Thailand’s dilemma: how to shore up economy as infections surge

[johnjac]

What dilemma? Just open up everything like they did in Texas:

 

https://www.zerohedge.com/covid-19/texas-ended-lockdowns-mask-mandates-now-locked-down-states-are-where-covid-growing-most

 

How many people have died with Covid? How many have died of Covid?

 

How many have died in traffic the last year?

 

Questions, questions... 

 

 

[talahtnut]

Freedom of information requests from 3 councils in the UK on burials

and cremations since 2015 seem to suggest people live longer now

that we have the dreaded 'covid'.

This is easy research you can do yourself.

 

[Poet]

10 hours ago, ftpjtm said:

Who is going to come to a country in lockdown with no end in sight?

Vaccinated people eager for an exotic vacation after 15 months in lockdown.
 

10 hours ago, ftpjtm said:

I'm in the US now getting my Pfizer, and won't return to Thailand until;

 

- I get my 3rd Pfizer booster shot in September or October, and;

 

... With the emergence of all the COVID variants ... I'm planning on a long stay in the US.

Fair enough, let me qualify what I'm saying: Vaccinated people who have not allowed the media to scare them witless.

While it is good that you feel safer in the US, it is worth noting that the number of active cases per million there is currently 27.5 times higher than Thailand.
 

[Poet]

6 hours ago, Daithi85 said:

Don't think Vietnam will be leapfroging Thailand any time soon, there visa situation  is worse than Thailands,big panic over there at the moment with the visa situation. 

I agree that, pre-Covid, Vietnam's visa situation was becoming more restrictive and, now, during Covid, they have certainly shutdown hard.

As we hit the summer, however, they could be smart enough to recognize both that fully-vaccinated tourists pose no biological threat to their population, and that this could be a strategic opportunity for them to take a bite out of Thailand's tourist industry.

Imagine what a boon all that foreign currency would be to their economy. Remember, for historical reasons, they are not all that fond of, or popular with, Chinese tourists.
 

[sirineou]

On 5/22/2021 at 6:59 AM, mtls2005 said:

Thailand's tourism model is high-volume, low-margin. For that to work they need tens of millions of tourists just to cover the costs.

 

Continuing to pine for the teat of the foreign tourist, until COVID is behind us, is a waste of energy.

 

A few million tourists will actually cost the country more given the costs of restarting the whole apparatus.

 

And, of course, this model is reliant on a boatload of third parties who will move independently.

 

 

Absolutely right

Greece opened up last summer (a desperation move). Many hotels were forced to open because they did not want to lose their business to competition, but there was not enough tourism to make any of them profitable, It would had been better for them to stay  closed. The only good thing is that it put some people to work. 

    IMO what Thailand need to do is , to make getting here easier for vaccinated people that are pose small danger.  There is no reason for someone fully vaccinated with Pfizer, to have to quarantine 14 days and buy covid insurance. 

   Second is to do what they are doing wow. Concentrate in certain high producing tourist areas. No way they are going to vaccinate everyone in time , so concentrate in targeted areas. and open the country in stages. 

Instead of sitting in a hotel for seven says (I was lucky, now it is 14) , I would had been happy to had gone to Phuket, or an Island , for a couple of weeks before going to my home in Khon Kaen. 

[ftpjtm]

1 hour ago, Poet said:

Vaccinated people eager for an exotic vacation after 15 months in lockdown.
 

Fair enough, let me qualify what I'm saying: Vaccinated people who have not allowed the media to scare them witless.

While it is good that you feel safer in the US, it is worth noting that the number of active cases per million there is currently 27.5 times higher than Thailand.
 

Some more figures from Worldometer today for you.

 

Tests per Million Population; UK 2.5M, USA 1.4M, Thailand 116K.

 

New Cases per Million Population; UK 33, USA 39, Thailand 48.

 

As of today the US has 61% of the adult population vaccinated, all with high quality vaccines. The UK is even higher percentage wise. Thailand is struggling to hit 2% and mainly using Sinovac which is arguably the worst of the worst.

