Thailand had the world's first coronavirus case outside China. Here's how it avoided disaster

[richard_smith237]

4 hours ago, Logosone said:

Yinn just wants to believe. She wants to believe Thailand really only has 58 cases. Many Thais want to believe this, our government is testing a lot and its wise policies protected us, with this wonderful secret Asian weapon, the mask.

 

Unfortunately none of this narrative stands up to scrutiny. I don't understand how journalists can take the figures provided by Thailand at face value. 58 deaths in a population of 70,000,000. When it is clear they have not tested 99% of the population. It is obvious what is happening in Thailand. Same as in Nigeria, Lesotho, Uganda, a lack of testing results in fairytale numbers that have no correlation to reality.

 

Of course some people believe in fairytales, amulets and such. Those people will say Thailand is a fantastic success story. I say it is a black hole where nobody made a real effort to test and the excess deaths tell a wholly different story, namely that none of the policies of Thailand have made the country a special success and the death toll is pretty much like in many other places.

 

I'm of course very happy many people believe Thailand is a great success, as it means hopefully that the restrictions will be gone sooner and tourists can come back and Thais can live a normal life.

 

However, given the insistence on keeping the restrictions in place it looks like not even the Thai leadership believes its own numbers. 

 

 

 

Another good summary. 

 

Thailand has, for whatever reasons found itself ‘more protected’ from the virus than the UK.

 

While the UK may be over-reporting its Covid-19 deaths (died with instead of because of), Thailand may well be under-reporting its deaths. 

 

If Thailand had even half of the UK’s number it would be difficult to hide such deaths, social media would be rife with photos of such.

 

Thus, while Thailand’s Covid-19 deaths; currently at 58, are clearly extremely under-reported and when accounting for all the factors, i.e. less road deaths etc the ‘excess deaths' are still much lower than the UK. 

 

Something has helped keep the death toll lower - it may have been a more efficient lock down or other factors. 

 

 

Of course, the biggest issue with all of the statistics is that each country is pedalling its own cool-aid which makes an accurate and honest evaluation somewhat difficult. 

 

 

 

 

[JCP108]

11 minutes ago, ChouDoufu said:

 

 

 

jinkies, i could just as easily say those excess deaths were heart attack victims who couldn't get to the hospital in time because the ambulance drivers were taking too many virus precautions.....and i'd have just the same justification for your claim.  my imagination.

Not really if you factor in plausibility. In the context of Covid 19 infecting lots and lots of people around the world and making lots of people sicker than they already were and some sick who weren't sick before, that becomes a more plausible explanation than thousands of people having heart attacks and not making it to the hospital. The latter explanation is more imagination since it lacks correlating elements in the context. 

[JCP108]

15 minutes ago, richard_smith237 said:

 

 

 

If Thailand had even half of the UK’s number it would be difficult to hide such deaths, social media would be rife with photos of such.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Again, we have the number-reported-must-be-close-to-true-or-social-media theory.

 

What would the photos be of? Would they be screen shots of the MOPH data that hasn't been made widely public? Who would be posting those photos?

 

The thing is: Thailand's medical system doesn't run at 100% capacity. So, it can handle an increase of business to the tune of 8% and the rest of us won't know unless the aggregate reports are made public. That bump in business doesn't make dead bodies pile up anywhere, especially when spread out over time and over the whole country. 

Edited June 24, 2020 by JCP108

[DrTuner]

15 minutes ago, ChouDoufu said:

jinkies, i could just as easily say those excess deaths were heart attack victims who couldn't get to the hospital in time because the ambulance drivers were taking too many virus precautions.....and i'd have just the same justification for your claim.  my imagination.

I'm sure the spindoctors at Xinhua are working overtime to figure it out. Must be suicides, that should be neutral enough not to scare away tourists. Or maybe the good old "heart stopped beating". Of course it's just a totally random 100% co-incidence, jing jing.

[ChouDoufu]

12 minutes ago, DrTuner said:

I'm sure the spindoctors at Xinhua are working overtime to figure it out. Must be suicides, that should be neutral enough not to scare away tourists. Or maybe the good old "heart stopped beating". Of course it's just a totally random 100% co-incidence, jing jing.

 

it's a chaotic universe where random events happen.  sometimes a meteor hits and coincidentally wipes out 99% of the life on a planet.  stuff happens for which we can't always find an easy explanation.

 

so about those excess deaths?  any breakdown of the numbers?  any correlations?  is the entire country seeing excess deaths, or are there any local hotspots?  any sudden increase in certain causes of death?

 

was there a spike in, i dunno, dengue fever fatalities?  do we know anything other than the total number?

[DrTuner]

2 minutes ago, ChouDoufu said:

so about those excess deaths?  any breakdown of the numbers? 

