Chula virologist says discipline keeping Thais safe as global contagion rages

[DavisH]

4 hours ago, Jimbo2014 said:

Is it possible that Thai's can apply this newfound discipline to controlling air pollution and making the roads safer?  ????.  That would probably save far more lives in the long run.

Thais are way more scared of this virus than dying on the roads. Look how many wear masks but don't wear a helmet. 

But for Bangkokians I would agree they are generally discilipled, at least compared to those up country. The problem is when the lockdowns ease, people are getting a false sense of security and will think it's over, when it is not over. 

[DavisH]

4 hours ago, cmarshall said:

I have noticed that the Thais did seem to be afraid of corona from very early on.  The BTS train would be full of people wearing masks.  

 

By contrast what I gather from news coverage of the US is that Americans, with their deep belief in their own exceptionalism, never expected to be overwhelmed by a pandemic.  The governor of Mississipi when asked why he had not issued a shelter-at-home order after the virus took off in China, replied, "MIssissipi isn't China."  Well, it soon will be, Governor.

 

In addition to a general awareness of risk, Thailand has several other advantages.  The public health bureacracy is competent.  That includes a volunteer force operating in every village in the countryside to spread information and encourage good practices in all areas of public health, certainly including the current pandemic.  Thailand also has a universal healthcare system, which Europe also has, but the US does not.  There are not many nursing homes in Thailand so that the most vulnerable population is not concentrated into dense facilities, like the US.

 

We know that Thailand has been doing contact tracing and monitored the quarantine of arriving passengers into the country until those flights were stopped altogether.  The US never implemented any of these measures.

 

So, while it's hard to get a detailed picture of exactly how the Thai public health service has managed the crisis, it certainly looks as though they have done a good job.  There may also be other environmental advantages.

A large percent of the polulation here don't have aircond, so they tend to stay outside. The weather has been stinking hot this last month, so people tend to spread out rather than congregate inside. High humidity and heat dessicates the virus rather quickly, so the current weather has been on our side. There are a lot of factors involved, so it's hard to know at this stage what is most important. In another week or so we will see if there is any spike in cases in BKK or other hotspots that have eased their restrictions. 

[DrTuner]

4 hours ago, JCP108 said:

Also, while Thailand did eventually impose some fairly stringent measures to limit people coming into the country, people were coming here from all over (including China) for months after the supposed start of all of this (November or early December). Seems like maybe Thailand got a less deadly strain. It really would be interesting if they were to do a valid sampling of the population so we could see that the infection rate really is. Perhaps we are all already infected and we could just all relax (though keep the borders closed until we know what might come here from elsewhere with all the mutations). 

That's my take too, but unfortunately it's too late. The German strain came here in late Feb/early March, as can be seen in Nextstrain (look for "Thai" in search): https://nextstrain.org/ncov . One example: https://nextstrain.org/ncov/global?s=Thailand/Bangkok-0017/2020

 

Luckily by that time countermeasures started to appear. But Thailand is not in the clear by a long shot.

Edited May 8, 2020 by DrTuner
typo

[DavisH]

4 hours ago, JCP108 said:

"Thailand has been fortunate since most infected people have received good treatment in hospital rather than suffering at home, he said."

 

To say this with honesty, one would have to know the infection rate which we don't since there hasn't been adequate testing. 

The real rate is liklely never to be known, as those with no or mild symptoms are not likley to be tested. And as yet there appears to be no antibody testing done here either. However, if a family member is sick and tested, they are also testing close relatives without symptoms, and some are also positive. This seems to be what is happening in NYC, where many of the infections are occuring among the unemployed and retired who stay mostly at home - it appears that relatives are bringing home the virus to them. 

[BobBKK]

BS go look at the Australian model - no lockdown, Taiwan - no lock down, Sweden - no lockdown

[DrTuner]

2 minutes ago, BobBKK said:

BS go look at the Australian model - no lockdown, Taiwan - no lock down, Sweden - no lockdown

Some work, some not.

http://www.asymco.com/

[spiekerjozef]

22 hours ago, webfact said:

Thailand has been fortunate since most infected people have received good treatment in hospital rather than suffering at home, he said.

ehm.....

Or they can't go to the hospital because it's too expensive.

[bodga]

22 hours ago, webfact said:

Thailand’s current mortality rate, at 1.8 percent, is much lower than in Western countries because of strong public cooperation with official health directives, said Yong.

Utter  BS,  no  one knows why yet, and as for strong  co operation, none of that present  either.