 

Feeling "safer" isn't the primary reason I'm in the US. I'm here due to availability of quality vaccines and because things are opening up and people have an air of optimism. When I left Thailand 2 weeks ago people were dejected over the never ending lockdowns and failure of the government to acquire a meaningful amount of vaccine. Thailand did a good lockdown and I opted to stay there vs the US until May 2021. But vaccines are the final solution to COVID. It can't be eradicated with lockdowns and border closures unless they go on forever. 

 

You say vaccined people will come flocking to Thailand for an exotic vacation. Unless they enjoy closed beaches, restaurants, bars etc the only thing exotic about today's Thailand is the myriad of ever changing lockdown rules.

 

Tourists are not returning until Thailand gets COVID under control with good quality vaccines so they can open and stay opened, and they end quarantine. 

 

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

Edited May 24, 2021 by ftpjtm

[Daithi85]

1 hour ago, Poet said:

I agree that, pre-Covid, Vietnam's visa situation was becoming more restrictive and, now, during Covid, they have certainly shutdown hard.

As we hit the summer, however, they could be smart enough to recognize both that fully-vaccinated tourists pose no biological threat to their population, and that this could be a strategic opportunity for them to take a bite out of Thailand's tourist industry.

Imagine what a boon all that foreign currency would be to their economy. Remember, for historical reasons, they are not all that fond of, or popular with, Chinese tourists.
 

I actually thought it would be a race between, Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia to open up and get the tourists  in, but they don't seem to be in any hurry  at all.. A place like siem reap will be completely wiped out if they don't get tourists back this year, but yet  no movement whatsoever to open Cambodia up. 

[FarFlungFalang]

On 5/22/2021 at 6:39 AM, Fex Bluse said:

 

Rice farmers in suits

Rice farmers aren't stupid enough to think they could run a country to ruin as fast as these generals.

[Poet]

2 hours ago, Daithi85 said:

I actually thought it would be a race between, Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia to open up and get the tourists  in, but they don't seem to be in any hurry  at all.

 
Everything changes in June.

In public, all these governments stress that they take the situation very seriously and have no plans to re-open until there is zero risk to their citizens - they have to say this at present.

In private, they know that mass tourism becomes viable again once there are a sufficient number of fully-vaccinated people in their main tourist-providing countries. Tourists to S.E. Asia skew older, richer, and more educated, all factors that make it more likely that a vaccine will be accepted when offered. Most of the citizens in the US, UK, and Israel, and most of the over-50s in the EU will be fully-vaccinated by the end of June. We can already see dramatic reductions in the active case numbers in the UK. Israel provides an encouraging preview of where those figures are going.

Once any of the S.E. Asian countries shift their position, the others will follow quite quickly. I believe Thailand will be the first-mover.

If, as planned, the Siam Bioscience plant starts pumping out AZ vaccines at the start of June, we are going to see a lot of feel-good news stories about how successful the UK has been, armed with AZ. They will point to how very high the UK infections rates were, and how low they now are (in June, probably quite close to the "zero covid" level of 100 per millions). The purpose of these stories will be three-fold:

1. To provide hope and quell public disquiet about how badly the government have mismanaged vaccine acquisition.

2. To reflect well upon the Very Important Person who owns Siam Bioscience.

3. To prepare the public for the idea that covid is essentially over in some countries and that, therefore, fully-vaccinated tourists from those countries are completely safe.

Depending on how this media barrage shifts the public mood, and whether there are any eruptions of hysteria over newly emergent variants, I expect the government to then announce that, for the second half of the year (i.e. starting on July 1st), Thailand will open the doors completely to fully-vaccinated tourists, with vaccine passports, from a list of "zero covid" level countries, and arriving on planes carrying only fully-vaccinated passengers and crew.

Announcing this at some point in June will give many millions of tourists the certainty they need to make bookings for the high-season.

The only thing that will stop this happening will be if:

A) A variant emerges that renders the existing vaccines less than 50% effective. This is wildly unlikely.

B) The afore-mentioned Very Important Person dies. At that point, the junta will have far bigger problems to worry about.