Only other publically available is this one: https://hdcservice.moph.go.th/hdc/reports/report.php?source=formated/death298.php&cat_id=491672679818600345dc1833920051b2&id=b4ea22252bb533f3f9225dfcab83d43a

 

And it doesn't give you a month to month breakdown. An article in Bangkok Post called 'All fatalities decline since start of pandemic' yesterday disclosed, probably by accident, that that stat is only from public hospitals in provinces. Cool anti-spin against NYT and BBC, though. It does not have deaths at home, which seem to be plentiful when comparing HDC agains DoPA, or private hospitals, you'll need to google that as TVF doesn't let me link.

 

I became aware of the HDC page on May 6th, when pneumonia deaths recorded from public provincial hospitals were 11,170 for the budget year. I then monitored it daily for a few weeks, where it first showed about double pneumonia deaths (over 100) per day for the first couple of weeks, after which it dropped below the yearly average that's around 60. Unfortunately it's not possible to search for historical numbers, Sept 2019 - Mar 2020 against yearly averages comparison would be interesting, even given the very limited scope and inaccuracy of the data.

[jadee]

Thailand avoided disaster by simply not testing. I just had a flu jab (covered by medical insurance) and the hospital gave me a brochure - 6,700+baht for one test and SEVEN DAYS until the result! There's NO WAY anyone's getting that. The only people who get COVID19 tested are at death's door and are probably dead by the time the results come back - so they don't get counted! Pretty smart when you think about it!

[Yinn]

9 hours ago, 4MyEgo said:

Agreed, but try getting Yinn to take her blinkers off, the horse has bolted a long time ago ????

 

Er, you getting your information from a natural healing consultant! ????

 

I listen to doctors, expert and scientist.

You probably believe also covid come from 5G?

Maybe Santa bring covid.

 

Good report from OP. Explain the MANY ways Thailand fight covid and win. 

People still die in Australia.

 

RIP

Here what they say about your healing guy...????????

 

https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-covid-19-vaccine-modify/false-claim-a-covid-19-vaccine-will-genetically-modify-humans-idUSKBN22U2BZ

 

Most claims refer to a version of a now-deleted, widely shared YouTube video of Dr Andrew Kaufman, a “natural healing consultant” (  here ) in an interview with Spiro Skouras, an online-personality and “independent researcher” with a popular YouTube channel. 

 

 

Mark Lynas, a visiting fellow at Cornell University’s Alliance for Science group, debunked the idea that a DNA vaccine could genetically modify an organism. Lynas told Reuters that no vaccine can genetically modify human DNA. 

“That’s just a myth, one often spread intentionally by anti-vaccination activists to deliberately generate confusion and mistrust,” he said

 

 

[Yinn]

2 hours ago, jadee said:

Thailand avoided disaster by simply not testing. 

Testing doesn’t make people die. 

 

Read the OP.

 

it explain why thailand avoided disaster. 

[Yinn]

2 hours ago, ChouDoufu said:

 

it's a chaotic universe where random events happen.  sometimes a meteor hits and coincidentally wipes out 99% of the life on a planet.  stuff happens for which we can't always find an easy explanation.

 

so about those excess deaths?  any breakdown of the numbers?  any correlations?  

2400

1200 per month 

40 per day.

 

= less than one person, per province, per day. Nothing.

 

If you read the threads from Febuary , the same members were saying Thailand would have 100,000+ deaths.

 

Then in March-June their countrys have 100,000+ deaths.

They can not accept the reasons in the OP explain. 

 

But listen to Andrew Kaufman. ????

[DrTuner]

The OP had a nugget of information I missed at first:

Quote

"Currently we test more than 7,000 per day, or a little more than 50,000 per week," Dr Plipat said.

So it's up from 2k/day in April and they are now using batch sampling and some sort of saliva tests. It doesn't look like the amount of available PCR reagents has improved that much, the batch size is likely 3-4. The 100k test that were promised are apparently of the saliva type. No idea if that's the PTT/MIT/etc test kit that never got a follow-up after the initial PR release.

[ChouDoufu]

4 hours ago, DrTuner said:

Only other publically available is this one: https://hdcservice.moph.go.th/hdc/reports/report.php?source=formated/death298.php&cat_id=491672679818600345dc1833920051b2&id=b4ea22252bb533f3f9225dfcab83d43a

 

And it doesn't give you a month to month breakdown. An article in Bangkok Post called 'All fatalities decline since start of pandemic' yesterday disclosed, probably by accident, that that stat is only from public hospitals in provinces. Cool anti-spin against NYT and BBC, though. It does not have deaths at home, which seem to be plentiful when comparing HDC agains DoPA, or private hospitals, you'll need to google that as TVF doesn't let me link.

