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

[LomSak27]

On 6/23/2020 at 2:16 PM, Bender Rodriguez said:

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

MUSLIM country, covered from head to toe...

 

and when it is hot and you can stay indoors ... you don't get UV sun

 

If you a re outside you greatly reduce the chances versus being in an enclosed space (and get exposed). Strange little factoid that probably accounts for a lot, a real lot, of Thailand's good luck. That means my lunch noodle shop, where I get my haircut, the morning and evening markets I go to are all open air or only partially enclosed, with fans a whirring.

 

Turns out that little fact is HUGE.

 

 

 

 

Edited June 25, 2020 by LomSak27

[Logosone]

18 minutes ago, ChouDoufu said:

 

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)

 

 

 

 

When Randy writes "Overall, 111,950 deaths were reported within Thailand’s 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.", I think he is giving us a clue as what figures he is looking at. The public hospital system figure.

 

So his claim that the average is lower, would apply only in the figures from the public hospital system figure. Maybe this has to do with the fact that because of Covid19 people in fact are scared to go into hospitals? Because they're afraid of catching the virus there.

 

When he then writes "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 take that to mean that because the overall figures on death from the Thailand Department of Provincial Administration are not broken down in months and do not include the 10% attributable to private hospitals this was the reason he focused on the 10% from public hospitals.

 

That is the figure he alludes to in the second sentence, is it not "Overall, 111,950 deaths were reported within Thailand’s public-hospital system". So his conclusion about lower averages could only stem from these public hospital figures, since he claims the overall figures are not broken down in months.

 

Edited June 25, 2020 by Logosone

[JCP108]

2 minutes ago, Logosone said:

When Randy writes "Overall, 111,950 deaths were reported within Thailand’s 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.", I think he is giving us a clue as what figures he is looking at. The public hospital system figure.

 

So his claim that the average is lower, would apply only in the figures from the public hospital system figure. Maybe this has to do with the fact that because of Covid19 people in fact are scared to go into hospitals? Because they're afraid of catching the virus there.

 

When he then writes "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 take that to mean that because the overall figures on death from the Thailand Department of Provincial Administration are not broken down in months and do not include the 10% attributable to private hospitals this was the reason he focused on the 10% from public hospitals.

 

That is the figure he alludes to in the second sentence, is it not "Overall, 111,950 deaths were reported within Thailand’s public-hospital system". So his conclusion about lower averages could only stem from these public hospital figures, since he claims the overall figures are not broken down in months.

 

Also, don't most Thai people die at home and not in a private or public hospital? About 40-45k people die in the country each month according the data we've seen recently. So, if you subtract a typical month of hospital deaths, you could get the percentage of those who die outside the hospitals.

[ChouDoufu]

5 minutes ago, Logosone said:

When Randy writes "Overall, 111,950 deaths were reported within Thailand’s 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.", I think he is giving us a clue as what figures he is looking at. The public hospital system figure.

 

So his claim that the average is lower, would apply only in the figures from the public hospital system figure. Maybe this has to do with the fact that because of Covid19 people in fact are scared to go into hospitals? Because they're afraid of catching the virus there.

 

When he then writes "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 take that to mean that because the overall figures on death from the Thailand Department of Provincial Administration are not broken down in months and do not include the 10% attributable to private hospitals this was the reason he focused on the 10% from public hospitals.

 

That is the figure he alludes to in the second sentence, is it not "Overall, 111,950 deaths were reported within Thailand’s public-hospital system". So his conclusion about lower averages could only stem from these public hospital figures, since he claims the overall figures are not broken down in months.

 

10% from private hospitals, 10% from public hospitals.  and the other 80%?

[Logosone]

11 minutes ago, JCP108 said:

Also, don't most Thai people die at home and not in a private or public hospital? About 40-45k people die in the country each month according the data we've seen recently. So, if you subtract a typical month of hospital deaths, you could get the percentage of those who die outside the hospitals.

Then there's that, that is why I don't think the public hospital deaths are representative.

 

At best they only account for 10% of deaths, as Randy admits in his article. 

 

On the contrary, because of the Covid19 pandemic, where is the last place you'd want to be? In hospital. Everyone would be concerned about catching the virus in hospitals during a pandemic. I'd not be surprised if less people went to hospital. But to extrapolate from that, less deaths recorded in public hospitals, therefore less deaths overall, is clearly wrong and is not supported by the data from the Thailand Department of Provincial Administration. As the BBC tells us, there are excess deaths in the region of 2400 (not cleaning it with the lack of 6000 or so road deaths due to lockdown). So there is no question of lower deaths over all. There are excess deaths.

 

Even if the Thailand Department Provincial Administration figures do not account for 100% of the figures, but only for 90% it is still a better measure than the public hospital figures, which at most account only for 10%.