I expect the Thai government to quite quickly phase out the non-vaccination options such as quarantine. Being fully-vaccinated will soon be the only way to get into Thailand or to extend a visa here. I also expect almost all international airlines to phase out non-vaccinated passengers by end of this year.


 

Edited May 24, 2021 by Poet

[realfunster]

On 5/20/2021 at 9:30 AM, webfact said:

The economy shrank 2.6 percent year on year in the first quarter, according to the National Economic and Social Development Council (NESDC)’s quarterly report released on May 17. Thailand has now suffered economic contraction for five consecutive quarters since the virus outbreak in early 2020.

 

I see it as very concerning that we did worse than Q1 2020...which was only partially COVID impacted both locally & globally.

International tourism is now completely absent in Thailand but the global economy has been ramping back up for at least 6 months, I would have expected to have seen a positive impact for Thailand because of that plus during Q1'21 fairly minimal local COVID disruption.

 

With our current outbreak and restrictions kicking in in early Q2 (around Songkran), I am not confident the Q2'21 economic results will bring any positive news.....

[Poet]

2 hours ago, ftpjtm said:

Some more figures from Worldometer today for you

Thank you but, as it happens, I have a Web browser ????
 

2 hours ago, ftpjtm said:

Thailand is struggling to hit 2% and mainly using Sinovac which is arguably the worst of the worst.

The vaccine status of the Thai population is irrelevant to the point I was making. Fully-vaccinated tourists don't care if there is Covid in the countries they visit.
 

2 hours ago, ftpjtm said:

Feeling "safer" isn't the primary reason I'm in the US.

I was not being sarcastic when I said I was glad you feel safer in the US. This has been a traumatic time, everyone has to find their own way to process that. I have seen people wearing masks when driving alone in a car.
 

2 hours ago, ftpjtm said:

You say vaccined people will come flocking to Thailand for an exotic vacation.

This is not conjecture. Every survey makes it utterly clear. During lockdown, most people paid off their credit cards and now are desperate to get back out into the world to properly abuse those cards again.
 

2 hours ago, ftpjtm said:

Unless they enjoy closed beaches, restaurants, bars etc the only thing exotic about today's Thailand is the myriad of ever changing lockdown rules.

Okay, so, let's pretend that, during this lockdown, I haven't been enjoying all of these things that are supposedly unavailable ????

Once it is clear that millions of biologically-safe tourists are on their way, just watch how quickly the authorities will scramble to allow businesses to harvest them.
 

2 hours ago, ftpjtm said:

Tourists are not returning until Thailand gets COVID under control with good quality vaccines so they can open and stay opened,

Certain members of this forum seem to have fixated on this idea. I can see how it might feel like a compelling argument but it makes no logical sense. Fully-vaccinated tourists do not care about whether some Thai guy they pass on the street has covid.

 

2 hours ago, ftpjtm said:

and they end quarantine. 

Quarantine is ending, very soon. That is the whole point.

 

Edited May 24, 2021 by Poet

[Brunolem]

22 minutes ago, Poet said:

Most of the citizens in the US, UK, and Israel, and most of the over-50s in the EU will be fully-vaccinated by the end of June. We can already see dramatic reductions in the active case numbers in the UK. Israel provides an encouraging preview of where those figures are going.

Being fully-vaccinated will soon be the only way to get into Thailand or to extend a visa here. I also expect almost all international airlines to phase out non-vaccinated passengers by end of this year.

 

What a scheme!

 

The fact is that just around 50% of the US population is fully vaccinated (2 doses) and no country has yet reached the famous 70% threshold, because once over 50% there is much more resistance to vaccination from the remainder of the population.

 

On top of that, about half of all the countries have yet to start vaccinate their population.

 

Meanwhile, the infection rates, post vaccination, are not that impressive...the US, for example, is only 20% below Thailand.

 

The two or three countries that matter the most for Thailand tourism, China, Russia and India, are not in encouraging situations.

 

China seems to have defeated the virus after injecting its supposedly poorly efficient vaccine in a small part of its population...which is bared to travel abroad.