 

I became aware of the HDC page on May 6th, when pneumonia deaths recorded from public provincial hospitals were 11,170 for the budget year. I then monitored it daily for a few weeks, where it first showed about double pneumonia deaths (over 100) per day for the first couple of weeks, after which it dropped below the yearly average that's around 60. Unfortunately it's not possible to search for historical numbers, Sept 2019 - Mar 2020 against yearly averages comparison would be interesting, even given the very limited scope and inaccuracy of the data.

 

you can link to the same content on bloomberg

 

Thailand is seeing fewer fatalities than usual during the Covid-19 epidemic, with deaths from all causes since October dropping by about 8% from a year earlier.

 

Overall, 111,950 deaths were reported within the public-hospital system during the first 267 days of fiscal 2020, which began nine months ago. That amounts to about 419 a day, compared with a daily average of 460 deaths during the year-earlier period, according to the Health Ministry’s database.

 

https://www.bloombergquint.com/onweb/thailand-sees-decline-in-deaths-amid-low-coronavirus-infections

 

they're saying total deaths over 9 months are down.  what data are the bbc using showing excess deaths?  the bloomberg article data exclude some sources, but then those sources would have been excluded from prior years as well. 

 

unfortunately, i cannot visit the hdc site.  won't open from here using a vpn.

 

 

Edited June 24, 2020 by ChouDoufu

[Ratchsima]

Thai woman with Covid19 in The Netherlands

https://youtu.be/sa8Dxct8nGk

 

Thai woman  with Covid19 in France

https://youtu.be/CL2vYb2N90k

 

In both of the vids, they said they were fortunately self-cured but with no chance of getting admit to the hospital or even see the doc tors at all. The woman in France had extremely high fever unable to go outside to drug store. No doctors ,no ambulance, no hospital bed available. She needed to clarwed her way to her neighbour's room to ask for the Paracetamol. She thought that was her last day on earth.

 

I am wondering if there is similar video like this with Farang having Covid 19 in Thailand.

 

I dont want to start with Thai people with Covid19 in UK and USA. Sooo many stories. It will take days to tell.

Edited June 24, 2020 by Ratchsima

[daveAustin]

On 6/23/2020 at 4:55 AM, webfact said:

Here's how it avoided disaster

Conveniently missing the many that died before it was a thing, under-reporting.

[4MyEgo]

9 hours ago, Yinn said:

Er, you getting your information from a natural healing consultant! ????

 

I listen to doctors, expert and scientist.

You probably believe also covid come from 5G?

Maybe Santa bring covid.

 

Good report from OP. Explain the MANY ways Thailand fight covid and win. 

People still die in Australia.

 

RIP

Here what they say about your healing guy...????????

 

https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-covid-19-vaccine-modify/false-claim-a-covid-19-vaccine-will-genetically-modify-humans-idUSKBN22U2BZ

 

Most claims refer to a version of a now-deleted, widely shared YouTube video of Dr Andrew Kaufman, a “natural healing consultant” (  here ) in an interview with Spiro Skouras, an online-personality and “independent researcher” with a popular YouTube channel. 

 

 

Mark Lynas, a visiting fellow at Cornell University’s Alliance for Science group, debunked the idea that a DNA vaccine could genetically modify an organism. Lynas told Reuters that no vaccine can genetically modify human DNA. 

“That’s just a myth, one often spread intentionally by anti-vaccination activists to deliberately generate confusion and mistrust,” he said

 

 

You know Yinn, when and if I am ever wrong about something, I am the first to admit that I was wrong, it helps me build who I am, warts and all, that said, do you honestly think Youtube took down the video because his take on things, "free speech" is a myth, or a concern the truth is getting out, I mean who do you think owns all of these sites ?

 

If advances in biotechnology over the last few decades has allowed scientist to modify the DNA of microorganisms, crops and animals, why wouldn't they be able to do genetically modify an organism through a vaccine ?

 

Dr Andrew Kaufman is not a spiritual healer as suggested in your post by Mark Lynas, you really should do your research and see what and who Mark Lynas is to compare eggs with eggs.

 

 https://www.nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/genetically-modified-organisms/#:~:text=Genetically%20Modified%20Organisms-,Genetically%20Modified%20Organisms,common%20in%20today's%20food%20supply.

 

Next thing you will probably tell me is that cloning doesn't exist because it's illegal ?

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_cloning#:~:text=Such a law%2C if passed,States which ban cloning completely.

 

If you really have the time, read this, it should give you an insight into another world, that is, if your prepared to take off your blinkers ????

 

https://medium.com/@achosenlife/10-things-a-conspiracy-theorist-taught-me-about-the-novel-coronavirus-98224413ed38

 

There is two sides, one is fabricated to make us believe what they want us to believe, and the other is the truth which they try and crush by calling them conspiracy theorists, mind you there are a few out there, has it ever occured to you that they, the mainstream media create some of these conspiracy theories and put them out there so that people see through what they are wanting them to see, and once that is done, the doubt is created and everybody going the other way, is a conspiracy theorist, as if to say the governments are there to protect and serve us, and never lie, yeh right, give me a break.

