Israeli tourist who fled quarantine in Bangkok infected with Omicron variant

[Danderman123]

1 hour ago, BKKBike09 said:

Spot on. The more detail emerges, the more rum the whole affair looks. Also seems like no-one is interested in hearing this guy's side of the events (his 'lived experience' as I believe we should call it this days).

 

I can easily see a comms screw up at the original one-night hotel leading to him thinking he could leave and then panic after they realised they let him go but he was "positive" (if he even was; seems to me that arrivals since November are consistently testing positive at around 1:1,000 - something close to the 'typical' PCR test false positive rate [we'd need to know whether his original 'positive' test was positive on a single gene, or more than one: the former likely being genuinely false, the latter more likely to be genuinely positive]).

 

CCTV from the hotel would be the most revealing: if he's clearly on camera sneaking out of a fire escape, would support him knowingly doing a runner. But if he's on CCTV at reception settling his bill and his bags with the bellboy, well that would be a different story.

 

Let's see if the CCTV footage from the hotel is suddenly 'missing' or there was 'a technical problem and it didn't record'.

 

 

 

 

 

It’s simpler than that. 

 

Did he settle his account and check out of the hotel? If he has his hotel receipt, he will be a free man shortly. 

[Daithi85]

Just now, Danderman123 said:

It’s simpler than that. 

 

Did he settle his account and check out of the hotel? If he has his hotel receipt, he will be a free man shortly. 

I would of thought he payed his hotel when booking. 

[richard_smith237]

9 hours ago, SteveWilts said:

I can't believe how many commenters actually support this guy!

I can’t believe you would place 100% trust in the information provided to the media outlets. 

 

Can you imagine this scenario... 

“Hello Mr x...  welcome to xx hotel"

“Hi...   any idea when I can leave the hotel"

“You can leave after you do PCR"

“Cool”....

 

- and there we have it, poor and imprecise communication and the Israeli guy takes his PCR test, thinks he’s free to go and simply walks out the hotel with his bags and takes a taxi.... no one stops him. 

 

The PCR result comes back positive, the hotel can’t find the guy and realise he just ‘walked out’....  they have to cover themselves so report to Police that he ‘escaped’....  the media and netizens want to have this guy jailed before finding out what really happened.

 

The israeli guy then takes a test, is negative, hands himself in, takes another test, is negative.

 

Netizens start questioning the accuracy of the PCR tests issued in Thailand questioning the ‘false positive’... 

 

Suddenly, it is reported the test is found to be positive and not only that, positive with Omicron. 

 

Now the attention is removed from the false positive, removed from the hotel which let the guy walk out and is placed firmly on this ‘Israeli’ guy who is once again ‘criminalised’ in the media. 

 

 

We are not ’supporting this guy’.... He was stupid and naive.... but I don’t believe he acted with any intent and now may be blamed for something which is not entirely his fault. 

 

[cjinchiangrai]

14 hours ago, scubascuba3 said:

Would be interesting to hear the medical bill for him, I'm guessing 300k+

I am guessing the insurance company will not pay once he violates the terms of quarantine.

[vinny41]

7 minutes ago, richard_smith237 said:

I can’t believe you would place 100% trust in the information provided to the media outlets. 

 

Can you imagine this scenario... 

“Hello Mr x...  welcome to xx hotel"

“Hi...   any idea when I can leave the hotel"

“You can leave after you do PCR"

“Cool”....

 

- and there we have it, poor and imprecise communication and the Israeli guy takes his PCR test, thinks he’s free to go and simply walks out the hotel with his bags and takes a taxi.... no one stops him. 

 

The PCR result comes back positive, the hotel can’t find the guy and realise he just ‘walked out’....  they have to cover themselves so report to Police that he ‘escaped’....  the media and netizens want to have this guy jailed before finding out what really happened.

 

The israeli guy then takes a test, is negative, hands himself in, takes another test, is negative.

