20 minutes ago, lkv said:

No, but most of the world does testing on protocols that test symptomatic and generally multiple symptoms.

 

Even in France, where they are getting closer to 200k confirmed, based on antibody testing, they estimate 6% of the population has it/ had it, which would equal 3.6M people. 

 

So that would be x18.

 

In Thailand, where they are even more "stingy" with the testing, we are probably talking x50...x100...x200, who knows.

New York is closer to 25% after they carried out sample testing of 3000 random people for antibodies 

14 minutes ago, Pedrogaz said:

I have been critical of the junta....but they have done an outstanding job here and their prompt response has given Thailand a fantastic result. I guess authoritarians are the right choice for certain types of problem.... 

As an aside whenever they were at war, the Romans suspended their constitution and appointed a dictator to deal with the problem....sometimes one head is better than two.

555 OMG are your serious 

10 minutes ago, smedly said:

New York is closer to 25% after they carried out sample testing of 3000 random people for antibodies 

Yes, Paris is probably the same. Cities with a high density of people would reach these sort of percentages.

2 hours ago, SkyFax said:

Everyone? Not everyone is in the daily "gotcha" mode.

right, my mood about all this figure- crunching b.s. is on level "couldn't care less"...

9 minutes ago, lkv said:

Yes, Paris is probably the same. Cities with a high density of people would reach these sort of percentages.

They estimate that the numbers will increase to around 80% of total population over the coming months at which point they will have reached the so called herd immunity (60% +) and the virus will peter out

3 minutes ago, thurien said:

right, my mood about all this figure- crunching b.s. is on level "couldn't care less"...

ignore it if you want - your choice but just be mindful that many people believe the infection rate is massively hidden in Thailand so be careful when you are out and about, experts believe that 80% of the population will be infected at one time or another and many will die...................so feel safe out there - Thailand has it all under control 

Cases etc are not interesting in the end, because you can´t find them all. What counts is the dead, only the dead. Today 54.

To compare, in 2017 Thailand ended up with 24.419 dead in the FLU. This was reported to CDC/WHO.

Conclusion, Thailand have handled the COVID19, extremely well!

 

 

2 hours ago, Guderian said:

Does anyone have a reason why Phuket has had such a (relatively) big problem with the virus, at least compared with Pattaya? Is it the Muslim influence from the southern provinces, residents returning home carrying the infection after visiting Malaysia for religious purposes? Or is there something I'm missing?

Maybe they spread virus from different part of body????

 

1 hour ago, wensiensheng said:

I live in Phuket. From what I see:

 

1. Initially Bangla Road area was a problem because of close proximity in bars. That sparked quite a few cases.

 

2. I don’t know why Bang Tao became such a big cluster, but to respond to your suggestion with regard to Muslims, in my area a see general adherence to social distancing and the wearing of masks. One caveat however, when cycling around the Tambon, I notice groups of people outside of two mosques, mostly prompted by a collection of food stalls outside of each of them. Sort of an impromptu market with no social distancing.

 

3. I hear the mosque calling people for prayer as was the case pre covid, but I don’t know whether people still actually go to the mosque.

 

Overall my general feeling is that Phuket has a high number of cases because there is a fairly high concentration of people in a small area and in the early days of covid, a lot of Chinese tourists. As a result, the virus gained a foothold early on.

The good news is that Phuket is probably going to ahead of the field in achieving herd immunity.   

I can't post the link here as it's 'not a recognised source'.  However, if anyone searches on youtube for 'Bang Kapi Street Market', there's a 14 minute video taken at 7:30 this morning.  

If the virus was truly prevalent this would turn into a massive hot spot.  It shows crowds, zero social distancing, zero sanitisers, many not wearing masks including many of the vendors.

A real eye-opener.

If this were at all believable it would have been included with all the other countries that are having great success lately, such as NZ, Australia and S. Korea. But Thailand is never included on that list because nobody outside of Thailand believes the numbers. Same with situation with China. Does anyone really believe that in the two major cities of Beijing and Shanghai, with well over 20 million people each, has less than 10 death per city?

But hey if the Thais want to fool themselves, great. Just relax the rules so businesses can reopen and people can get back to work. My neighborhood in central Bangkok is suffering so badly, every week more and more shops close for good. The damage to the economy will be felt for years. There will not be any type of quick recovery no matter how hard they try to push the Chinese tourists down everyone's throats.

It does strike me as odd that there are hundreds of new cases daily just down the road in Singapore but Thailand appear to have it under control. 

We really need to start living normally again sooner rather than later. 

1 hour ago, lkv said:

Yes, Paris is probably the same. Cities with a high density of people would reach these sort of percentages.