 

 

[Yinn]

19 minutes ago, 4MyEgo said:

and the other is the truth which they try and crush by calling them conspiracy theorists

Who is they? 

 

The aliens? Secret gang control the world? 

 

I not believe your “doctor” 

 

or the million other “conspiracy theorists”.

Paranoia. 

 

More than 58 Thais die already covid. Sure. 1000+

In Europe. Not in thailand.

The doctor refuse them. Terrible.

 

Post #163

 

watch the YouTube videos. Is real people, real situation. 

 

I think you not watch it, because you not want to believe. Admit that.

 

4 foreigner die covid in Thailand. (maybe THEY hide the other one right?)

1000+ thai die in Europe, New York etc because no medicine, doctor, ambulance refuse. 

How about that? 

 

Ps. Be very careful. THEY watching you. Because you important. Will crush you. 

 

[4MyEgo]

12 minutes ago, Yinn said:

Who is they? 

 

The aliens? Secret gang control the world? 

 

I not believe your “doctor” 

 

or the million other “conspiracy theorists”.

Paranoia. 

 

More than 58 Thais die already covid. Sure. 1000+

In Europe. Not in thailand.

The doctor refuse them. Terrible.

 

Post #163

 

watch the YouTube videos. Is real people, real situation. 

 

I think you not watch it, because you not want to believe. Admit that.

 

4 foreigner die covid in Thailand. (maybe THEY hide the other one right?)

1000+ thai die in Europe, New York etc because no medicine, doctor, ambulance refuse. 

How about that? 

 

Ps. Be very careful. THEY watching you. Because you important. Will crush you. 

 

[kingdong]

perhaps the air quality is so bad in thailand the virus can,t survive it

[Logosone]

14 hours ago, ChouDoufu said:

 

yes, there apparently were excess deaths (more than expected) for some reason.  no way at this point to prove they were covid19 deaths, so you have no basis for claiming so.  you, the intertubes expert, have no expertise, just a gut feeling.  you can factor in all those factors for which you have no actual numbers, so your math gets awful fuzzy. 

 

you might be right, but you might be wrong.  the most you can honestly say is "i don't know, but i suspect...." 

 

jinkies, i could just as easily say those excess deaths were heart attack victims who couldn't get to the hospital in time because the ambulance drivers were taking too many virus precautions.....and i'd have just the same justification for your claim.  my imagination.

Your post is a bit contradictory. One the one hand you say I have no "actual numbers", on the other you accept "yes, apparently there were excess deaths". 

 

Obviously there are actual numbers, provided by the BBC, which uses numbers given by the Thais themselves. As you concede, those numbers show there were excess deaths, which happened to start when this pandemic started.

 

We also have clear numbers that show that the number of road deaths was drastically reduced this year. By up to 6000, depending which annual estimate you take, I took the lowest one.

 

Clearly that distorted the excess death figure significantly. There would have been a lot more excess deaths if the usual road deaths had not fallen away due to the lockdown.

 

These claims are not based on "my imagination". They are based on the figures. They are based on the context. They are based on the balance of probabilities. If you look at countries across the globe they ALL had excess deaths during the time of this pandemics. With some countries, like France, that made an effort to test, you can see that the excess deaths align almost perfectly with the Covid19 death figure. In some like Belgium who clearly overcounted, the Covid 19 deaths are higher than the excess deaths. In others like Indonesia where insufficient testing was done the Covid 19 death figure does not line up with the excess figure on paper because Indonesia did not test enough. The conclusion that Indonesia just did not test enough, and its excess deaths are attributable to Covid19 is obvious. The same in Thailand. This is not "imagination". It is deduction.

 

Your claims about the internet echo that of another poster here, that because the BBC numbers appear on the internet they must be false. Your claim about me not having "expertise" is of course merely an attempt to attack me personally, rather than argument. I won't go down the road of some posters who will tell you they're more educated than you to win an argument, as I think that's a nonsense and unfair, but suffice to say I have appeared in the Supreme Court of England, I've worked at the worlds most prestigious law firms, including the oldest law firm on Wall Street and I can assure you I have some expertise in dissecting information and in deciding what is more likely on a balance of probabilities.

 

On the balance of probabilities, the likelihood of Thailand's Covid 19 death figure actually being 58 is very slim, when you look at the excess death figure, the period when it happened and the fact that Thailand has not tested 99% of its population. You just have to think it through. Of course this is not proof, in the sense there was no actual test for Covid19 which shows that figure aligns with excess deaths in Thailand. That's rather the point. The Thai authorities did not conduct the tests required. That is why we are reduced to having to make these deductive, detective investigations in order to make some sense. Because the Thais refused to provide the evidence. Naturally, in the absence of full Covid19 testing there is no proof where the excess deaths came from.