[bodga]

13 hours ago, ParkerN said:

Crikey, this guy again.

 

Discipline is one thing but I really do doubt the government data, and I think the proposal that TL has been afflited by an earlie, and less virulent strain has legs. I doubt the government would agree though, everyone knows that Thais have a uniquely gifted and effective government...

 

 

And are leading the vaccine charge.

[cmarshall]

52 minutes ago, BobBKK said:

BS go look at the Australian model - no lockdown, Taiwan - no lock down, Sweden - no lockdown

Taiwan had no lockdown, but they stopped flights from China early, did extensive testing of new arrivals and isolating of positives.  They also retested people who tested negative for the virus.  

 

Taiwan had no lockdown because they followed best practices that they had learned from SARS in 2003 which controlled the outbreak so that a lockdown was never necessary.  A lockdown is only necessary when the state has failed to follow best practices of testing, isolating, and contact tracing.

 

Sweden, having failed to apply best practices early to control corona after the example already demonstrated by Taiwan faced the choice of a lockdown or no lockdown with the result of higher mortality.  They chose no lockdown (really a limited lockdown since bars are closed, restaurant use controlled, and crowds of more than 50 forbidden) and they are paying the price with a much higher mortality than the neighboring countries of Denmark, Norway, and Finland all of which have lower mortality rates.

 

Taiwan succeeded in controlling the disease with a handful of deaths.  Sweden, with a third the population, already has 3,000 deaths and counting.

 

Sweden has failed because they were asleep at the wheel.

[ParkerN]

4 hours ago, uhuh said:

Try to explain to Chinese people, from HK, China or Taiwan, that Westerners do not want to stop a deadly plague by such a cheap and simple act as wearing a mask. Incomprehensible Westerners. 

Aren't they afraid? 

 

But if I tell Asians how many Western friends told me old people should die,  so they can visit the pub again (someone wrote in the FT he wants to visit not the pub, but the Grand Prix) - Asians just cannot believe this. 

 

Ah yes, the clash of cultures.but who's to say which is right and which is wrong; it's a personal decision, a personal perspective.

 

Everyone will have an opinion, and indeed I have one, and this is one time when I'm inclined to turn my back on the Western culture, and move towards the eastern culture that we find in Thailand.

 

On the other hand, the Eastern culture has a very great deal to learn from the Western culture in terms of honesty, straightforwardness, lack of corruption and what is to my view, a better set of values. Not that I expect very many people to agree with the point, it's far too easy for the hoi-polloi to naturally assume that what they're used to is in fact the best available. Which it just isn't in this case.

 

Of all the things that I think humanity could do to improve itself, getting rid of the idea of geographically located countries is way up there near the top. All countries appear to suffer from this one problem and in each country the same nonsense is re-enacted. I will not see the day but I think the coming of the day is inevitable. Please.

 

[brain150]

Why are they all saying exactly the same as Bill Gates does ???

 

... SPAMdemic 

[SkyFax]

39 minutes ago, ParkerN said:

On the other hand, the Eastern culture has a very great deal to learn from the Western culture in terms of honesty, straightforwardness, lack of corruption and what is to my view, a better set of values.

When Gandhi visited London in the 1930's he was (supposedly) interviewed by a local reporter as follows:

Reporter: What do you think of Western civilization?
Gandhi: I think it would be a good idea.

Edited May 8, 2020 by SkyFax

[Monomial]

19 hours ago, DrTuner said:

It's likely the infection rate in Thailand was was very high in December-February, but went unnoticed because they got an earlier strain.

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.29.069054v2.full.pdf

 

 

You can categorize that under "dumb luck", nothing to do with Thailand's fumbling early efforts.

 

So a couple of questions that immediately come to mind reading that paper. First, they mention that only in Iceland the D614 variant outperformed the G614 mutation.  Why? What is special about the environment or population of Iceland, and could investigations along this line yield some clues about how to take advantage of this?

 

Second, and more interesting question, is if the G614 variant is more easily transmitted, meaning a higher R value, then the ultimate percentage of a population that needs to become infected in order to confer herd immunity is increased. Thus, while Asian countries may have reached a point that the D614 variant already has an effective R of less than 1 in the population, it may still be that the more virulent G614 variant, if released into the population, could find enough without immunity to cause a new bump in cases until the "recovered" population increases further to dampen the R on the new strain.