 

Russia, with its supposedly very efficient vaccine, is still reporting lots of infections and deaths.

 

No need to talk about India, we know the situation there.

 

Vaccinated or not, Israelis and Americans will never make up for the tourism losses from those three countries.

 

If airlines refuse to transport non vaccinated people, they will all go bankrupt because they won't survive with only half of their potential customers...or they will have to increase their fares by so much that it will kill tourism...

 

[Poet]

40 minutes ago, Brunolem said:

The fact is that just around 50% of the US population is fully vaccinated (2 doses)

Actually, right now, only 38.57% of the US population is fully-vaccinated (2 doses of Pfizer or Moderna, or 1 dose of J&J).
 

40 minutes ago, Brunolem said:

and no country has yet reached the famous 70% threshold, because once over 50% there is much more resistance to vaccination from the remainder of the population.

Israel has only fully-vaccinated 59.07% of its population but, apparently, this is good enough to achieve the "zero covid" level of less than 100 infections per million.

By the end of June, that is probably where there UK will be.

 

40 minutes ago, Brunolem said:

On top of that, about half of all the countries have yet to start vaccinate their population.

Well, some poorer countries lagging does not mean that Thailand cannot open to the richer countries.
 

40 minutes ago, Brunolem said:

Meanwhile, the infection rates, post vaccination, are not that impressive...the US, for example, is only 20% below Thailand.

I am not clear on what is happening in the US, but it is possible that they are simply doing more testing than Thailand. I would hope that their numbers will improve significantly over the next month or so.

Meanwhile, the figures in Israel and the UK are terrific. Based on the types of vaccine they are using, I expect all the EU countries to achieve similar figures once they recover from the EU bureaucrats' inexplicable 3-month delay in ordering anything.

 

40 minutes ago, Brunolem said:

The two or three countries that matter the most for Thailand tourism, China, Russia and India, are not in encouraging situations.

No one is suggesting that Thailand is going to snap back to 40 million tourists per year. What I am saying is that they can keep their tourist industry on life support by opening up to certain countries when it becomes biologically safe to do so. They then use the same criteria to determine when other countries can return to non-quarantined visits, allowing them to ramp back up in a measured way.

 

40 minutes ago, Brunolem said:

Russia, with its supposedly very efficient vaccine, is still reporting lots of infections and deaths.

Well, Russia is a very big county so, yeah, it will take time to vaccinate enough people to slow the spread of the virus and reduce active cases. I gather Sputnik has had some scaling problems. The important part, however, is that they at least have an effecitve vaccine.
 

40 minutes ago, Brunolem said:

If airlines refuse to transport non vaccinated people, they will all go bankrupt because they won't survive with only half of their potential customers...or they will have to increase their fares by so much that it will kill tourism...

The vast majority of people who want to travel are waiting until they can get vaccinated, for their own safety.

Among people who do enjoy travel, especially long-distrace, they will disproportionately accept a vaccine when offered one. Most of these people, once vaccinated, would like to thing that the person sitting next to them has made the same effort. Some airlines are already touting their crews as being 100% vaccinated. There will almost certainly be a race among airlines to establish themselves as the covid-safe option. Once vaccine passports are introduced in June, switching to such a policy may actually be necessary to main booking levels.

This is similar to the last few airlines that allowed smoking, before it became law - while there were a hard core of smokers who might become loyal customers, any airline that became know as "the smokers' airline" would lose out on the majority of mainstream customers. There is no financial incentive for any airline to become "the Covid airline".

 

Edited May 24, 2021 by Poet

[ftpjtm]

49 minutes ago, Poet said:

Thank you but, as it happens, I have a Web browser ????

Excuse the overzealous citations, I recently had a post removed for stating figures without a link.

 

51 minutes ago, Poet said:

The vaccine status of the Thai population is irrelevant to the point I was making. Fully-vaccinated tourists don't care if there is Covid in the countries they visit.

Maybe vaccinated tourists don't care if COVID is running rampant in Thailand while they're visiting, but it will be major policy shift for the Thai government if they don't put the country into lockdown if there are triple or more new cases daily. And visiting a country in lockdown is no fun for tourists. Tourists, vaccinated or not, will stay away from Thailand as long as Thai lockdowns continue. 