 

Given their timing, given their scale, and given the fact that almost all other countries had significant excess deaths, given the fact that Thailand has not tested 99% of its population, on the balance of probabilities it is more likely that the excess deaths are due to Covid19. It's not imagination. It's deduction.

 

 

 

 

[Logosone]

14 hours ago, richard_smith237 said:

 

Another good summary. 

 

Thailand has, for whatever reasons found itself ‘more protected’ from the virus than the UK.

 

While the UK may be over-reporting its Covid-19 deaths (died with instead of because of), Thailand may well be under-reporting its deaths. 

 

If Thailand had even half of the UK’s number it would be difficult to hide such deaths, social media would be rife with photos of such.

 

Thus, while Thailand’s Covid-19 deaths; currently at 58, are clearly extremely under-reported and when accounting for all the factors, i.e. less road deaths etc the ‘excess deaths' are still much lower than the UK. 

 

Something has helped keep the death toll lower - it may have been a more efficient lock down or other factors. 

 

 

Of course, the biggest issue with all of the statistics is that each country is pedalling its own cool-aid which makes an accurate and honest evaluation somewhat difficult. 

 

 

 

 

If you look back, Thailand declared a state of emergency on 26 March. That was actually later than the EU, which did so on 16 March. And the EU was already late. Thailand then declared a curfew on 3 April. Remember Thailand was one of the first to have a case, on 13 January the first case was identified.

There were cases throughout February, mostly attributed to returnees from China. On 6 March there was the Lumpinee outbreak. 

 

Thailand suspended flights on 4th April. The EU did so on 17 March. The US as well

 

The Thai government was sharply criticised by many for various aspects of its initial response to the crisis. The government's inconsistent policy over international travel and quarantine requirements, indecisiveness and slowness to act, and poor communication—many official announcements were made available to the public, only to be quickly retracted or contradicted by other government units, and later changed, all this led to much criticism. The abrupt closure of Bangkok businesses prompted tens of thousands of workers to travel to their hometowns, risking further spread and reflecting the failure among agencies to coordinate a unified response.

 

I think it is safe to say that if anything protected Thailand it was not the government response. In fact many of the measures that were done in Thailand, like taking temperature, would have limited usefulness. Since we now know asymptomatic carriers can spread the disease. Equally the wearing of masks, UK SAGE government advisers have said themselves there is little evidence it has any impact. Indeed a major UK study later confirmed this, though other studies disagreed it is fair to say the evidence on masks is mixed at best. Distributing handgel in the villages, okay. From what I have seen perhaps the only Thai measure that could have had a significant impact was the tracing effort.

 

Nevertheless, the tracing probably also does not explain why Thailand, at worst, only had some 8400 cases, probably somewhat less, I suspect between 3000-6000. It is very perplexing, I agree Richard, because of course Thailand was one of the first to have a case, so had little time to react. And when it reacted it reacted late, in a contradictory manner, and with measures that do not really have much impact.

 

So how to explain the relatively few cases in Thailand? We can look at the younger population in Thailand, how they also had less flu deaths, and such, but it is still unsatisfactory. Of course academics who looked at why Thailand had fewer flu deaths, concluded that the data in Thailand was so poor that one could not explain it, the death certificates were unreliable in close to 60% of cases.

 

If you remember, Richard, when we looked at Covid19 in the past, you had mentioned population density as a factor in Covid19 spread. I recognised that clearly it was a factor, but I was perplexed why some less densely populated areas were less affected than some very densely populated areas. Heinsberg, for example, had, per capita, more cases than Stuttgart or Cologne.

 

So I could only explain it with one factor: Chance. Given all the factors you still need one ingredient for a major outbreak, the actual infected and superspreader events. What happened in Heinsberg was that people came very close together at a carneval. Similar to what happened at the Lumpinee boxing stadium.

 

So why was the UK affected so much worse? After all the population of the UK is fairly similar to Thailand, Thailand is closer to China, more Chinese tourists.

 

I think it's because the British like to party so much. Because they attend sports events so much. You need very close, carneval, stadium, concert contact. In addition Britain was assailed by a whole number of affected areas, Italy, Spain, Germany, China.  

 

I don't think it was lockdown, that kept the numbers low in Thailand, because if anyone had a tough lockdown, that was the UK. It did not result in small numbers. Thailand put in place its lockdown later than the UK.

 

[ChouDoufu]

1 hour ago, Logosone said:

Your post is a bit contradictory. One the one hand you say I have no "actual numbers", on the other you accept "yes, apparently there were excess deaths". 

 

Obviously there are actual numbers, provided by the BBC, which uses numbers given by the Thais themselves. As you concede, those numbers show there were excess deaths, which happened to start when this pandemic started.

 

We also have clear numbers that show that the number of road deaths was drastically reduced this year. By up to 6000, depending which annual estimate you take, I took the lowest one.