 

This could also be a primary contributor to the very interesting "left coast"/"east coast" phenomenon that occurred in the USA. If true that the D614 variant was introduced to areas like Seattle back in November as speculated, it would explain why there was a brief surge in infections there in March/April, but it seemed to die out quickly. That surge would have been the more virulent G614 variant picking off more people than the earlier D614 variant.  But overall the problem was quickly extinguished in certain communities that were already mostly immune from the previous strain. It just needed a slight push to get the immunity a bit higher.

 

Thailand would presumably be in this same category. We'd see a brief spike but nothing that would overwhelm the medical capabilities. And it basically means we still have this to look forward to. Oh joy...I can just imagine what Prayut is going to do this time.

 

Either way though, I think the biggest advantage Thailand received during this pandemic is that the disease spread through the population long before anyone started looking for it. If that hypothesis is correct, it should show up in the total reported deaths during the months of November, December 2019 and January 2020.  The monthly distribution of deaths for this period should show a distinctly different profile from the monthly death profile in previous years.  Unfortunately, I have been unable to find data for total mortality rates in Thailand for any year after 2017.

 

So it would seem this is all stil speculation for the moment.

 

 

 

 

[SkyFax]

Seattle researcher debunks theory COVID-19 spread in Calif. in November

 

by KOMO News Staff Monday, April 13th 2020 SEATTLE -- A prominent Seattle medical researcher took to Twitter Sunday to debunk a theory that the new coronavirus had been spreading in California in November weeks ahead of the first known cases and that many in the state have now developed "herd immunity" due to earlier exposure.

 

Trevor Bedford, a Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center scientist who made waves near the start of the outbreak for sounding the alarm that the virus had been silently spreading for weeks in the Seattle area, says his research with the Seattle Flu Study shows there was no earlier California outbreak.

 

"This is empirically not the case," Bedford tweeted as part of an 18-tweet thread detailing his evidence. "COVID-19 was first introduced into the USA in Jan/Feb 2020."

 

https://komonews.com/news/coronavirus/seattle-researcher-debunks-theory-covid-19-spread-in-calif-in-november

 

[HOAX]

Discipline or not, call it what you want, Thai citizens, companies and even the government has done far better than most of the west. There may be other factors contributing to the low numbers of infections in Thailand recently, but nonetheless, Thais has done a good collective job concerning following the guidance that has been given, whether you like it or not.

 

Looking at how citizens in western countries have handled the situation, I can't help feeling concerned for the west, say IF there was to come a much worse crisis, such as an outbreak of the far more deadly Nipahvirus that has been spreading in South and Southeast Asia recently. Political correctness, slow democratic processes and corrupt organisations hasn't exactly played in the west's favour to say the least.

[billd766]

22 hours ago, Enoon said:

 

Discipline.......of thought, discussion and dissemination of information.

 

Maintained by the Computer Crimes Act and the Emergency Decree.

 

The people hear, see and speak no evil.

 

 

 

 

 

I believe that the Thai people do hear, and do see evil, but are punished severely if they dare to speak of it.

[DrTuner]

2 hours ago, Monomial said:

 

So a couple of questions that immediately come to mind reading that paper. First, they mention that only in Iceland the D614 variant outperformed the G614 mutation.  Why? What is special about the environment or population of Iceland, and could investigations along this line yield some clues about how to take advantage of this?

 

Second, and more interesting question, is if the G614 variant is more easily transmitted, meaning a higher R value, then the ultimate percentage of a population that needs to become infected in order to confer herd immunity is increased. Thus, while Asian countries may have reached a point that the D614 variant already has an effective R of less than 1 in the population, it may still be that the more virulent G614 variant, if released into the population, could find enough without immunity to cause a new bump in cases until the "recovered" population increases further to dampen the R on the new strain.

 

This could also be a primary contributor to the very interesting "left coast"/"east coast" phenomenon that occurred in the USA. If true that the D614 variant was introduced to areas like Seattle back in November as speculated, it would explain why there was a brief surge in infections there in March/April, but it seemed to die out quickly. That surge would have been the more virulent G614 variant picking off more people than the earlier D614 variant.  But overall the problem was quickly extinguished in certain communities that were already mostly immune from the previous strain. It just needed a slight push to get the immunity a bit higher.

 

Thailand would presumably be in this same category. We'd see a brief spike but nothing that would overwhelm the medical capabilities. And it basically means we still have this to look forward to. Oh joy...I can just imagine what Prayut is going to do this time.

 

Either way though, I think the biggest advantage Thailand received during this pandemic is that the disease spread through the population long before anyone started looking for it. If that hypothesis is correct, it should show up in the total reported deaths during the months of November, December 2019 and January 2020.  The monthly distribution of deaths for this period should show a distinctly different profile from the monthly death profile in previous years.  Unfortunately, I have been unable to find data for total mortality rates in Thailand for any year after 2017.

