connda

Good guys turn into bad guys Tuesday for those caught between Covid and an inflexible xenophobic nation.  As the good guys are increasingly fined and criminalized and possibly jailed, any goodwill that has been generated by the amnesty will quickly evaporate.  What will be left are tourist who when they finally return home relate their tale to friends and family, who in turn will tell their friends and acquaintance. Bad treatment will beget bad press.  And all of those people will probably never get on a jetliner bound for Thailand.

C'est la vie. 

47 minutes ago, Jack Cook said:

Just another academic chasing 5 minutes of fame. Cases do not mean deaths. The vast majority don’t know they have it or they experience a mild flu. What a crock.

"Cases" don't even mean cases.  They mean a positive PCR test which doesn't mean someone is even sick from Covid.  It means they have genetic material in they systems similar to Sars-Cov-2.  That genetic material can come from a cold or other Sars-based virus infections.  There is no definitive "Covid-19" test.  And the PCR is not the "Gold Standard" of Covid-19 testing.

“PCR detects a very small segment of the nucleic acid which is part of a virus itself. The specific fragment detected is determined by the somewhat arbitrary choice of DNA primers used which become the ends of the amplified fragment. “
-- Dr. Kary Mullis, Inventor of Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR)
 

“You have to have a whopping amount of any organism to cause symptoms. Huge amounts of it."  You don’t start with testing; you start with listening to the lungs. I’m skeptical that a PRC test is ever true. It’s a great scientific research tool.  It’s a horrible tool for clinical medicine.  30% of your infected cells have been killed before you show symptoms. By the time you show symptoms…the dead cells are generating the symptoms.”
-- Dr. David Rasnick, bio-chemist, protease developer, and former founder of  Viral Forensics

https://bpa-pathology.com/covid19-pcr-tests-are-scientifically-meaningless/

14 minutes ago, geriatrickid said:

You are offering conclusions based upon your own deficient assumptions.

1. The use of the term "killing off the weak" is asinine.  The weak are not mass produced  at a set period in the year. They are  present on a continuous basis. They are the patients undergoing chemotherapy, patients who have developed advanced stages of their chronic disease, they are smokers who passed a threshold, or people with  stressed immune systems at the time of infection. 

 

2. Your statement " There's literally only so many people this thing can kill and we may have already reached that point"  defies common sense. You would have us believe that  a disease can only kill a certain number of people. This isn't a coupon offer  that exoires after a few months.  if your notion was valid, we would not be seeing the new deaths in Australia, Canada, the EU etc.  You missed the demographic characteristics of the new infections. In the EU and North America and Australia, it is younger demographic driven. It will take a few more weeks before we see just how damaging the new cases are.  However, some young men are going to be disappointed when they discover that they can't manage an erection, or are out of breath after minimal exertion and have brain fog for weeks.  The knock on effects in the younger demographic are somewhat  different than those seen in the 50+ age group and they are only now being identified.

 

It is going to be a very difficult and unpleasant 90 days as the 2nd installment of the infection rampages.

This isn't a plague that is threatening the lives of a large percentage of the population.  It's a bad flu that has been hyped by various governments, organizations and individuals aligned with pharmaceutical companies, media conglomerates, and other stakeholders as being something it is not.  They are yelling "Fire" in the global theater. 

From the US Center of Disease Control (CDC):

Come on folks.  Learn to read and analyze on your own instead of thinking the god-honest truth is coming out of main-stream media cartels. 

Here - read: 

COVID-19 Pandemic Planning Scenarios

Updated Sept. 10, 2020

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/planning-scenarios.html

My only criticism of the CDC report is that there should be a clear base-line comparison to historical seasonal flus such as the 2017-2018 flu season or SARS or H1N1,  because without the comparison those who can't analyse data (like the majority of people on this planet it seems) end up being convinced that all Covid deaths are unacceptable when the numbers not much different than statistics for other historical flus.  
 

The new expert-normal.  Here an expert, there an expert, everywhere and expert-expert getting their 15 minutes of fame.

Hey.  Look over here!  I'm an "expert!" I have an opinion!  Look at me!  I have a steady income.  So, close the borders or everyone dies of Covid.  Don't worry about the poor and unemployed.  They can eat green rice and field crabs or beg on the streets.  Close everything.  It won't affect me.  Do it now!!!  You'll all die if you don't listen to me, an important expert with a steady income.

Here an expert, there an expert, everywhere and expert-expert getting their 15 minutes of fame.

Having worked in the service industry at times in my life, reviews should be looked at and taken to heart.  Generally I've seen on other review sites where the establishment will write a response to negative reviews.  Most often smart business will acknowledge the customer's perceptions, offer an apology if they fell short of exceptions, acknowledge that they will look into the problem and remedy it if a problem is found, and thank the customer.  You can't please everyone all the time - that just the nature of business.  Looking at the Sea View Koh Chang on Tripadvisor there are
1671 good or excellent review
78 terrible or poor review
Looking at the site's review, mostly very positive, the negative views would not keep me from booking a vacation there.  It looks like a nice place.  Even the best of places will get "outlier" negative reviews.  If there are a lot of good and excellent reviews, then the small number of negative reviews are "noise."