 

Clearly that distorted the excess death figure significantly. There would have been a lot more excess deaths if the usual road deaths had not fallen away due to the lockdown.

 

These claims are not based on "my imagination". They are based on the figures. They are based on the context. They are based on the balance of probabilities. If you look at countries across the globe they ALL had excess deaths during the time of this pandemics. With some countries, like France, that made an effort to test, you can see that the excess deaths align almost perfectly with the Covid19 death figure. In some like Belgium who clearly overcounted, the Covid 19 deaths are higher than the excess deaths. In others like Indonesia where insufficient testing was done the Covid 19 death figure does not line up with the excess figure on paper because Indonesia did not test enough. The conclusion that Indonesia just did not test enough, and its excess deaths are attributable to Covid19 is obvious. The same in Thailand. This is not "imagination". It is deduction.

 

Your claims about the internet echo that of another poster here, that because the BBC numbers appear on the internet they must be false. Your claim about me not having "expertise" is of course merely an attempt to attack me personally, rather than argument. I won't go down the road of some posters who will tell you they're more educated than you to win an argument, as I think that's a nonsense and unfair, but suffice to say I have appeared in the Supreme Court of England, I've worked at the worlds most prestigious law firms, including the oldest law firm on Wall Street and I can assure you I have some expertise in dissecting information and in deciding what is more likely on a balance of probabilities.

 

On the balance of probabilities, the likelihood of Thailand's Covid 19 death figure actually being 58 is very slim, when you look at the excess death figure, the period when it happened and the fact that Thailand has not tested 99% of its population. You just have to think it through. Of course this is not proof, in the sense there was no actual test for Covid19 which shows that figure aligns with excess deaths in Thailand. That's rather the point. The Thai authorities did not conduct the tests required. That is why we are reduced to having to make these deductive, detective investigations in order to make some sense. Because the Thais refused to provide the evidence. Naturally, in the absence of full Covid19 testing there is no proof where the excess deaths came from.

 

Given their timing, given their scale, and given the fact that almost all other countries had significant excess deaths, given the fact that Thailand has not tested 99% of its population, on the balance of probabilities it is more likely that the excess deaths are due to Covid19. It's not imagination. It's deduction.

 

 

 

 

 

my "concession" originally was to grant that the report of "excess deaths" was true.  it's on the interwebs so it must be, right?  bbc claims to be using thai government numbers, but without a link to a source.  guess we just have to believe they have the correct numbers from the government, and the government numbers are valid, and that the bbc writer understood the information. 

 

but the report in the source that shall not be named (same content in bloomies) reports deaths are actually down during the latest 9-month period, also using government data.  same data?  but we don't accept thai government numbers anyway, so why accept as truth a report based on thai government numbers when it claims something we agree with?

 

my remark as to "imaginary numbers" was your comparing thai covid numbers to other countries when countries are not identical, and your many "gotta consider this's" with no numbers to input other than guesses.

 

no, silly, i'm not attacking you personally by saying you're not an expert in the field.  that is true.  i also am not an expert.  we're just a bunch of bored interwebs sleuths speculating about thai numbers with no background, just a bunch of random links we can point to.  appeared in court you say?  wow!  well, i was once in the audience of a live taping of the sailor bob show.  that's a wash!

 

i would agree 58 deaths is probably incorrect, given what is known about traffic fatality accounting, but i wouldn't speculate any further.  many of those 58 covid deaths could have been false positives, right?  now unless we want to count dropped cell-phone subscriptions, or urn deliveries, or pour over satellite photos of hospital parking lots.....

[DrTuner]

21 minutes ago, ChouDoufu said:

 

 bbc claims to be using thai government numbers, but without a link to a source.  guess we just have to believe they have the correct numbers from the government, and the government numbers are valid, and that the bbc writer understood the information. 

 

but the report in the source that shall not be named (same content in bloomies) reports deaths are actually down during the latest 9-month period, also using government data.  same data?

No, not same data. Again Thais cherrypicked the sources. HDC, which you apparently can't access ftom China, is the Bangkok Post/Bloomberg source. It is the MoPH data of deaths from public hospitals in provinces only.

 

BBC and NYT got their data from Department of Provincial Administration that handles all death certificates, not just hospitals. This BTW gives us the number of people that died in home or private hospitals in the provinces. BBC lists the source and NYT confirmed it to be the same upon query by on of our TVF members.

 

HDC does not include the Bangkok Metropolitan area. Unknown if DoPA does, but from the name only, probably not. BKK seems to have it's own systems. Which would mean BBC/NYT doesn't include BKK.

