".

The key metric is going to be the number of excess deaths in 2020 from all causes - known as "all-cause mortality". That will show clearly how much of an extra impact the arrival of Covid has had.

In some countries, such as Australia, this will be the safest year in overall mortality in a decade, the light death toll from Covid counterbalanced by lowered mortality from other causes - perhaps people are staying at home more, and engaging less in risky behaviour.

Countries such as Spain and the UK will show excess mortality near to 10% over the year (i.e. total number of deaths this year 10% above the average).

(Detailed data at https://www.mortality.org.)

In Thailand, Covid-badged deaths over the last year now stand at 67; I would be interested to see the lowered death total for the year on Thailand's roads caused by lockdowns and other restrictions.

1 hour ago, starky said:

Show me one shred of any proof or evidence that you can provide that would show there are thousands (or whatever number you seem to think) of unidentified cases of covid in Thailand. And why these cases don't seem to end up in hospitals effect the healthcare system or transmit the virus further through the community.

The reason that unidentified cases don't end up in hospitals or affect the healthcare system is that they don't get sick - they are asymptomatic. If they were getting sick, they would be going to clinics and hospitals, and getting tested.

As for transmission by asymptomatic individuals, the British Medical Journal wrote:

"The transmission rates to contacts within a specific group (secondary attack rate) may be 3-25 times lower for people who are asymptomatic than for those with symptoms. A city-wide prevalence study of almost 10 million people in Wuhan found no evidence of asymptomatic transmission."

https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m4851

It would be a monumental waste of time trawling through the wider community trying to find people who had Covid at some time and didn't know it, having never got sick or been tested.

1 minute ago, RichardColeman said:

Assuming that's true then Thailand had been deliberately not reporting false positives for months

I think it would be fairer to say that they are simply not considering the false positive problem - and in that, they are joined by a great many other countries.

3 hours ago, RichardColeman said:

I'm pretty sure lesson one in the FUNDAMENTALS book is testing in mass, and they threw the fundamentals book out after skimming the prelude chapter  !

I'd agree that mass testing is a good idea - IF the test is a very reliable one, which PCR is not, as the WHO noted in December.

"The design principle of RT-PCR means that for patients with high levels of circulating virus (viral load), relatively few cycles will be needed to detect virus and so the Ct value will be low. Conversely, when specimens return a high Ct value, it means that many cycles were required to detect virus. In some circumstances, the distinction between background noise and actual presence of the target virus is difficult to ascertain." (my bold).

https://www.who.int/news/item/14-12-2020-who-information-notice-for-ivd-users

With a test that throws up false positives at a non-zero, but essentially unknown rate, it is impossible to sensibly track the progress of infections.

At best, testing exaggerates the number of cases, and at worst could lead to a pseudo-pandemic where large swathes of healthy people are banged up for no reason, while many infected but asymptomatic people roam around, having not got around to being tested.

59 minutes ago, richard_smith237 said:

An article in the Lancet (from September) suggest the percentage of false positive results in the UK could be high as 4% - thus 16,000 people out of 400,000 tested daily could false positives.

Right. And if the true Covid infection rate were 1%, then 4000 of that sample would have the disease.

But with the false positive, they would be reporting 16,000 + 4000 = 20,000 positives in a single day, 5 times the actual figure. Cue immediate panic.

Even the CDC has warned about the problem of PCR tests and false positives. 

"Before testing a large proportion of asymptomatic workers without known or suspected exposure, employers are encouraged to have a plan in place for how they will modify operations based on test results and manage a higher risk of false positive results in a low prevalence population."

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/community/organizations/testing-non-healthcare-workplaces.html

The OP calls them "non-mandatory apps", yet the Five Conditions for travelling to and from a red zone demand the use of Mor Chana.

Quote

 

The severest restrictions apply to travel to and from Samut Sakhon, Chanthaburi, Chonburi, Trat and Rayong where the following checks will be done:

 

1. Temperature and symptoms

2. Reasons for travel and destination asked

3. Mor Chana app on phones checked

4. Are people in possession of the necessary documents for travel

5. Records made of people passing through. 

 

So, "non-mandatory" seems to mean "non-mandatory if you're not going anywhere".

12 minutes ago, Justgrazing said:

 

No Saturday Night fever then .. 

Or Dirty Dancing .....

12 hours ago, webfact said:

The Chonburi order states from now until 4 Jan, bars and pubs can remain open until midnight, but they can only serve food and drink and no dancing is permitted. Alcohol is not banned.

