GroveHillWanderer

Items bought outside of Thailand deteriorate in just the same way as those bought here. My computer, various containers, bags, suitcases, pairs of trainers etc that we have brought from outside Thailand have all suffered the same sort of deterioration mentioned by others above.

As is often the case it varied according to where you were. Here in Hua Hin we were able to register for vaccination in mid '21 (not sure if it was May or June but I got my first vaccination in June) just using your passport. They issued everyone with a dummy 13-digit ID number as part of the registration process. That number still appears on all my vaccination records.

One individual anecdote does not outweigh the statistics gathered from 10’s of thousands of people. Multiple studies have shown that the vaccinated, taken as an overall group (and not on an individual basis) are still less likely to contract Covid than the unvaccinated - even with Omicron. As stated in the FactCheck.org article below: Vaccinated People Not More Susceptible to COVID-19 Than Unvaccinated

Again, you're making the mistake that the CDC was trying to avoid people making - that immunity is an all or nothing proposition, and that it only comes in one flavour. Immunity is a relative term and you can have different levels of immunity. You can have partial immunity and it can be a high level of immunity or a low level of immunity. Covid vaccines do provide a level of immunity from CoVid-19 - however it was never complete immunity and unfortunately has got lower as each of several newer variants with higher transmissibility has come along. With Omicron, the level of immunity conferred by the vaccine is probably lower than with any previous variant but it still does confer a certain level of immunity.

Except that prior CDC definitions of a vaccine did not always say that vaccines conferred "immunity", as that AP fact checking article points out. Only some later ones did, and it was on the understanding that anyone familiar with immunology would be aware of, that "immunity" is a relative term and is never 100%.

They only changed that because too many people were (possibility deliberately) misconstruing "immunity" to mean "sterilizing immunity" - which it does not mean, and should never have been taken to mean. As Dr. Ryan Langlois, a microbiology and immunology professor at the University of Minnesota points out in the AP fact-checking article below, earlier CDC definitions did not always use the word "immunity" (though later ones did). CDC definition of a vaccine

A vaccine is simply a medical preparation that exposes the recipient to antigens from a known disease-causing pathogen, thereby stimulating an immune system response. Ideally yes, a vaccine would confer sterilizing immunity meaning a person would not become infected on exposure to the relevant pathogen but that is not a requirement for something to be called a vaccine. Perhaps the most easily recognised example of this are the flu vaccines that many people get every year. They do not provide 100% protection against catching the flu either - by they are still vaccines. All a product needs to do to qualify as a vaccine is what I laid out in the first paragraph above. So by what measure or logic, is a CoVid-19 vaccine "not a true vaccine"?

No, you could not. As already explained by several people, to keep your extension of permit to stay valid, you must get a re-entry permit before you go, otherwise your permit to stay automatically ends when you leave. They actually put a stamp in your passport now, when you get an extension, that tells you this. It says: Otherwise, on returning without either a re-entry permit (or a new, valid, longer term visa issued while you were away) you would only have been stamped in for 30 days visa exempt (assuming you were eligible).

Firstly, I don't know what your process for getting a re-entry is, but as far as I'm concerned it's absolutely no hassle whatsoever. I just get one automatically as part of the yearly extension process. Even if I didn't, it would still only be a simple five minute process at my nearest Immigration office (admittedly I'm lucky in that it's only five minutes from my house). Maybe I'm not understanding the situation correctly with the OP or maybe they aren't (I'm not sure) but for me the re-entry permit is highly useful if not absolutely critical. Without a re-entry permit, if you're on a yearly extension of permission to stay (and I don't know why else you'd even be thinking about one) you would lose your extension - as others have pointed out it would be automatically voided. On returning, would only get a 30-day visa exempt entry. Then if you wanted to stay long-term again, it would mean starting again from scratch by converting to an O visa - which to me represents a much bigger hassle than getting a simple re-entry permit before leaving. The scrapping of the TM6 and lack of need to report on returning have nothing at all to do with the reasons for getting a re-entry permit, which is to preserve the validity of your permission to stay. Note: For some reason, my replies keep getting changed to bold text half way through. Not sure why. I could go back and retype but it doesn't seem worth the effort.

No - for herd immunity to work, it requires that immunity - whether naturally or vaccine-acquired, stop transmission somewhere around 95% of the time (or more). This is known as sterilizing immunity. As has become glaringly obvious however, neither having CoVid-19 nor being vaccinated against it, gives rise to sterilizing immunity. As Khunper pointed out, it is much more likely to be like colds and flu where relatively large proportions of the population will get infected every year - and possibly even several times a year. Any chance of herd immunity started to recede with the Delta variant, and the chances have only diminished further with subsequent variants. Now, with the increased transmissibility and immune evasiveness of Omicron and especially the BA.4 and BA.5 variants, the prospect of herd immunity is really only a distant memory.

Except that they kind of are (though not completely) since they imply that no-one tried to intervene, whereas someone did. On hearing the cries, his uncle went to try and stop the beating, but unfortunately, "The group then reportedly took the boy away on a motorcycle ..." He was later returned, but was already dead.

I've read through that report and I don't see anything in it that shows excess mortality at +83% for the 25-54 age group. I did find a Reuters Fact Check that documents false claims circulating on social media about an 84% rise in excess mortality for 25-44 year-olds, though. Is that related to what you're claiming? Fact Check-No evidence that people aged 25-44 experienced an 84% increase in excess mortality