 

Here you go ( at least GoldenFrog has VPN with Thai server )

https://stat.bora.dopa.go.th/download/list.php

https://hdcservice.moph.go.th/hdc/reports/report.php?source=formated/death298.php&cat_id=491672679818600345dc1833920051b2&id=b4ea22252bb533f3f9225dfcab83d43a

[Logosone]

37 minutes ago, ChouDoufu said:

 

my "concession" originally was to grant that the report of "excess deaths" was true.  it's on the interwebs so it must be, right?  bbc claims to be using thai government numbers, but without a link to a source.  guess we just have to believe they have the correct numbers from the government, and the government numbers are valid, and that the bbc writer understood the information. 

 

but the report in the source that shall not be named (same content in bloomies) reports deaths are actually down during the latest 9-month period, also using government data.  same data?  but we don't accept thai government numbers anyway, so why accept as truth a report based on thai government numbers when it claims something we agree with?

 

my remark as to "imaginary numbers" was your comparing thai covid numbers to other countries when countries are not identical, and your many "gotta consider this's" with no numbers to input other than guesses.

 

no, silly, i'm not attacking you personally by saying you're not an expert in the field.  that is true.  i also am not an expert.  we're just a bunch of bored interwebs sleuths speculating about thai numbers with no background, just a bunch of random links we can point to.  appeared in court you say?  wow!  well, i was once in the audience of a live taping of the sailor bob show.  that's a wash!

 

i would agree 58 deaths is probably incorrect, given what is known about traffic fatality accounting, but i wouldn't speculate any further.  many of those 58 covid deaths could have been false positives, right?  now unless we want to count dropped cell-phone subscriptions, or urn deliveries, or pour over satellite photos of hospital parking lots.....

If you read on, at the bottom of the BBC report, they disclose that the statistical supervisor is Robert Cuffe, the head of statistics at the bbc, and that the figures were from the Thailand Department of Provincial Administration (see "Sources").

 

They also disclose that whilst Robert Cuffe had statistical oversight the team that worked on the data or made contributions included: Stéphane Helleringer, Associate Professor, Johns Hopkins University; Dr Bernardo Lanza Queiroz, Associate Professor of Demography, University Federal de Minas Gerais; Dr Hazhir Rahmandad, Associate Professor, MIT Sloan School of Management; Navid Ghaffarzadegan, Associate Professor, Virginia Tech University; Mesut Erzurumluoglu, Research Associate, MRC Epidemiology Unit, University of Cambridge; Dr Yu Korekawa, Director for International Research and Cooperation, National Institute of Population and Social Security Research.

 

So this was not just one single BBC author. I think it's safe to say they got the right source, and were competent in transcribing its data.

 

It is thus not correct to say the BBC did not disclose their source, they certainly did.

 

Indeed they state that figures are preliminary, and can change, but that is not a major issue.

 

I think the death figures overall from all causes are more reliable for one reason: They require no extra effort like testing. It is literally just recording deaths. There is less reason not to do it, it is easier and therefore more likely to be accurate.

 

I think you completely misrepresent what I wrote when you say that the comparison to other countries' excess death is "imaginary". Those figures for other countries' excess deaths are not imaginary, again they are very real figures. And of course if you consider that some countries can account for 100% of the excess death by covid death figures, and those countries happen to be countries that have tested more, whereas some countries can only account for a small number of excess deaths by covid 19 death figures and those countries happen to have tested less  you don't need to be a genius to figure out the reason. Lack of testing. That is not imaginary, it is deduction.

 

Indeed some of the 58 deaths could have been false positives, but these are rather unimportant points, when you consider the scale of lack of testing, in that Thailand has not tested 99% of its population. Clearly this does not affect the reality that Covid 19 deaths are significantly higher and the 58 deaths figure is just the result of lack of testing.

 

I have never mentioned dropped phone calls "urn deliveries" or "parking lots", this is just another attempt to tarnish the argument by reference to other non related unlikely things. Which again, I have never once mentioned. It's called a "red herring" argument.

 

I'll look at your other link though, just in case.

Edited June 25, 2020 by Logosone

[DrTuner]

BTW I've been dropping the source links to MoPH and various Thai government departments here for months. I take it very few have ever actually opened them? There's not much coherent data (a symptom of a seriously fragmented system, MoPH's underunits each seem to have their own hodgepodge websites with mostly ancient data), but some like the HDC are near realtime.

 

It's just about as transparent as 20M of granite. With a lot of detective work one can see some bits of information. What was Thailand's position in the transparency index again?

 

Normally I wouldn't care that much when it's just Thais throwing smokescreens to other Thais, let the children play, but this virus situation affected the evil farangs like myself.

Edited June 25, 2020 by DrTuner

[JCP108]

4 hours ago, Yinn said:

 

 

Ps. Be very careful. THEY watching you. Because you important. Will crush you. 

 

Wut?

[tlandtday]

more comedy... gotta love fiction...

[n00dle]

On 6/23/2020 at 11:20 AM, robblok said:

Strange that indonesia has countless infections. That rules out climate. The hash lockdown is what saved us. 