 

Netizens start questioning the accuracy of the PCR tests issued in Thailand questioning the ‘false positive’... 

 

Suddenly, it is reported the test is found to be positive and not only that, positive with Omicron. 

 

Now the attention is removed from the false positive, removed from the hotel which let the guy walk out and is placed firmly on this ‘Israeli’ guy who is once again ‘criminalised’ in the media. 

 

 

We are not ’supporting this guy’.... He was stupid and naive.... but I don’t believe he acted with any intent and now may be blamed for something which is not entirely his fault. 

 

 

If we go with your scenario. Why would he phone the hotel and say he would return later in the day, Why would he turn his phone off

On Saturday, he called the Bangkok hotel and said he was visiting a friend at a hospital and would return later that day, which didn’t happen.

Baruch then reportedly turned off his phone on Saturday night and traveled back to Bangkok and then to the southern island of Koh Samui.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-faces-thailand-jail-time-after-leaving-quarantine-evading-police-for-5-days/

[SymS]

It's not an important story. Tests have been known to report negative or positive results when the viral load is low.
Omicron can't be stopped, every country will have to go through it, and the good news is that it kills much less people than earlier strains, people who do need to get admitted (with severe cases?) only stay 2 or 3 days in the hospital on average, instead of the usual 10 days.

[lockman07]

First he has negative covid tests & now he's got the omicron, BS.  Just another tactic to keep Thai people afraid of & hating farangs.  Deny everything, blame others for our corruption and mistakes is the mantra here.

[JustinCredible]

11 hours ago, tomacht8 said:

In some Facebook groups I read he have went to the policestation by him self. The police did not catch him. What exactly happened. Who knows.

Reports that I have read in other publications say that he contacted the his Embassy while he was in Samui and they told the Police where he could be found, after he agreed to give himself up.

 

[MikeN]

12 hours ago, internationalism said:

that is strange, that he runs from hotel yet before results came. As he suspected, that test will turn positive or was in an immense rush to do something.

According to the unlinkable paper, he stayed at the BKK hotel for over 24 hours, while under the test and go scheme you should only have to wait overnight for your test result. Perhaps something got lost in translation and he thought that “no news is good news” and when he did not get a result in over 24 hours he thought he was clear ?

[Silencer]

13 hours ago, ukrules said:

For all we know he might have booked his transport through the hotel and had no clue there was a problem and now they're covering it up to save face by having him arrested, possibly imprisoned and likely deported - which will be very convenient to keep him away from reporters.

Reporters here don't investigate anything if it has any connection to politics. They march along with the beat and 'report' what they are told. Occasionally, foreign press will break some stories.

[richard_smith237]

19 minutes ago, vinny41 said:

 

If we go with your scenario. Why would he phone the hotel and say he would return later in the day, Why would he turn his phone off

On Saturday, he called the Bangkok hotel and said he was visiting a friend at a hospital and would return later that day, which didn’t happen.

Baruch then reportedly turned off his phone on Saturday night and traveled back to Bangkok and then to the southern island of Koh Samui.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-faces-thailand-jail-time-after-leaving-quarantine-evading-police-for-5-days/

I'm not defending the guy......  

 

I’m making the argument that its feasible there was a misunderstanding due to poor communication and he thought he was free to leave the hotel after having the test administered and had stayed at the hotel over night.... The BKK Post reports he left the hotel at 2pm the following afternoon....  

 

Its quite reasonable for him to think he’d already complied by then....

 

Phone batteries run out... poor timing, who knows if he actively ’turned off the phone’ 

 

That said, the Times of Israel Article presents a better argument and series of events that Baruch was attempting to evade detection when attempting to check into a hotel in Pattaya without his passport.

 

Where is the CCTV of Baruch leaving his ‘Test & Go’ hotel in Bangkok ???