Cities/countries with high infection rates would have populations with high antobody rates - the correlation across different counties in NY showed this. With the low reported infection rate in Thailand I highly doubt the populaion here has a high antibody rate. But having said that, active tracing is turning up a few positive asymotomatic/pre-symptomatic cases. I really dount its anthhing like the 20% antibody rate that NYC has though. 

Just now, ukdave51 said:

It does strike me as odd that there are hundreds of new cases daily just down the road in Singapore but Thailand appear to have it under control. 

We really need to start living normally again sooner rather than later. 

They were doing OK until there were outbreaks in foreign worker dorms - where the high density of people caused it to spread quickly. 

3 hours ago, sapson said:

Maybe so many Chinese visitors for so long and the previous governor allegedly not releasing some very early covid cases figures and keeping the resort and the tills open until the very last possible moment and importantly they are doing some regular daily testing in Phuket.

 

A future problem could also be the many thousands of Phuket tourist industry workers returning home to the provinces of Issan  etc to their families where testing is seemingly a last resort because of potential cost.

I think we would have heard big news if Chinese tourists were falling sick or dropping dead in December and January.

22 minutes ago, phkauf said:

If this were at all believable it would have been included with all the other countries that are having great success lately, such as NZ, Australia and S. Korea. But Thailand is never included on that list because nobody outside of Thailand believes the numbers. Same with situation with China. Does anyone really believe that in the two major cities of Beijing and Shanghai, with well over 20 million people each, has less than 10 death per city?

But hey if the Thais want to fool themselves, great. Just relax the rules so businesses can reopen and people can get back to work. My neighborhood in central Bangkok is suffering so badly, every week more and more shops close for good. The damage to the economy will be felt for years. There will not be any type of quick recovery no matter how hard they try to push the Chinese tourists down everyone's throats.

The makro I went to was jam packed today....if that is indicative of the normal situation, either the government is involved in a huge coverup, which I highly doubt, or the infection rate is very low. I see no evidence of a coverup. There's no point USA, Italy,,,bla bla bla....its a different climate, different culture, and a different way of dealing with it. I dont'see any second wave of infections coming, unless International borders are opened up. 

3 hours ago, sapson said:

Maybe so many Chinese visitors for so long and the previous governor allegedly not releasing some very early covid cases figures and keeping the resort and the tills open until the very last possible moment and importantly they are doing some regular daily testing in Phuket.

 

A future problem could also be the many thousands of Phuket tourist industry workers returning home to the provinces of Issan  etc to their families where testing is seemingly a last resort because of potential cost.

I think we would have heard big news if Chinese tourists were falling sick or dropping dead in December and January.

Let us get a life and look at the reality. Less than ten new cases a day. The longer this goes on, the more businesses lost, the more hunger, and greater difficulty in re-starting the economy. There is absolutely no justification to continue the lockdown. At a minimum it should be a gradual reopening, starting with malls, restaurants, salons, public transportation, and small shops. Will take some time to see how this all shakes out, but it is my opinion that the economic fallout from the inane economic shutdown, is going to be 200 times worse than Covid itself, and the recovery "ramp up" will be long and excruciating. Far longer than they say. It will not just bounce back. In the history of the world, as far as we know, there has never been a deliberate worldwide economic shutdown. It is light years beyond dumb.

25 minutes ago, DavisH said:

unless International borders are opened up. 

That is the real reason for the low numbers, not local restrictions that have been put in place.  Open up the borders and you could see a rise in cases.

Already proven when they opened the Malaysian land border.

5 hours ago, Somtamnication said:

I know of one new case in Phuket. Nothing announced yet.

Phuket haf 3 new cases today, 1 of these maybe.

4 hours ago, Kerryd said:

That's funny, earlier today in the ThaiVisa newsletter there was an article that said Phuket had no new cases of covid.

https://forum.thaivisa.com/topic/1162271-phuket-officials-report-zero-new-confirmed-covid-cases/?utm_source=newsletter-20200502-0729&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=news

From the day before probably, these numbers are for today.

2 hours ago, smedly said:

and ?

 

it is exactly how things are done today - nothing has changed, in fact it has probably deteriorated over the last 6 years under total military control 

 

If you think Thailand has suddenly become honest and accountable these last few years you are deluded

 

Thailand is going backwards not forwards - hadn't you noticed 

 

 

this quote below is exactly what I have been saying for weeks, 60-70% of death certification is not performed by qualified people, and currently they have no wish or incentive to do so

 

Other reason of low quality COD is that 60-70% of the deaths occurred outside hospitals.
COD information in death certificate is provided by relative of deceased to village registrar who has no health or medical background. As the result, large number of COD information in civil registration system is ill-defined and questionable. 