 

So it would seem this is all stil speculation for the moment.

Valid thoughts. The one that really hit me in they eye in the paper was this:

 

 

The timeline seems to fit, as well as the East/West coast thing. The way to take it out of speculation would be to do large scale antibody testing to see if D614 has spread throughout Thailand without people noticing, meaning most had mild symptoms or were completely asymptomatic. Nobody knows if acquired immunity for D614 works for G614. We'll see.

 

There is one source for data for the budget year for illness related deaths, but it's inadequate for comparison month-by-month: https://hdcservice.moph.go.th/hdc/reports/report.php?source=formated/death298.php&cat_id=491672679818600345dc1833920051b2&id=b4ea22252bb533f3f9225dfcab83d43a . MoPH would have more detailed access to the database but they ain't telling. 

 

Iceland is a strange outlier. Perhaps because it's so remote and slammed the door closed early?

Edited May 8, 2020 by DrTuner

[uhuh]

5 hours ago, cmarshall said:

Taiwan had no lockdown, but they stopped flights from China early, did extensive testing of new arrivals and isolating of positives.  They also retested people who tested negative for the virus.  

 

Taiwan had no lockdown because they followed best practices that they had learned from SARS in 2003 which controlled the outbreak so that a lockdown was never necessary.  A lockdown is only necessary when the state has failed to follow best practices of testing, isolating, and contact tracing.

 

Sweden, having failed to apply best practices early to control corona after the example already demonstrated by Taiwan faced the choice of a lockdown or no lockdown with the result of higher mortality.  They chose no lockdown (really a limited lockdown since bars are closed, restaurant use controlled, and crowds of more than 50 forbidden) and they are paying the price with a much higher mortality than the neighboring countries of Denmark, Norway, and Finland all of which have lower mortality rates.

 

Taiwan succeeded in controlling the disease with a handful of deaths.  Sweden, with a third the population, already has 3,000 deaths and counting.

 

Sweden has failed because they were asleep at the wheel.

Additionally:

Taiwan closed the brothels (shock!)

No spectator sports. No movies. 

Travel to the outlying islands is forbidden. 

Private language schools use skype.

Senior high students cannot leave the  country. 

Masks are obligatory in shops, on public transport, and recommended everywhere,  the vast majority follow this recommendation. Masks are rationed and distributed by the government. 

From Chinese New Year  (Jan 25) to the end of April,  most people stayed at home as much as possible,  didn't go out. Many people keep a distance of 2m in public. 

 

But no lock down

 

 

[Redline]

One good thing about a military education, plenty of fear, and some fudged numbers-it somehow could result in a hub ????

[JensenZ]

Discipline? What a joke. They constantly ignore distancing and get in my face when I'm out shopping.

 

On 5/7/2020 at 4:31 PM, Stocky said:

"Thailand’s current mortality rate, at 1.8 percent, is much lower than in Western countries because of strong public cooperation with official health directives" said Yong with a twinkle in his eye and his tongue firmly in cheek.

Australia and New Zealand are 1.4 percent mortality, and most of them are 80 years old and older. Are they "Western Countries"? I thought developed nations were considered "Western countries". Singapore is 0.09% mortality.

 

Despite this, they (Australia & NZ) have decided to ban international travel for 6 months. 

 

Maybe this doctor didn't get the memo from the PM, who said he wanted to add China to the list of safe countries. Even using there highly debatable numbers, China is 6% mortality.

 

[cmarshall]

9 hours ago, uhuh said:

Additionally:

Taiwan closed the brothels (shock!)

No spectator sports. No movies. 

Travel to the outlying islands is forbidden. 

Private language schools use skype.

Senior high students cannot leave the  country. 

Masks are obligatory in shops, on public transport, and recommended everywhere,  the vast majority follow this recommendation. Masks are rationed and distributed by the government. 

From Chinese New Year  (Jan 25) to the end of April,  most people stayed at home as much as possible,  didn't go out. Many people keep a distance of 2m in public. 

 

But no lock down

 

 

Taiwan with a population of 28 million has had 355 cases of infection and six deaths.  That's what you can do if you are smart and committed to solving the problem with the powers of government.  

 

All other countries with higher per capita death rates than Taiwan's or S. Korea's simply failed miserably.  

[stouricks]

23 hours ago, TEFLKrabi said:

If wearing masks is the best way to stop infection, then Thailand is right up there with the top countries in the world for preventing spread. Like it or not, once you go outside just about everyone is wearing masks. It makes a huge difference in stopping the disease. 

