2 hours ago, anchadian said:

Thailand's Vaccine Tracker (Aug. 10, 2021) About 6.9% of the population is fully vaccinated. 16,336,743 (+350,389) people have received the first dose, while 4,566,345 (+104,484) have been fully inoculated. #วัคซีนโควิด19 #COVID19 #ล็อกดาวน์ #KE

 

https://twitter.com/KhaosodEnglish/status/1425012168211140615

 

So on 64 days since the big vaccine rollout began the required target has been met on 2 days.

6 hours ago, brewsterbudgen said:

Good question.  I would think a severe depression, massive unemployment, businesses going bust with all the concomitant social and mental health issues.  Maybe it would be survivable but a horrible cost.  

 

Right, but that's also going to happen with uncontrolled COVID transmission, so what's the solution?

 

12 minutes ago, Macrohistory said:

 

Right, but that's also going to happen with uncontrolled COVID transmission, so what's the solution?

 

Dead right mate. Could have been avoided or at the very least softened but the Empty Heads Full Pockets at the top allowed this to happen. It has now been out of control since mid April. 

11 hours ago, Denim said:

Ironic considering that Israels vaccination roll out was probably the most successful in the world.

One of the most popular vaccines used was Pfizer !

It's mostly the unvaccinated people in israel that is being submitted to hospitals with severe illnes.

 

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/the-israeli-graphs-that-prove-covid-vaccines-are-working-1.10101640

A post containing content that was copied from the BBC live news feed has been removed:

 

14) You will not post any copyrighted material except as fair use laws apply (as in the case of news articles). Please only post a link, the headline and the first three sentences.

 

A baiting post that was basically of a stalking nature has been removed:

 

7) You will respect fellow members and post in a civil manner. No personal attacks, hateful or insulting towards other members, (flaming) Stalking of members on either the forum or via PM will not be allowed.

 

TIMELINE: Pattaya and Banglamung inform residents who visited places in relation to most recent Chonburi confirmed Covid –19 cases

 

List of places here:

https://thepattayanews.com/2021/08/10/timeline-pattaya-and-banglamung-inform-residents-who-visited-places-in-relation-to-most-recent-chonburi-confirmed-covid-19-cases-3/

1 hour ago, Macrohistory said:

 

Right, but that's also going to happen with uncontrolled COVID transmission, so what's the solution?

 

I thought the lockdown that's been in effect since April was supposed to be controlling it!  When will it end?  I know it's not popular with the regular posters on this thread, but Sweden's different approach, while obviously not perfect, seems more sensible to me.

Phuket this evening has reported 37 new cases, 0 Sandbox and 0 deaths:

 

https://www.facebook.com/phuketinfocenter/posts/363234825331700

 

 

I'll be interested in the excess death figures during this wave, that will be the only way to assess its true magnitude - retroactively.

 

Their testing is very obviously both inadequate and insufficient, and after having thrown rapid antigen tests into the mix, they don't seem to bother to confirm asymptomatic and mild cases with PCR any longer, so the official numbers are even more questionable than before.

 

The only good news is that the baht keeps getting weaker.

A troll post has been reported and removed. 

Thailand has a little catching up to do:

 

BBC Breaking News

 

More than 75% of UK adults have received both Covid vaccine jabs, government says.

https://twitter.com/BBCBreaking/status/1425092114908598274

 

4 minutes ago, anchadian said:

Phuket this evening has reported 37 new cases, 0 Sandbox and 0 deaths:

 

https://www.facebook.com/phuketinfocenter/posts/363234825331700

 

 

Unfortunately because of the now official use of rapid tests in Phuket and the setting up of 3 community centers that will house asymptomatic patients who have tested positive via rapid tests, I really do not have much faith in these official numbers. Perhaps it should be best worded official pcr confirmed positive cases.

 

I have no doubt as is the case with the official daily numbers by the government, daily positive case antigen tests will not be included.

 

Its disappointing as living in Phuket I would have liked to be aware of the true figures and where they are found so as to make risk based decisions on where my family of me should visit.

 

 

10 Aug 2PM Expatvac Update Registrants: 47,626

 

Blow 60 yrs old: 37,358

Over 60 yrs old: 10,268

Health conditions: 3,462

Pregnant: 204

 

https://twitter.com/SangratTanee/status/1425094145018826766

 

22 minutes ago, brewsterbudgen said:

I thought the lockdown that's been in effect since April was supposed to be controlling it!  When will it end?  I know it's not popular with the regular posters on this thread, but Sweden's different approach, while obviously not perfect, seems more sensible to me.