 

CCTV of him attempting to check in to his hotel was found., but there is not mention of CCTV showing him leaving is hotel in Bangkok....  did he just carry his luggage out of the hotel ? was there any communication with the hotel staff or front-desk???

 

 

--------

 

My Wife Son and I did our ’Test & Go’ in November, information provided by the hotel was very ’thin’.

 

I asked when we could leave.... the answer was ‘After your PCR’.....   

We were also provided with the Antigen Test Kits, I asked what we are supposed to do wit them (i.e. who do we sent the result to), the hotel staff did not know. We took the ATK but never ended up sending the result to anyone. 

 

We checked out of our ’Test and Go’ hotel on the same day we arrived, but only after calling the front desk to check that our result was negative. The hotel gave us our ‘PCR test certificates’ on check-out. We didn’t even know we were going to be given these, we could have just walked out. Everything at the hotel was pre-paid. 

 

 

 

 

Edited December 24, 2021 by richard_smith237

[wombat]

12 hours ago, mancub said:

if he did a guilty "runner" before getting the results of the initial test, why did he later get 2 more tests done ?

the old more holes than Swiss cheese story

[Daithi85]

12 hours ago, internationalism said:

that is strange, that he runs from hotel yet before results came. As he suspected, that test will turn positive or was in an immense rush to do something.

Did he forge his departure pcr test from Israel?

Why he went to pattaya and then immediately to samui?

That is pattern of behaviour of somebody, who is hiding something, deflecting police.

I trust he is not a drug mule, diamond smuggler or mosad agent with some job assignment.

Thai police did a very swift action as if they suspected something more sinister, not just a crazy guy running away from hotel. They have traced him by cctv in chumpon, which means they did search on a very large, national scale, usually in case of terrorism or such

He called his embassy to hand himself in, that's how they got him in samui. 

[internationalism]

1 minute ago, Daithi85 said:

He called his embassy to hand himself in, that's how they got him in samui. 

before that he was traced by cctv in chumpon, on his way to samui.

Police had warrant and was actively searching for him, but if he did not use his passport for check in at hotels (payed receptionist to use somebody else details), so couldn't find him easily

[richard_smith237]

1 minute ago, wombat said:

12 hours ago, mancub said:

if he did a guilty "runner" before getting the results of the initial test, why did he later get 2 more tests done ?

the old more holes than Swiss cheese story

As I see it... here is the chain of events. 

 

 

- 17 Dec: Baruch arrives checks into Test and Go and has a PCR Swab taken

- At 2pm the following day (after more than 24 hrs in Test & Go) Baruch departs Test & Go hotel without his PCR result takes a taxi to Pattaya (vista a friend in hospital) 

- Unable to check into hotel in Pattaya, doesn’t want to show his passport (seems strange) - Phone off. 

- Baruch travels to Samui and sees that he’s the target of a man-hunt, he tested positive for Covid-19

- Baruch Contacts his Embassy, probably highly concerned. 

- Baruch takes a PCR or Antigen test which was negative.

- Baruch turns informs Embassy of his location for the Police to Pick him up

- Baruch takes a PCR test - result is negative

- Same Swab is taken to Bangkok and re-tested (very odd, why the need re-test in Bangkok ??) - this result is positive and they discover Omicron.

 

 

As I see it... He didn’t do a runner, he simply left his hotel after 24 hrs (as reported in the BKK Post) and wasn’t stopped. Why was he not contacted before that if his test was positive ?????

 

It is suspicious (if true as reported) that he’d tried to check into a hotel without his passport (maybe the wanted to keep it rather than just take a copy ? / or maybe he was being cagey).

 

It is suspicious that his phone was off... Battery died ? or had he simply turned it off as he didn’t have a local (Thai) Sim and didn’t want to receive expensive calls and texts ?

 

The tests seem hit and miss.

1) Pre Travel PCR - Negative

2) Arrival PCR - Positive 

3) Samui test (ATK or PCR) - Negative 

4) Samui PCR - Negative

5) Sample taken to BKK - Positive for Omicron

 

So far is seems there are 3 negatives to 2 positives.....  (or at least in Thailand its 2 for 2).