 

58 minutes ago, Poet said:

Okay, so, let's pretend that, during this lockdown, I haven't been enjoying all of these things that are supposedly unavailable ????

Once it is clear that millions of biologically-safe tourists are on their way, just watch how quickly the authorities will scramble to allow businesses to harvest them.

This is a real possibility. If the rest of the vaccinated world opens up, even if vaccine deficient Thailand is still wracking up COVID cases, I can see the Prayut government throwing in the towel, stopping all COVID testing, declaring Thailand COVID free, and opening everything. 

 

1 hour ago, Poet said:

Quarantine is ending, very soon. That is the whole point.

I'll believe it when I see it.

[ftpjtm]

19 minutes ago, Poet said:

Among people who do enjoy travel, especially long-distrace, they will disproportionately accept a vaccine when offered one. Most of these people, once vaccinated, would like to thing that the person sitting next to them has made the same effort. Some airlines are already touting their crews as being 100% vaccinated. There will almost certainly be a race among airlines to establish themselves as the covid-safe option. Once vaccine passports are introduced in June, switching to such a policy may actually be necessary to main booking levels.

This is similar to the last few airlines that allowed smoking, before it became law - while there were a hard core of smokers who might become loyal customers, any airline that became know as "the smokers' airline" would lose out on the majority of mainstream customers. There is no financial incentive for any airline to become "the Covid airline".

I absolutely agree with all of that. Vaccine certificates are going to be required for long distance air travel over the next few months. 

 

Anti vaxxers will join people who refuse to board a plane if they can't smoke on it, as the vast majority of travelers will demand that their fellow passengers are vaccinated and don't smoke during the flight. 

[Brunolem]

11 minutes ago, Poet said:

Actually, right now, only 38.57% of the US population is fully-vaccinated (2 doses of Pfizer or Moderna, or 1 dose of J&J).
 

Israel has only fully-vaccinated 59.07% of its population but, apparently, this is good enough to achieve the "zero covid" level of less than 100 infections per million.

By the end of June, that is probably where there UK will be.

 

Well, some poorer countries lagging does not mean that Thailand cannot open to the richer countries.
 

I am not clear on what is happening in the US, but it is possible that they are simply doing more testing than Thailand. I would hope that their numbers will improve significantly over the next month or so.

Meanwhile, the figures in Israel and the UK are terrific. Based on the types of vaccine they are using, I expect all the EU countries to achieve similar figures once they recover from the EU bureaucrats' inexplicable 3-month delay in ordering anything.

 

No one is suggesting that Thailand is going to snap back to 40 million tourists per year. What I am saying is that they can keep their tourist industry on life support by opening up to certain countries when it becomes biologically safe to do so. They then use the same criteria to determine when other countries can return to non-quarantined visits, allowing them to ramp back up in a measured way.

 

Well, Russia is a very big county so, yeah, it will take time to vaccinate enough people to slow the spread of the virus and reduce active cases. I gather Sputnik has had some scaling problems. The important part, however, is that they at least have an effecitve vaccine.
 

The vast majority of people who want to travel are waiting until they can get vaccinated, for their own safety.

Among people who do enjoy travel, especially long-distrace, they will disproportionately accept a vaccine when offered one. Most of these people, once vaccinated, would like to thing that the person sitting next to them has made the same effort. Some airlines are already touting their crews as being 100% vaccinated. There will almost certainly be a race among airlines to establish themselves as the covid-safe option. Once vaccine passports are introduced in June, switching to such a policy may actually be necessary to main booking levels.

This is similar to the last few airlines that allowed smoking, before it became law - while there were a hard core of smokers who might become loyal customers, any airline that became know as "the smokers' airline" would lose out on the majority of mainstream customers. There is no financial incentive for any airline to become "the Covid airline".

 

As explained by another member, the problem is that Thailand is structured for mass tourism, and that it will lose lots of money if it opens to only a selected few tourists.

 

Thailand is not the Maldives.