 

The lockdown is working as expected to slow the transmission of the virus -- to the extent a lockdown is actually being implemented.  In any (modern) country, there is always a large category of public policies working invisibly to (1) facilitate some things while (2) stopping other things from happening.  But you would only know this if the policies were suddenly removed, shocking the system.  This is exactly what the soft Thai lockdown is doing.  Remove it and virus transmission would explode, thereby killing people directly (the healthcare system would be mauled) while wrecking the economy and shattering the lives of the survivors.  If anything, the lockdown should be tightened until mass vaccination can be achieved.  Meanwhile, a wealth tax on the super rich should be imposed so that resources could, during this emergency, be transferred to the poor and middle classes.

 

Sparsely populated, rich, and socialist Sweden makes for a poor comparison with Thailand.  According to Worldometers, Sweden has suffered 108,845 COVID cases per million people, by far the worst performance in all of Scandinavia.  By comparison, Norway has suffered only 25,907 cases per million.  Sweden's death rate of 1,438 per million is nearly 10 times Norway's death rate of 147 per million.  But Sweden's death rate would be even higher still if it weren't sparsely populated, rich, and socialist.  Transfer the Swedish "model" of dealing with COVID to crowded (at least in Bangkok), poor, and wildly unequal Thailand and the results would be horrific.

 

There is unfortunately no cost-free way of stopping Thailand's COVID catastrophe.  The lockdown (such as it is) will likely remain in place for many more months to come.

38 minutes ago, brewsterbudgen said:

I thought the lockdown that's been in effect since April was supposed to be controlling it!  When will it end?  I know it's not popular with the regular posters on this thread, but Sweden's different approach, while obviously not perfect, seems more sensible to me.

Swedens approach is not popular with the rest of the world's experts bar perhaps Brazil's president and of course he who pioneered it Anders Tegnell, not just the majority of posters on here. In addition the delta variant was not around then.

 

Lets put that aside as its been discussed 100's of times and just leads to bickering and off topic posts.

 

Here's my take on the rest of your post:

 

The lockdown imposed was not a lockdown in the true sense of the word, it was a semi lockdown with provincial travel still being active due to lack of enforcing the rules. The measures in the capital were also not a true lockdown in any sense of the word. 

 

If you remember weeks ago we all predicted here that if your going to do it then do it correctly otherwise its next to useless. However it probably has had some effect in keeping the numbers down a little as without it it could have been much worse. The hospitals as you know are overwhelmed and people are dying at home daily.

 

This is new territory now, its dynamic and day to day as quoted by WHO in reference to delta a few days ago. With Thailand's lack of vaccine planning its not going away anytime soon. The ridiculous notion that Thailand can open up as planned in Oct are just that, ridiculous and just setting unreachable expectations that leads to more misery.

 

 

12 minutes ago, Bkk Brian said:

Swedens approach is not popular with the rest of the world's experts bar perhaps Brazil's president and of course he who pioneered it Anders Tegnell, not just the majority of posters on here. In addition the delta variant was not around then.

 

Lets put that aside as its been discussed 100's of times and just leads to bickering and off topic posts.

 

Here's my take on the rest of your post:

 

The lockdown imposed was not a lockdown in the true sense of the word, it was a semi lockdown with provincial travel still being active due to lack of enforcing the rules. The measures in the capital were also not a true lockdown in any sense of the word. 

 

If you remember weeks ago we all predicted here that if your going to do it then do it correctly otherwise its next to useless. However it probably has had some effect in keeping the numbers down a little as without it it could have been much worse. The hospitals as you know are overwhelmed and people are dying at home daily.

 

This is new territory now, its dynamic and day to day as quoted by WHO in reference to delta a few days ago. With Thailand's lack of vaccine planning its not going away anytime soon. The ridiculous notion that Thailand can open up as planned in Oct are just that, ridiculous and just setting unreachable expectations that leads to more misery.

 

 

Thanks.  Obviously what you have written makes sense.  But it doesn't answer my question: when will it (the current lockdown) end?  I'm not suggesting opening up the country fully to tourists and fully opening up the nightlife, but allowing day to day life for most people to get back to normal.  Macrohistory suggests "many months to come" - but how many?  What do you consider to be an acceptable level of infections and deaths per day to be?  After all, the UK has opened up and still has a similar rate to Thailand.  Waiting for Thailand to be fully vaccinated will mean waiting years and could never happen anyway.

9 minutes ago, brewsterbudgen said:

  After all, the UK has opened up and still has a similar rate to Thailand

Similar rate of what?

Certainly not similar level of vaccinations.

Daily new infections.....deaths?