However!  Going full court press with a criminal law-suit?  Right there, I take this establishment off my list of places I'd consider staying and I warn others away from it.  Not because of thirty 1 star reviews on the site which to me are inconsequential base on the huge number of positive reviews, but because the owner chooses to file criminal charges against someone who criticizes their establish.  Which means that any of the other customers posting negative reviews are now potential defendants in criminal lawsuits.  Not good.
A better approach may have been to attempt to contact Mr. Barnes and address his concerns.  Where there is smoke, there's fire.  Fine out why there is smoke!  That's what you do if you are customer service oriented.

But filing criminal charges against an unhappy customer?  Not good.

The owner just did more damage to themselves than this one reviewer ever did if they go forward with the criminal complaint especially considering this is getting international coverage. 

56 minutes ago, plentyofnuttin said:

What's really hard to believe is that before an election Donald Trump - not the Republicans as you claimed - has nominated someone who has gone on the record as being strongly against Obamacare. She strongly criticized John Roberts for upholding the law in a 5-4 decision. And this with it being about to be reviewed again right after the election by the Supreme Court in a case challenging it's legitimacy and supported by the Trump administration. Republican senators up for reelection have been fleeing from their records of repeated attempts to repeal Obamacare. Now the prospect of that lawsuit actually succeeding thanks to the appointment of Barrett must be terrifying to them. 

Hopefully so.  The ACA is a terrible piece of legislation.  Medicare is too for that matter.  Healthcare should not bankrupt the public.
Personally I'd like to see a single payer system like those in Canada and other commonweath nations, and for those who want private healthcare, allow them to buy into the same health insurance schemes that cover Congressmen and Senators. 
Never happen though.  Both side will only write legislation that will benefit large healthcare corporations at the expense of the public.  But in the meanwhile, if the ACA is overturned, so be it.  The US with the highest health care costs on the planet needs desperate reform.

This is like a bad joke that nobody even bothers to laugh at anymore. 

21 hours ago, rooster59 said:

Phuket: More than 40,000 out of work and it'll only get worse if foreign tourists don't come back

That makes it sound as though it the fault of foreign tourists.  "Foreign tourist no come back to Thailand.  Bad tourists!" 

Better headline:
Phuket: More than 40,000 out of work and it'll only get worse if the government keeps the Thai borders closed to foreign tourist.

Now, that's more accurate.

10 hours ago, rooster59 said:

The baht weakened against the dollar this week

More accurate, "The dollar strengthened against the baht this week."

8 hours ago, rooster59 said:

Protesters at a central London anti-lockdown rally scuffled with police officers on Saturday who were trying to break up the demonstration because of a lack of social distancing.

More accurately, police waded into peaceful anti-lockdown protesters and beat the <deleted> out of them.

The Mrs and I will be taking advantage of the closed borders to enjoy a quiet high-season touring Thailand - but - Phuket?  Not on our itinerary.  I imagine those business which are over-priced to begin with and those who ran scams in the past targeting foreigners will simply be even hungrier than ever.  Why dip a toe in those waters as typical Thai behavior is to raise prices when business turns bad.  Maybe I'm wrong.  Anyone living there, let us know if the price of a beer drops at your favorite watering hole or the price of food drops at your favorite restaurant during the border closures. 
As usual the Mrs and I will bypass the tourism locations that used to cater to foreigners and head to those on the paths less travelled.  I just let the Mrs do the negotiating on prices and packages and limit my activity to chauffeuring.  It should be fun!   

The logic of masking?

It's a great way to socially condition the public.  And after a 6 month propaganda campaign of non-stop public pronouncements and dire warnings emanating from now autocratic governments and disseminated via main-stream media outlets and amplified on social media, a large majority of the plebs now suffer from a pathological fear of being infected with and dying of SARS-Covid-2. Whether it's a rational fear or irrational fear doesn't matter.  It's the effectiveness of the conditioning.  So, many who suffer from fear of Covid don masks to ameliorate their fear of dying.  I have a family member who suffers from frequent, almost debilitating nightmares about being in a room with maskless people and in this dream she can "see" the virus in the air as the virus hunts her down and infects her.  This reoccurring dream really makes her suffer.  So, mask wearing provides a psychological life-saver for those, like my family member, who believes that this flu is gonna get them.  These people wear masks while driving alone in a sealed vehicles, while exercising alone at home, and my family member with the nightmares routinely hikes in local forests that are devoid of humans and she still wears a mask. 
Rational?  Imho? No.  It's a symptom of what is now deep-seed, psychological damage within the general population and mask wearing provide a method to control the environment and therefore control the fear.  Our governments, scientific "experts", and the media have turned large segments of our global societies into populations suffering from mass obsessive–compulsive disorder.

Then they leverage it.  Obey, snitch on your neighbors,  follow the rules, trust your leaders, stay within the lines, don't rock the boat - conform.  If you comply, you'll be "safe." We promise.  "Now get your masks on!"

It reads like dystopian science-fiction, but...there ya have it. The world has become Adrian Monk.