 

Also don't forget that Thailand has yet to talk about removing the COE and the mandatory insurance which by itself will discourage many potential vaccinated tourists.

 

If things move with the usual bureaucratic speed, removing the red tape could take years...

 

As for the airlines, there is a big difference between temporarily not doing something (smoking) and permanently do something (getting a shot).

 

Yet it is likely that most if not all airlines will accept only vaccinated passengers, at least for long haul flights.

 

I doubt that those who oppose covid vaccination, and even more the concept of a vaccine pass, will change their minds for the only purpose of travelling far away from home.

 

We will see soon enough...in fact, probably not so soon...

[ftpjtm]

2 hours ago, Poet said:

If, as planned, the Siam Bioscience plant starts pumping out AZ vaccines at the start of June, we are going to see a lot of feel-good news stories about how successful the UK has been, armed with AZ. They will point to how very high the UK infections rates were, and how low they now are (in June, probably quite close to the "zero covid" level of 100 per millions).

This week the exact opposite of this happened with the Thai media reporting on AZ deficiencies, likely designed to quell trepidation in use of Sinovac. 

 

Which leads me to speculate that Siam Bioscience is struggling to produce a meaningful quantity of AZ, and the vaccine rollout on June 1st will be majority Sinovac. 

 

 

Edited May 24, 2021 by ftpjtm

[FarFlungFalang]

14 minutes ago, ftpjtm said:

I absolutely agree with all of that. Vaccine certificates are going to be required for long distance air travel over the next few months. 

 

Anti vaxxers will join people who refuse to board a plane if they can't smoke on it, as the vast majority of travelers will demand that their fellow passengers are vaccinated and don't smoke during the flight. 

Just for clarification what is an anti vaxxer?Is it some who chooses not to go and get the covid vaccine or someone who refuses all vaccines and is against vaccination in general? 

[ftpjtm]

1 minute ago, FarFlungFalang said:

Just for clarification what is an anti vaxxer?Is it some who chooses not to go and get the covid vaccine or someone who refuses all vaccines and is against vaccination in general? 

In the context of the thread, someone who does not get a COVID vaccine. 

[Poet]

33 minutes ago, ftpjtm said:

Excuse the overzealous citations, I recently had a post removed for stating figures without a link.

Ah, right, yes, I have had many posts disappear for ridiculous reasons.
 

34 minutes ago, ftpjtm said:

it will be major policy shift for the Thai government if they don't put the country into lockdown if there are triple or more new cases daily.

I agree, but the government are facing a very difficult political situation if the economy continues to deteriorate. It is entirely possible that an even more reactionary army faction will get the nod if the elites continue to feel their pockets getting lighter.

Everything is being stage-managed in Thailand, just as it has been since the start of the pandemic, and they have a hard deadline to get at least part of their tourist industry moving again. If another high season is lost, very important people will lose money, and entire layers of the tourist infrastructure, built up over half-a-century, will be difficult to resuscitate.
 

40 minutes ago, ftpjtm said:

This is a real possibility. If the rest of the vaccinated world opens up, even if vaccine deficient Thailand is still wracking up COVID cases, I can see the Prayut government throwing in the towel, stopping all COVID testing, declaring Thailand COVID free, and opening everything. 

I think they will declare certain key destinations covid-free, but allow tourists to go wherever they want.

Remember, tourists flying in have never been the cause of covid spread within Thailand. They have an almost 5,000 KM land border with Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos and Malaysia, and a massive reliance upon poor migrant labor.

One you have a credible vaccine passport system, you hand the Thai government the narrative they need to sell this economic necessity to the Thai people.
 

 

46 minutes ago, ftpjtm said:

I'll believe it when I see it.

Well, we don't have long to wait.

There is only a week of May left, and I am saying they will have to declare something during June, at latest before the currently proposed Phuket sandbox gets rolling at the start of July.

If I am wrong, okay, they probably won't open properly (i.e. drop all the current requirements) for this high season, and that will be a real tragedy for many Thais.