5 minutes ago, brewsterbudgen said:

Thanks.  Obviously what you have written makes sense.  But it doesn't answer my question: when will it (the current lockdown) end?  I'm not suggesting opening up the country fully to tourists and fully opening up the nightlife, but allowing day to day life for most people to get back to normal.  Macrohistory suggests "many months to come" - but how many?  What do you consider to be an acceptable level of infections and deaths per day to be?  After all, the UK has opened up and still has a similar rate to Thailand.  Waiting for Thailand to be fully vaccinated will mean waiting years and could never happen anyway.

I wish I knew too. There is evidence that delta surges through a country and then just as quickly surges back down without any one particular measure that can be identified to say why that was. India, Indonesia now as well, however I just saw this tweet that seems to give that a little more weight:

 

Again and again, Delta soars quickly and then plummets. Delta's so bad it necessitates action that brings levels down, coupled with underlying transmission dynamics. In some countries, lockdowns, in others vaccination, in other a mix of many means of mitigation.

Uganda

Namibia, all about a 2 month surge:

So lets all hope that will be the case here. Like any rational risk assessment, prepare for the worst but hope for the best.

 

 

 

 

5 minutes ago, brewsterbudgen said:

Thanks.  Obviously what you have written makes sense.  But it doesn't answer my question: when will it (the current lockdown) end?  I'm not suggesting opening up the country fully to tourists and fully opening up the nightlife, but allowing day to day life for most people to get back to normal.  Macrohistory suggests "many months to come" - but how many?  What do you consider to be an acceptable level of infections and deaths per day to be?  After all, the UK has opened up and still has a similar rate to Thailand.  Waiting for Thailand to be fully vaccinated will mean waiting years and could never happen anyway.

With the failure worldwide to manage the virus, I think eradication is a pipe-dream, and there will be future variants that hopefully will continue to be ones that the vaccines will continue having to some effect on.   The focus on lock-downs has to be more granular, which means making sure testing/tracking/tracing is first rate.  Lock-downs function has to be primarily to control the outbreak enough to keep the healthcare system from collapsing.  Assuming the vaccines have some immunity it should go a long way to keeping people out of the hospitals and hopefully keeping the healthcare system from collapsing. 

 

The first step is to make sure everyone that is not rejecting the vaccine outright is vaccinated, those that outright reject it ... that is on them... and we will have to live with it.  mRNA vaccines are actually a huge improvement in vaccine development in that it 'skips a step' (you don't have to 'culture' (not sure the word to use) then inactivate a live virus for use in a vaccine, but work with the 'blueprint' (which can be transmitted to manufacturers around the world) to create updated vaccines (speeding any vaccine to market - will also be useful for flu and other viruses).  On a regular basis (yet to be determined) people will have to get updated/booster shots to cover new variants of COVID. 

 

The behaviour of people will have to adjust some of our custom norms, probably more like asian/japanese norms (no handshakes / bow (yay, it is a family trait and comes naturally to me), wearing a mask when you are sick, wearing a mask when you are flying on a petri dish in the sky). 

 

Society will have to learn to live with the new normal...  (which will still have a dampening effect on the economy for sometime).

 

11 minutes ago, Bkk Brian said:

I wish I knew too. There is evidence that delta surges through a country and then just as quickly surges back down without any one particular measure that can be identified to say why that was. India, Indonesia now as well, however I just saw this tweet that seems to give that a little more weight:

 

Again and again, Delta soars quickly and then plummets. Delta's so bad it necessitates action that brings levels down, coupled with underlying transmission dynamics. In some countries, lockdowns, in others vaccination, in other a mix of many means of mitigation.

Uganda

Namibia, all about a 2 month surge:

So lets all hope that will be the case here. Like any rational risk assessment, prepare for the worst but hope for the best.

 

 

 

 

You have posted two countries from Africa, home to Lambda...  Do you have a matching graph for the Lambda variant for those two countries?  (is it the virus going down, or Delta losing to another variant such as Delta+ or Lambda)

1 hour ago, Virt said:

It's mostly the unvaccinated people in israel that is being submitted to hospitals with severe illnes.

 

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/the-israeli-graphs-that-prove-covid-vaccines-are-working-1.10101640

 

From the link I posted on page 4 of this thread , an article from a current Israeli newspaper regarding the current situation. The last paragraph of that article :

 

Health Ministry data released Monday showed that fully vaccinated individuals made up most of the new cases and most of those hospitalized in moderate condition or worse

 

Vaccines are primarily meant to reduce the symptoms of a covid infected person so that they are less severe and less likely to result in death.

Their ability to prevent infection in the first place is sadly not guaranteed.

 

After vaccination continued vigilance is still required.