 

 

Surely a further confirmation test is needed, one which meets international standards (i.e. the exact number of replication cycles (Ct - replication threshold) which I believe is somewhere around 35) - If the lab in Bangkok executed 45 replication cycles it could have found anything it wanted as skeletal remains of RNA are amplified to detectable amounts.

 

[Pedrogaz]

Lock him up and throw away the key. Stupid and selfish...great combination.

[Roel]

Normally I am not in favour of the death penalty perse but in this case, I am not so sure.

This guy has no respect. He does not understand that we have no choice but to stop the world from turning. Millions have sacrificed their jobs, businesses, and income for the greater good. Complete economies and nations brought down to their knees. Everybody happily giving up their social life and having fun. And he? He jumps in a taxi! Does he really not understand that we have to do all this so mostly 80+ year old's and sick people can live a few months longer than they otherwise would have. Hang him high.

[Tropposurfer]

15 hours ago, scubascuba3 said:

Would be interesting to hear the medical bill for him, I'm guessing 300k+

We can only hope ????

[Tropposurfer]

15 hours ago, scubascuba3 said:

Would be interesting to hear the medical bill for him, I'm guessing 300k+

We can only hope ????

[Pedrogaz]

2 hours ago, BKKBike09 said:

Spot on. The more detail emerges, the more rum the whole affair looks. Also seems like no-one is interested in hearing this guy's side of the events (his 'lived experience' as I believe we should call it this days).

 

I can easily see a comms screw up at the original one-night hotel leading to him thinking he could leave and then panic after they realised they let him go but he was "positive" (if he even was; seems to me that arrivals since November are consistently testing positive at around 1:1,000 - something close to the 'typical' PCR test false positive rate [we'd need to know whether his original 'positive' test was positive on a single gene, or more than one: the former likely being genuinely false, the latter more likely to be genuinely positive]).

 

CCTV from the hotel would be the most revealing: if he's clearly on camera sneaking out of a fire escape, would support him knowingly doing a runner. But if he's on CCTV at reception settling his bill and his bags with the bellboy, well that would be a different story.

 

Let's see if the CCTV footage from the hotel is suddenly 'missing' or there was 'a technical problem and it didn't record'.

 

 

 

 

 

To be honest, it doesn't matter whether his tests were negative or positive.....he broke quarantine. 

[Tropposurfer]

15 hours ago, scubascuba3 said:

Would be interesting to hear the medical bill for him, I'm guessing 300k+

We can only hope ????

[richard_smith237]

9 minutes ago, Pedrogaz said:

To be honest, it doesn't matter whether his tests were negative or positive.....he broke quarantine. 

He may not have known he was breaking quarantine. 

 

Baruch stayed at his ‘Pre-paid’ test and go for longer than 24 hours and simply walked out the hotel following day at 2pm with his baggage and took a taxi from the front of the hotel. It doesn’t seem like an ‘escape’.

 

While naive, its not improbable that he made the assumption that ‘no news is good news’ and he was free to go after no one gave him the results of his test within 24 hrs. 

 

 

In the UK I visited a hospital and was given a PCR test - I asked when I’d get the results and was told I’d only be contacted if I was positive, thus assume 'no news is good news’ - its not unimaginable that Baruch thought the same. 

 

[cnx101]

16 hours ago, d2b2 said:

He is the poster child for entitlement and disregard

And being a scumbag 

[Jingthing]

1 minute ago, cnx101 said:

And being a scumbag 

And he makes a perfect scapegoat for Omicron starting to locally spread in Thailand.  News flash: it already was before he arrived. It's literally impossible to stop this variant from spreading rapidly.

[Jingthing]

17 minutes ago, Tropposurfer said:

We can only hope ????

So you want them to grossly overcharge all f-rangs for Covid care or only this Israeli?