And yet another thread on TV says that masks and lock-down makes no difference whatsoever.

[asiaexpat]

On 5/7/2020 at 8:00 PM, RickBradford said:

The average age of the Thai population is much lower than that in Italy or Spain; rates of obesity and diabetes are low; most Thai people live outdoors to a large extent; the weather is hot; Thais absorb abundant Vitamin D; population density is relatively low; Thais mostly don't take public transport.

What Thailand are you talking about? Completely off the mark except about the weather. Come and get informed sometime.

[mikebell]

Thais and discipline?  One need look no further than the nearest red traffic light.

[fredwiggy]

On 5/7/2020 at 8:00 PM, RickBradford said:

The average age of the Thai population is much lower than that in Italy or Spain; rates of obesity and diabetes are low; most Thai people live outdoors to a large extent; the weather is hot; Thais absorb abundant Vitamin D; population density is relatively low; Thais mostly don't take public transport.

Not sure about that not taking public transportation thing. I've always seen buses, vans and trucks full and still do whenever I see them driving past. I agree on the rest, obesity rates here are very low, 17% compared to England 36% and America 40%, just to name a few, along with diabetes (go figure,especially when rice is eaten most meals) as well as diet being healthier than where I come from in America (average person)  Here I see more masks and most are staying a little further away from each other in public places, but as far as the home life when I'm driving around, I still see people eating close to each other, my wife's family still shares the same water glass and of course the sticky rice is eaten by everyone taking it in their hands and eating it, then going back to the same container after they put the rice in their mouths. They don't usually shake hands or hug, preferring to wai, which eliminates that contact. Affection, as far as I've seen, is nowhere near that of Americans, except in private, so that reduces contact also. Thailand may have a milder strain of the disease, because when this started , I thought with what I saw these few years living here, that this country was looking at a disaster. Hopefully the combination of things has kept the disease at bay.

Edited May 9, 2020 by fredwiggy

[Suua]

Using our old friend Google....

It's worth pointing out that people over the age of 65 in Thailand account for 11% of the population (69 million)...7.6 million

People over the age of 65 in the UK account for 18% of the population (67 million)....12 million (4.5 million more than Thai)

People over the age of 65 in France account for 19.6% of the population (67 million)....13 million (5.5 million more than Thai)

People over the age of 65 in Italy account for 22.75% of the population (60 million)...13.6 million (6.6 million more than Thai).

Therefore, 1st world countries, due to their much higher rate of aging populations will of course show more deaths.

Coupled with social interaction in the west...shaking hands/hugging/touching in general, it's not surprising that infections there are much higher in general.

Coupled with a much higher testing rate and more accurate reporting....these countries again will show a more accurate 'big picture' than here....currently, Thailand has tested 0.4% of its population...the government figures are obviously not credible.

Then of course there's the mutation factor/different strains of the virus to complicate the issue further.....this time next year, hopefully a clearer picture will be available for all to see.

Edited May 9, 2020 by Suua

[Gilltom]

On 5/7/2020 at 4:09 PM, eeworldwide said:

I'd love to have the number of actual tests being done on a daily basis nationwide.

so would i.

[Grumpy John]

39 minutes ago, mikebell said:

Thais and discipline?  One need look no further than the nearest red traffic light.

"Nearest red traffic light"  What has that got to do with it?  Just as Americans can turn Right on Red, in Thailand at a lot of traffic lights you can turn Left on Red if safe to do so.  OK,  there are the occasional moron that will blow through a Red but not a lot...maybe only several thousand times a day!   And most are on scooters...not cars. 

[mikebell]

Just now, Grumpy John said:

"Nearest red traffic light"  What has that got to do with it?  Just as Americans can turn Right on Red, in Thailand at a lot of traffic lights you can turn Left on Red if safe to do so.  OK,  there are the occasional moron that will blow through a Red but not a lot...maybe only several thousand times a day!   And most are on scooters...not cars. 

I was discussing the laughable notion that Thais and discipline can be linked.  I understand that you have a reputation associated with your nickname.  Living in Pattaya, I see 5 red light runners per change of colour; all cars/pick-ups/wagons.  This makes those waiting very nervous to move.  I have lived in Thailand 15 years; four of them spent waiting at traffic lights.  I am thinking in particular of two sets of lights adjoining police stations where I have NEVER seen a cop outside, yet 300 metres up the road there's a gang of 15 robbing motorists.