[Logosone]

20 minutes ago, ChouDoufu said:

10% from private hospitals, 10% from public hospitals.  and the other 80%?

It would have to be everything else, deaths on roads, deaths at home, all those deaths logged by the Thailand Department of Provincial Administration. Including people who die of Covid19 at home or in elderly care facilities to the extent these exist in Thailand. Though without having been tested nobody would know they died of Covid19.

 

Edited June 25, 2020 by Logosone

[DrTuner]

52 minutes ago, ChouDoufu said:

 

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)

Excludes home deaths as well. I know you can't access the HDC site, but there's another menu in there where the status reports of data transmission from hospitals can be checked. Probably excel files. It's the data from public hospitals in provinces only. 

 

I'll do comparison of HDC / DoPA for budget year 2019 to see what proportion dies at home or at private hospitals. Unless somebody beats me to it.

[Logosone]

If you factor in the 6000 road deaths that have not happened midpoint in 2020 due to lockdown, and you add that to the 2400 excess deaths the BBC have reported for Thailand, it is probably not unreasonable to estimate actual Thai death toll from Covid 19 between 3000-7000.

 

If it were at the higher end of that scale, 7000, then with a population of 70 million that is a miniscule figure on the face of it, however, when you compare it to Germany, which has a population of 80 million and 8900 deaths it looks about right.

 

Therefore that would not be a great success story, but certainly not a story of greater impact like in the UK. 

 

The question still arises, even if Thailand's death toll is placed into a more common and believable context, why have certain countries like Germany, Thailand, and many others not suffered the greater impact that was seen in the UK or Italy?

 

I do not understand why people keep saying it was because Thailand put a lockdown in place early, they did not, Thailand put the lockdown in place after the UK did.

 

 

[ChouDoufu]

18 minutes ago, Logosone said:

It would have to be everything else, deaths on roads, deaths at home, all those deaths logged by the Thailand Department of Provincial Administration. Including people who die of Covid19 at home or in elderly care facilities to the extent these exist in Thailand. Though without having been tested nobody would know they died of Covid19.

 

in this case, i'd have to throw out the BP/bloomers article as too imprecise.  as written, the author is implying to the average reader that the figures he uses account for 90% of all deaths.  my back of the envelope calculations tell me 112k would account for a little over 25%.

[warcy]

On 6/23/2020 at 11:35 AM, connda said:

It avoided disaster by not testing thus maintaining the illusion that Thailand was Covid-free?
Are there more Covid-19 cases in Thailand then being reported?  

 

I think most people who are skeptical of China and Thailand numbers are just sore losers who won't want to admit that their home countries did worse than these two countries. 

 

Need I remind you which countries has the worst virus cases in the world? Most are European countries and USA.

 

You really think that there are asymptomatic cases like those fear-mongering articles probably written by Reuters which is American controlled?

 

That's just like saying that you have contracted the flu virus but you won't have cold symptoms. LOL.

 

The amount of fear-mongering articles in western media is pumped out and paid by the western governments.

Edited June 25, 2020 by warcy

[warcy]

20 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. 

 

 

 

Another denial case.

 

If Thailand wanted to hide , it would be hard to hide considering the number of cameras ready to take snaps of dead photos. Everyone has a camera phone now unlike few decades ago.

 

Thailand might as well under-report its accident rate too instead of reporting it as the top two accident rate in the world.

 

The main reason for the spread is that Europeans and Americans don't want to use basic sense like wearing masks and don't want to be restricted in their movements like Thai people and Chinese people (curfew, no alcohol, no parties etc). 

 

In America and Europe, individual freedom is more important than community. That's the difference between Asian and Europeans.

 

Edited June 25, 2020 by warcy

[JeffersLos]

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

The hash lockdown is what saved us. 

yes. 

[473geo]

6 minutes ago, warcy said:

 

I think most people who are skeptical of China and Thailand numbers are just sore losers who won't want to admit that their home countries did worse than these two countries. 

 

Need I remind you which countries has the worst virus cases in the world? Most are European countries and USA.

 

You really think that there are asymptomatic cases like those fear-mongering articles probably written by Reuters which is American controlled?

 

That's just like saying that you have contracted the flu virus but you won't have cold symptoms. LOL.

 

The amount of fear-mongering articles in western media is pumped out and paid by the western governments.

Apart from the serial complainers and those with political agendas there is not a great deal of concern regarding the handling of the crisis in the UK and rather relief that we are brave enough to move on quickly

Not difficult to accept this virus arrived in the depths of winter, the height of the flu season, and may well have arrived and began to circulate well in advance of any preventative measure time frame.

Also not difficult to note that as the UK and Europe bask in temperatures of 30+ degrees the death rate has plummeted

In the main the UK governments England especially will be judged as to how they come out of this virus financially rather than controlling the spread and death rate. The way they are confidently moving forward, while others dither, is refreshing and bodes well for the future.