 

I

you had hash?

damn, im jealous.

 

[Logosone]

13 hours ago, ChouDoufu said:

 

you can link to the same content on bloomberg

 

Thailand is seeing fewer fatalities than usual during the Covid-19 epidemic, with deaths from all causes since October dropping by about 8% from a year earlier.

 

Overall, 111,950 deaths were reported within the public-hospital system during the first 267 days of fiscal 2020, which began nine months ago. That amounts to about 419 a day, compared with a daily average of 460 deaths during the year-earlier period, according to the Health Ministry’s database.

 

https://www.bloombergquint.com/onweb/thailand-sees-decline-in-deaths-amid-low-coronavirus-infections

 

they're saying total deaths over 9 months are down.  what data are the bbc using showing excess deaths?  the bloomberg article data exclude some sources, but then those sources would have been excluded from prior years as well. 

 

unfortunately, i cannot visit the hdc site.  won't open from here using a vpn.

 

 

Okay so I looked at your link, and I'm afraid I come to the same conclusion as DrTurner above.

 

The article seems to refer to  deaths that were reported within Thailand’s public-hospital system, which it then admits only amount to 10% of the total. 

 

That Bloomberg article was just written by one person, Randy Thanthong-Knight also known as Siraphob Thanthong-Knight. Randy is currently a reporter at Bloomberg News, covering energy, commodities and politics.

https://siraphobknight.com/about/

 

He's a very interesting and smart Thai guy, who speaks excellent English, however, he has not bothered to look at the Thailand Department of Provincial Administration statistics. He only looked at statistics for public hospitals which only account for 10% of total deaths at most as he says himself in his own article.

 

Whilst Randy's reporting of the public-hospital system figures is interesting let us not forget the experience in the West. Many of the deaths were not at hospitals but at elderly care facilities. The figures Randy provides are not for all hospitals.

 

It's very simple, the figures Randy gives are for public hospitals and only deaths therein. At most those hospitals deaths account for 10% of deaths of overall deaths, as Randy makes clear. However, the BBC figure refers to ALL deaths, since the Thailand Department of Provincial Administration registers all deaths, give or take delays. It is therefore more reliable.

 

Personally I have more confidence in the BBC team that provided its source and could call on several academics to help interpret the data, and refers to the authority that logs all deaths, though Randy is no doubt a competent reporter otherwise he admits he refers to data from public hospital deaths only, so only 10% of overall deaths at the very most.

 

Edited June 25, 2020 by Logosone

[Logosone]

1 hour ago, DrTuner said:

BTW I've been dropping the source links to MoPH and various Thai government departments here for months. I take it very few have ever actually opened them? There's not much coherent data (a symptom of a seriously fragmented system, MoPH's underunits each seem to have their own hodgepodge websites with mostly ancient data), but some like the HDC are near realtime.

 

It's just about as transparent as 20M of granite. With a lot of detective work one can see some bits of information. What was Thailand's position in the transparency index again?

 

Normally I wouldn't care that much when it's just Thais throwing smokescreens to other Thais, let the children play, but this virus situation affected the evil farangs like myself.

I have seen you and another poster above, have looked at the actual data. It was of course your post that first got me clued in on the fact that excess deaths in Thailand during the pandemic are in the thousands. 

 

So don't think nobody reads your posts or your sources. Some of us do.

[ChouDoufu]

7 minutes ago, Logosone said:

Okay so I looked at your link, and I'm afraid I come to the same conclusion as DrTurner above.

 

The article seems to refer to  deaths that were reported within Thailand’s public-hospital system, which it then admits only amount to 10% of the total. 

 

That Bloomberg article was just written by one person, Randy Thanthong-Knight also known as Siraphob Thanthong-Knight. Randy is currently a reporter at Bloomberg News, covering energy, commodities and politics.

https://siraphobknight.com/about/

 

He's a very interesting and smart Thai guy, who speaks excellent English, however, he has not bothered to look at the Thailand Department of Provincial Administration statistics. He only looked at statistics.

 

Whilst Randy's reporting of the public-hospital system figures is interesting let us not forget the experience in the West. Many of the deaths were not at hospitals but at elderly care facilities. The figures Randy provides are not for all hospitals.

 

Personally I have more confidence in the BBC team that provided its source and could call on several academics to help interpret the data, though Randy is no doubt a competent reporter otherwise.

 

 

Thailand’s overall figures on death in the nine months from Oct. 1 aren’t broken out by month. They also don’t include data from private and university medical facilities, which account for about 10% of the total, and data from some hospitals can lag by as much as 45 days.

 

i read that as the government figures he used include about 90% of the total, but exclude the approximately 10% from private/uni.   and is he not comparing the latest 9-month period using one particular method of accounting excluding 10% of the total, to a previous 9-month period using the same numbers that exclude the same 10%?  (speculation on my part)