Yes, the excessive movement caused by dancing spreads the virus exponentially ????

The nexus between ignorance, incompetence and petty authoritarianism grows day by day.

Quote

Is this better?  Jeez...calm down.  It may not be #1 overall for the entire year, but it will be darn close

I'm making a simple request that you not post misleading information on a very contentious topic by citing articles that you haven't even read, and which turn out to say the opposite of what you are claiming.

In my estimation, the people who need to "calm down" are the Covid hysterics who are trying to portray this disease as being similar to the Great Plague.

4 hours ago, Bangyai said:

The more they test the more they will find. 

 

Most people I talk to believe there are a lot more asymptomatic cases out there going around without a care in the world , and if they don't know they have it , feel normal and are not likely to be tested , you can understand why.

Yes, it's a very odd sort of plague, when for the most part you have to be tested in order to know whether you have the disease or not....

23 minutes ago, PGSan said:

Maybe they are astute enough to take the false positive rate into account when reporting this data.

Given your suggested data, I would assume that they reported  this figure because they actually found 6 per thousand positives.  

 

Crazy I know, but it is just this type of clever stuff that us numerate types get paid mega-bucks to do.

Unfortunately, the genuinely numerate types understand that probability theory doesn't work like that, and "assuming" things because they feel right just doesn't work.

On the tourist issue, as with many others, the Thai government follows the well-trodden Path of Incompetence:

Step 1: We must do something.

Step 2: This is something.

Step 3: Therefore we must do it.

4 hours ago, JusticeGB said:

A pragmatic decision. At least the people who are actually here are spending money and at the moment the hurdles for coming to Thailand are horrendous and extremely expensive.

Yes, these extensions amount to a sort of Special Tourist Visa without all the internment and insurance hassles.

21 hours ago, webfact said:

He prescribed three ways to improve the Thai government’s efficiency – eradicating corruption, reforming laws and regulations, and improving government services.

Thailand has a cargo cult government, which thinks that if it orders its bureaucrats to develop plans for some sort of progress, that progress will magically happen.

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult)

4 minutes ago, Jingthing said:

If you're talking about perfect solutions that are guaranteed to permanently wipe out the virus, no, we won't have that. So What? Attaining a high degree of control will indeed allow the world to live with this as just another "normal" threat to public health short of a pandemic.

Quite so.

But no government has shown willingness to accept merely "a high degree of control" or that this is just another "normal" threat to public health. NZ is a prime example of a government which believes it can "eliminate" this virus, which is absurd.

Governments worldwide have terrified their citizens over this virus as though it were a new plague, and have painted themselves into a corner as a result. Turning that round, and asking citizens to regard this as just another "normal" threat is going to take a lot of doing, and a lot of time.

18 minutes ago, placeholder said:

But it also  doesn't certainly mean "So a vaccine essentially solves nothing; governments still have to admit that this virus is never going away."

It means exactly that; until there is a proven, tested, safe, 100% effective, long-lasting vaccine - something that has never been achieved before with a coronavirus - then governments are going to have to come to terms, sooner or later, with the fact that this virus cannot be eliminated and that we have to learn to live with it. 

The sooner they can bring themselves to admit that, the better.

4 minutes ago, placeholder said:

Scientists were close to a coronavirus vaccine years ago. Then the money dried up.
Dr. Peter Hotez says he made the pitch to anyone who would listen. After years of research, his team of scientists in Texas had helped develop a vaccine to protect against a deadly strain of coronavirus. Now they needed money to begin testing it in humans.

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-care/scientists-were-close-coronavirus-vaccine-years-ago-then-money-dried-n1150091

So this scientist believes he has a vaccine, though it has never been tested in humans to see if it is a) safe and b) effective, criteria which rule out many potential vaccines.

Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't, but it certainly doesn't meet my criterion of a "successful vaccine".

7 hours ago, GroveHillWanderer said:

I'd be surprised if there isn't at least one vaccine approved and licensed by the middle of 2021.

That's a fair assumption, even though there has never previously been a successful vaccine for a coronavirus.

By that time, the airline, tourist and hospitality industries will be dead and buried worldwide.

Also, previous vaccines for other respiratory viruses have proved to be only about 50% effective and fairly short-lived. Which still poses a problem for Covid-purity governments, since outbreaks will continue indefinitely, just as the common cold (another coronavirus illness) does.

So a vaccine essentially solves nothing; governments still have to admit that this virus is never going away.