[Logosone]

22 minutes ago, warcy said:

 

I think most people who are skeptical of China and Thailand numbers are just sore losers who won't want to admit that their home countries did worse than these two countries. 

 

Need I remind you which countries has the worst virus cases in the world? Most are European countries and USA.

 

That's a load of nonsense of course, even Chinese studies published in the Lancet have shown that China's numbers totally lack credibility and were under-reported by a factor of 400% at least.

 

Nobody, but nobody, trusts Chinese numbers least of all the Chinese.

 

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/23/china-coronavirus-cases-might-have-been-four-times-official-figure-says-study

 

The same of course applies to Thailand. You need to have your head examined if you believe 58 people and no more died due to Covid 19 in country with 70,000,000. For some reason people trust Thailand's numbers though, it's baffling. Even if they admit that 99% of the population was not tested.

 

It's right across the board in Asia, looking at Japan too, the under-testing has also produced wholly incredible figures. Like China, Japan was forced to redraft its criteria for doing testing. Like China, and Thailand, Japan's figures are wholly inaccurate and lack credibility.

 

The Asians have basically not bothered to test on a meaningful scale, bar one or two exceptions, whereas in Europe and the USA there was a significant effort to test. So obviously the case numbers will be higher since greater testing identifieds greater numbers.

 

It's not Europeans who are the losers, but the Asians. They lack all credibility, they do not know the true extent of cases or have no inkling of the likely scale. Instead they pat themselves on the back on how marvelous their figures are.

 

Uganda, Nigeria and Lesotho are no doubt doing the same, having even better figures.

 

Guess why? Also miniscule testing.

Edited June 25, 2020 by Logosone

[A1Str8]

What disaster? ???????????? People actually fell for this??

[JCP108]

19 minutes ago, warcy said:

 

Another denial case.

 

If Thailand wanted to hide , it would be hard to hide considering the number of cameras ready to take snaps of dead photos. Everyone has a camera phone now unlike few decades ago.

 

Thailand might as well under-report its accident rate too instead of reporting it as the top two accident rate in the world.

 

The main reason for the spread is that Europeans and Americans don't want to use basic sense like wearing masks and don't want to be restricted in their movements like Thai people and Chinese people (curfew, no alcohol, no parties etc). 

 

In America and Europe, individual freedom is more important than community. That's the difference between Asian and Europeans.

 

Someone would have to point their camera at the public health data that is being kept private for such a photo to help. If some poor person who has a sick or dying family member takes a photo, we're all still in the dark in re the numbers.

[DrTuner]

1 hour ago, Logosone said:

For some reason people trust Thailand's numbers though, it's baffling.

Not baffling at all, some people think there was a dude that walked on water and turned water into wine. It's because they desperately want to have faith in something. Some people are simply born that way.

[DrTuner]

1 hour ago, ChouDoufu said:

in this case, i'd have to throw out the BP/bloomers article as too imprecise.  as written, the author is implying to the average reader that the figures he uses account for 90% of all deaths.  my back of the envelope calculations tell me 112k would account for a little over 25%.

It's shoddy reporting, they could have put in the title as "Deaths in hospitals in Thailand decrease during the lockdown" and be more truthful. The data does have value, it shows that a) people didn't croak in public hospitals in large quantities b) there is some actual data available.

Edited June 25, 2020 by DrTuner

[bluesofa]

11 minutes ago, DrTuner said:

Not baffling at all, some people think there was a dude that walked on water and turned water into wine. It's because they desperately want to have faith in something. Some people are simply born that way.

I've done that before.

Last week I found $10 in the road. I thought, "What would Jesus have done?"

So I turned it into wine.

[Logosone]

25 minutes ago, DrTuner said:

Not baffling at all, some people think there was a dude that walked on water and turned water into wine. It's because they desperately want to have faith in something. Some people are simply born that way.

It's just it is so very obvious. Thailand has 70 million people or thereabouts. They've tested less than 1%. It had the first case outside China. It has a huge Chinese contingent of residents and a lot of Chinese tourists. 

 

How anyone can believe they only have 58 deaths is a bit mistyfing. Then you show there's excess deaths in the thousands, and still some people wax lyrical about the village volunteers providing hand gel. It's a bit odd.