[Grusa]

Ok, the guy did what he did, and will no doubt suffer consequences.

 

What I do not understand is; why did he call his embassy to tell them he would turn himself in? If he was gaily swanning around the country how did he get to know the police were on bis trail? His phone was apparently offline, and there are no "wanted" posters on the streets.

[richard_smith237]

3 minutes ago, Grusa said:

Ok, the guy did what he did, and will no doubt suffer consequences.

 

What I do not understand is; why did he call his embassy to tell them he would turn himself in? If he was gaily swanning around the country how did he get to know the police were on bis trail? His phone was apparently offline, and there are no "wanted" posters on the streets.

Not that hard to imagine is it ???

 

Walked out of his quarantine hotel after 24 hrs (assumed no news was good news), no one stopped him, he travelled...     Didn’t have a local SIM Card ?? (didn’t want to receive loads of SMS’s and costly calls while internationally roaming - many people turn off their phone when travelling internationally to avoid costs). 

 

Turned his phone back on a saw a load of messages that he was the target of a man-hunt for ‘escaping quarantine’....  quite frightening.... Contacted his Embassy....  In the mean time he took himself to Samui Hospital to take a Covid-19 test to ensure he was ok. 

 

Handed himself in to Police (waited at his accommodation for Police to arrive), he was tested for Covid-19 again while in Samui and was negative.

 

 

So...  simple miscommunication / misunderstanding ??? - But there’s no grounds for the media outrage and hang-him-high brigade to announce "lock him up and throw away the key”....   The ’escaped quarantine’ narrative if far more attractive, gets more hits, gets more comments, keeps the story alive, draws in the advertising revenue....   Meanwhile officials are happy everyones forgotten about the potential for an initial false positive.... 

 

 

I’m not supporting this guy, but it is easy for me to see how this story has evolved from a simple mistake into the current outrage.....  my point is, it may be noting more than a naive mistake. 

 

 

[vinny41]

9 minutes ago, Grusa said:

Ok, the guy did what he did, and will no doubt suffer consequences.

 

What I do not understand is; why did he call his embassy to tell them he would turn himself in? If he was gaily swanning around the country how did he get to know the police were on bis trail? His phone was apparently offline, and there are no "wanted" posters on the streets.

When Covid 1st started people were allowed to self isolate/ quarantine at home, that didn't last long as people just carried on as normal visiting friends, going shopping, going to restaurants/bars  and hence that option was removed

I suspect Hotels will be required to take passports on check-in and only returned with the PCR results.

Here’s the timeline of Baruch’s recent movements:

December 17 - Entered Thailand under the Test & Go scheme. Waited at his hotel in Sukhumvit area for his Covid-19 test result.

December 18 – Left his hotel and returned a while later, claiming he visited his friend in hospital near Soi Phetchaburi 47.

2pm – Left the hotel again and called a taxi to Pattaya without showing his passport. He travelled in the area there before returning to Bangkok.

December 19 - Rented a van to the southern provinces.

December 20 - Went to Chumphon en route to Koh Samui.

December 22 - Caught on Koh Samui.

https://www.nationthailand.com/in-focus/40010335

[Genmai]

10 hours ago, SteveWilts said:

I can't believe how many commenters actually support this guy!

I can't believe how many commenters actually believe announcements from Thai officials at face value. Nobody is supporting the guy, just that some are questioning the media narrative in light of Thai people's begrudging sentiments towards foreigners and the fact that we haven't yet heard anything from the Israeli himself.

[tomacht8]

Such a story is often stigmatized across the board without knowing the exact circumstances.

 

The story spread also in the Thai media. There is also no great journalistic detailed research carried out and differentiated. The evil foreigner is portrayed in a very striking way. The distrust and denial of foreigners will continue to grow among the Thai population. Such events contribute to it.

Unfortunately.

Edited December 24, 2021 by tomacht8