 

[Poet]

26 minutes ago, ftpjtm said:

Which leads me to guess that Siam Bioscience is struggling to produce a meaningful quantity of AZ, and the vaccine rollout on June 1st will be majority Sinovac. 

That would not surprise me at all, but I believe we will still see the industry re-open, even though Sinovac will offer Thai citizens barely any protection.

[Poet]

41 minutes ago, Brunolem said:

As explained by another member, the problem is that Thailand is structured for mass tourism, and that it will lose lots of money if it opens to only a selected few tourists.

I did read that post, I forget which member that was, but he is wrong. He drew a comparison with the recent experience in Greece, in which there was a substantial shortfall even in the limited numbers of Brits and Germans that were expected. There were a couple of reasons for this but, in short, it was too early and they lacked the solid basis for easing the rules, particularly around re-entry to your own country, that the advent of full-vaccination does allow for.

Mass tourism for Thailand does not mean that it has to be 40 million tourists. This is not one big, well-oiled machine but an organic accumulation of different businesses in different cities and towns that have grown up around half-a-century of tourism. They have geared themselves towards serving certain nationalities, but with a great deal of crossover in most cases.

The return of just six million tourists during the second half of this year would allow them to kickstart significant clusters of the industry, something that is necessary anyway now that most staff have scattered to the winds. Thailand, this high season, literally could not handle the 25 million it handled during the 2019 high season.
 

50 minutes ago, Brunolem said:

Also don't forget that Thailand has yet to talk about removing the COE and the mandatory insurance which by itself will discourage many potential vaccinated tourists.

 
Yes, of course, nothing happens if they leave all that nonsense in place. My whole point is that verified vaccination allows them to get back to the pre-pandemic rules.
 

 

52 minutes ago, Brunolem said:

If things move with the usual bureaucratic speed, removing the red tape could take years...

As you know, money talks here, and the Chinese-Thai business elites are very smart. They are not going to unnecessarily sit with empty hotels for another high season.

 

54 minutes ago, Brunolem said:

As for the airlines, there is a big difference between temporarily not doing something (smoking) and permanently do something (getting a shot).

 

Yet it is likely that most if not all airlines will accept only vaccinated passengers, at least for long haul flights.

Yes, that is what I am saying. Like it or hate it, no one is traveling internationally over the rest of this decade without up-to-date vaccinations.
 

56 minutes ago, Brunolem said:

I doubt that those who oppose covid vaccination, and even more the concept of a vaccine pass, will change their minds for the only purpose of travelling far away from home.

As with so many issues these days, there is quite a lot of hysteria on both sides of this issue. If my life was based in my home country, I might well have not bothered to get vaccinated but as I want to live my life in Thailand, I accept that they have a right to insist that I present no danger to their people. I accept that all countries feel this way and I want to have the freedom to continue going wherever my interest takes me, so, I have no problem with the jab.

My guess is that 90% of the people kicking up a fuss about it now will quietly go off and get vaccinated when the full implications of not doing so finally dawn upon them.
 

1 hour ago, Brunolem said:

We will see soon enough...in fact, probably not so soon...

Well, look, I am putting a hard date on my prediction, so, in just 5 weeks, we will know if I am right.

 

[FarFlungFalang]

1 hour ago, ftpjtm said:

In the context of the thread, someone who does not get a COVID vaccine. 

So you will call people who are unable or unwilling to take the covid vaccine a name like "anti vaxxer"?Are all the people under the age limit for vaccines anti vaxxers?Dude there's no reason to call people derogatory names because the don't have the ability to get the covid vaccine.People who have been infected seem to have better protection than those being vaccinated yet if they choose to go with that protection you'll go ahead with your infantile approach and call them names like "anti vaxxer".I notice others dragging in terms like "holocaust apologist".Name calling rule says that if you resort to name calling you admit defeat in the argument as well as display for all to see your infantile approach. 

[kevc]

The only thing that is going to change anything is VACCINE, we're in a worse situation now than we were this time last year.

[brewsterbudgen]

On 5/20/2021 at 5:03 PM, Aomelia said:

Lock BKK and surrounding provinces Down , Now 

That won't help the economy much!!