 

 

Just now, bkkcanuck8 said:

You have posted two countries from Africa, home to Lambda...  Do you have a matching graph for the Lambda variant for those two countries?  (is it the virus going down, or Delta losing to another variant such as Delta+ or Lambda)

No not me, a disease infection expert in his tweet if you follow the links.

 

Beside that Nambia first detected delta in May and that was when the delta virus exploded there, Uganda first detected it in April and  again the delta surged there.

 

I check data and information before posting

36 minutes ago, Bkk Brian said:

The ridiculous notion that Thailand can open up as planned in Oct are just that, ridiculous and just setting unreachable expectations that leads to more misery.

 

 

 

More misery than this?

 

There’s a lot more horrific videos online of hundreds of people queuing for handouts. 
 

For them the misery is already here. No job, no home, no life. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Current Israel data for mRNA vaccination in people age >60, 1st to get vaccines >6 months ago, now confronting Delta infections 1. Vaccines work but their apparent effectiveness is diminished over time + Delta 2. Boosters showing some preliminary evidence of working via

@dvir_a

https://twitter.com/EricTopol/status/1425089101926080514

2 minutes ago, Kadilo said:

 

 

More misery than this?

 

There’s a lot more horrific videos online of hundreds of people queuing for handouts. 
 

For them the misery is already here. No job, no home, no life. 

 

Please post my whole quote in future you've missed completely the context of it. 

 

I went past a large food handout today, I'm quite aware of the misery, this is not a points making post though as I'm not going to post the images of people dying at home because of no hospital beds on a daily basis.

31 minutes ago, DrJack54 said:

Similar rate of what?

Certainly not similar level of vaccinations.

Daily new infections.....deaths?

Similar rate of infections and deaths. Obviously not vaccinations, as I thought I'd made clear by writing that Thailand was nowhere near achieving anything like full vaccination, unlike the UK, and probably never will..

53 minutes ago, brewsterbudgen said:

Thanks.  Obviously what you have written makes sense.  But it doesn't answer my question: when will it (the current lockdown) end?  I'm not suggesting opening up the country fully to tourists and fully opening up the nightlife, but allowing day to day life for most people to get back to normal.  Macrohistory suggests "many months to come" - but how many?  What do you consider to be an acceptable level of infections and deaths per day to be?  After all, the UK has opened up and still has a similar rate to Thailand.  Waiting for Thailand to be fully vaccinated will mean waiting years and could never happen anyway.

 

The problem is that allowing day to day life for most people to get back to normal is impossible.  At least under current conditions when Delta hasn't burned itself out yet, relaxing restrictions will just lead to an explosion in COVID cases, which is the opposite of life getting back to normal.  This is just a cold, hard, inescapable reality.  Thailand isn't vaccinated like the UK is.  What's more, I'm not convinced the UK won't itself start slowly seeing an increase in cases again now that "freedom" has returned.

 

As to how long Thailand's lockdown will last, no one can possibly know.  Hopefully the burnout that Bkk Brian talked about will occur after some months.  Two?  Four?  Impossible to say.

32 minutes ago, Bkk Brian said:

 

 

I went past a large food handout today, I'm quite aware of the misery, this is not a points making post though as I'm not going to post the images of people dying at home because of no hospital beds on a daily basis.

You went passed, i actually stopped and helped deliver to the homeless and starving today. 

I find it gives me a better perspective of the real situation. 

Quite a horrible and a rewarding g experience. Not for everyone of course. 
 

 

Just now, Kadilo said:

You went passed, i actually stopped and helped deliver to the homeless and starving today. 

I find it gives me a better perspective of the real situation. 

Quite a horrible and a rewarding g experience. Not for everyone of course. 
 

 

I don't find any need to mention what my family and I have done in the previous year and a half to help our local communites. I find it a bit distastefull. A little like giving to charity and advertizing the fact. However you carry on.

13 hours ago, anchadian said:

Thailand’s ‘modern trade’ confidence at lowest point in 3 years due to pandemic

The Rector of the UTCC added that the economic cost of the lockdown measures may soar to about 700 billion baht.

 

https://www.thaipbsworld.com/thailands-modern-trade-confidence-at-lowest-point-in-3-years-due-to-pandemic/

If they had a welfare system / furlough scheme , that figure would be much longer , also  there is still a long way to go , at least another year .    Maybe the government will dip into their foreign reserves pocket to feed the unemployed and procure the better class of vaccine or will they rely on the worldwide charity ? I think the latter.

  How are the unemployed folks and their families surviving ?  The government need to come up with a solution to feed the wanting and stop a disaster .  Undernourished folks immune system will be low and the virus will flourish .