I am convinced that you do not want this virus to go away. Your daily preaching from your soapbox is getting really tiring. Please try and be a bit more positive and give the Thai's a bit of credit. They are doing as well as they can with the national resources that they have.

22 minutes ago, DavisH said:

The makro I went to was jam packed today....if that is indicative of the normal situation, either the government is involved in a huge coverup, which I highly doubt, or the infection rate is very low. I see no evidence of a coverup. There's no point USA, Italy,,,bla bla bla....its a different climate, different culture, and a different way of dealing with it. I dont'see any second wave of infections coming, unless International borders are opened up. 

That  is more sensible and less determined to see the negative side. Firstly let's forget those obsessed with the economy *. We are talking about people here (Remember them) 100,000s of people's lives. Will we all suffer from a huge economic downturn, yes of course, we've just had one in 2008, gift of corrupt bankers, this will be worse.  All the same as we say in Scotland "There's nae pockets in a shroud". 

 

Yes I was doubtful about the Thai figures for a long time, I still am to an extent, but if they are completely  wrong where are the piles of dead bodies. You can't hide that sort of thing, you need a huge secret cover up operation, I don't think a bunch of fat old generals are remotely capable of running one. I think it is wiser to accept that - possibly through good fortune, or factors we may not be aware of - Thailand actually has achieved a "good result". The news goes on and on being positive, it's unlikely to be 100% correct, of course, but it is beginning to look churlish to go on and on saying nothing worthwhile has been achieved.

 

* There is a good cartoon doing the rounds where one dinosaur says to another, as a giant meteor flies through the sky, oh <deleted> the economy.

5 hours ago, Kerryd said:

That's funny, earlier today in the ThaiVisa newsletter there was an article that said Phuket had no new cases of covid.

https://forum.thaivisa.com/topic/1162271-phuket-officials-report-zero-new-confirmed-covid-cases/?utm_source=newsletter-20200502-0729&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=news

Well there are Phuket tests and there are Thailand tests, never shall the two meet.

 

I'm surprised they haven't silenced the local Phuket office yet. There's an inactive post for somebody in the cards.

27 minutes ago, jimn said:

I am convinced that you do not want this virus to go away. Your daily preaching from your soapbox is getting really tiring. Please try and be a bit more positive and give the Thai's a bit of credit. They are doing as well as they can with the national resources that they have.

+1. Thailand doing great. Leaders who stay cool and make decisions based on facts and advice from the right ppl (medical experts), and a united population who supports all covid measurements.

Other (western) countries: chaos, unruly citizens, leaders politisizing this crisis, not wearing masks themselves and peddling dubious to outrages sarcastic solutions like injecting bleach, blame game (china, who).

 

They should not have been allowed off the island without a proper test.

 

1 hour ago, jimn said:

I am convinced that you do not want this virus to go away. Your daily preaching from your soapbox is getting really tiring. Please try and be a bit more positive and give the Thai's a bit of credit. They are doing as well as they can with the national resources that they have.

we have a believer 555

with single digit figures surely this is completely traceable. In other words quarantine them and test people with whom they have been in contact with? So, no need for any kind of lockdown surely! 

 

Unless of course that is not an indication of the true situation.

2 hours ago, jimn said:

I am convinced that you do not want this virus to go away. Your daily preaching from your soapbox is getting really tiring.

Oh give him a break -- he hasn't had a soapbox to preach from like this since he was a DNA expert on the SEP 2014 Koh Tao murders.

5 hours ago, smedly said:

and ?

 

it is exactly how things are done today - nothing has changed, in fact it has probably deteriorated over the last 6 years under total military control 

 

If you think Thailand has suddenly become honest and accountable these last few years you are deluded

 

Thailand is going backwards not forwards - hadn't you noticed 

 

 

this quote below is exactly what I have been saying for weeks, 60-70% of death certification is not performed by qualified people, and currently they have no wish or incentive to do so

 

Other reason of low quality COD is that 60-70% of the deaths occurred outside hospitals.
COD information in death certificate is provided by relative of deceased to village registrar who has no health or medical background. As the result, large number of COD information in civil registration system is ill-defined and questionable. 

Exactly, and there was a radio news program in Thai a couple of weeks ago that my wife was listening to - she said the lady being interviewed's father had died and they didn't dare tell anyone else there it was Covid as the whole family would have been hounded out of the village. No temple would take the body either and they ended up having to transport it to another town for cremation. This is probably widespread.

Also I drove around Phuket today and It seems people are getting blase. Lots of people without masks out and about, especially in Muslim areas.

Edited May 2, 20206 yr by katatonic
punctuation