[SkyFax]

12 minutes ago, Logosone said:

Then you show there's excess deaths in the thousands

... and there also excess deaths from the same source in the thousands SEP-DEC 2019 and I don't know that anyone anywhere yet has suggested that those deaths would be COVID-19 related

[DrTuner]

Ok, so I took HDC data:

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

 

In budget year 2019 (1.October 2018 - 30. September 2019, correct me if I'm wrong), deaths reported by public hospitals, including inpatients and outpatients (autopsies, probably), total deaths in provinces: 148,886

 

DoPA data, unfortunately it wasn't per month from their website and could be calendar year, in any case it should be in the ballpark, total deaths excluding Bangkok (I simply deleted it in excel) : 218619

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

 

218619 - ‭148886‬ = 69,733 

 

Now, there was a 10% number quoted, so that didn't seem right .. so I'll take the NYT data that also originates from DoPA:

https://github.com/nytimes/covid-19-data/blob/master/excess-deaths/deaths.csv

 

566,026 in budget year 2019. I think I'll trust this one more as somebody has vetted it and the one on DoPA's site could have some filters applied. Also seems to match with https://knoema.com/atlas/Thailand/Death-rate ( BTW that also shows more people are dying each year - probably because of increasing traffic deaths) .

 

Ok soooooo.... 566,026 - 148,886‬ = ‭417,140.‬ That's how many die in private hospitals or at home without an autopsy. ‭417,140‬/566,026 = ~74%. So roughly 3/4 of all deaths are at home or at a private hospital without autopsy. 

 

That would be the demographic where excess deaths that have never been tested for COVID is. 

 

BTW the social media gurus must be very busy getting over 400k alarms for each home death every year.

 

EDIT: That's just the provinces. Bangkok probably adds something like 15/70  = ~20% or so if the population in BKK Metropolitan is 15M. Somebody could give the actual number here, thanks.

 

Edited June 25, 2020 by DrTuner

[JCP108]

7 minutes ago, SkyFax said:

... and there also excess deaths from the same source in the thousands SEP-DEC 2019 and I don't know that anyone anywhere yet has suggested that those deaths would be COVID-19 related

Any other health issues being reported that might explain it better?

[DrTuner]

BTW I found while digging into the DoPA data that they do record BKK Metro as well. So the BBC & NYT does include all of Thailand.

[SkyFax]

14 minutes ago, JCP108 said:

22 minutes ago, SkyFax said:

... and there also excess deaths from the same source in the thousands SEP-DEC 2019 and I don't know that anyone anywhere yet has suggested that those deaths would be COVID-19 related

Any other health issues being reported that might explain it better?

The first instance of COVID-19 in the Milan sewers is DEC 18 2019 and COVID samples were found in Milan and Turin in January and February 2020. Samples taken in October and November 2019 tested negative.

 

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-italy-sewage/italy-sewage-study-suggests-covid-19-was-there-in-december-2019-idUSKBN23Q1J9
 

[JCP108]

6 minutes ago, SkyFax said:

The first instance of COVID-19 in the Milan sewers is DEC 18 2019 and COVID samples were found in Milan and Turin in January and February 2020. Samples taken in October and November 2019 tested negative.

 

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-italy-sewage/italy-sewage-study-suggests-covid-19-was-there-in-december-2019-idUSKBN23Q1J9
 

Wonder how many people have to be infected for the sewer test to return positive? Then, I wonder how long it needs to be in that locality to spread enough so that that number of people get infected. Maybe it was in Italy in October? Earlier? Any reasons to believe it would have gotten a better start in Italy before Thailand?

[JCP108]

The increase in numbers of deaths in 2019 compared to 2018 doesn't seem to be explained by available data for road deaths in Thailand.

 

http://www.thairsc.com/eng/

 

(BTW, Thailand is now #3 in the world for road deaths behind the Dominican Republic and Nuie [never heard of it].)

 

 

Edited June 25, 2020 by JCP108

[SkyFax]

4 minutes ago, JCP108 said:

Maybe it was in Italy in October? Earlier? Any reasons to believe it would have gotten a better start in Italy before Thailand?

As said above:  I don't know that anyone anywhere yet has suggested that those deaths (SEP-DEC 2019) would be COVID-19 related

[JCP108]

2 minutes ago, SkyFax said:

As said above:  I don't know that anyone anywhere yet has suggested that those deaths (SEP-DEC 2019) would be COVID-19 related

Well, other than those convinced that it's all a big hoax, people who think Covid-19 is causing an uptick in deaths in countries where the infection has spread might suggest that until they, or others, come up with competing explanations. 

[SkyFax]

An analysis released on Thursday said samples taken in Milan and Turin on Dec. 18 showed the presence of the SARS-Cov-2 virus.

“This research may help us understand the beginning of virus circulation in Italy,” said Giuseppina La Rosa, an expert in environmental wastewater at the Italian National Institute of Health who co-led the research.

 

La Rosa said the presence of the virus in the Italian waste samples did not “automatically imply that the main transmission chains that led to the development of the epidemic in our country originated from these very first cases”.

 

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-italy-sewage/italy-sewage-study-suggests-covid-19-was-there-in-december-2019-idUSKBN23Q1J9