Top Thai virologist says 2023 is game over for COVID-19

[onthedarkside]

Trolling meme reported/removed

[NoshowJones]

34 minutes ago, ozimoron said:

So they'll invent another virus to pad their bank accounts? Is that what you mean? Otherwise I'm at a loss to understand your post. All these vaccine skeptic conspiracy theories are beyond tiresome.

There will be other viruses, they won't have to invent one, and I believe it will be used to pad certain bank accounts of the medical profession etc. It will be noticed how the last one made many people rich, so certain people will want a piece of the action.

[Jumbo1968]

24 minutes ago, ozimoron said:

I hope you took him to a doctor. There's no evidence that masks can cause such a thing. Perhaps it may be air pollution which is why the authorities are now again suggesting wearing masks. Personally I think you are just spreading anti mask conspiracy theories.

Prior to mask wearing he never had a catarrh problem, on a W.E. It’s never a problem when he is not at school, 

[ozimoron]

1 minute ago, NoshowJones said:

There will be other viruses, they won't have to invent one, and I believe it will be used to pad certain bank accounts of the medical profession etc. It will be noticed how the last one made many people rich, so certain people will want a piece of the action.

Are you suggesting they just ignore other viruses and that big pharma don't bother to make vaccines for them? Or that government don't recommend use of those vaccines?

[ozimoron]

Just now, Jumbo1968 said:

Prior to mask wearing he never had a catarrh problem, on a W.E. It’s never a problem when he is not at school, 

This is what's known as a logical non sequitur.

 

If it's not a problem when he's not at school have you tested your theory at home by requiring him to wear a mask and monitoring him for symptoms?

[Jumbo1968]

Just now, ozimoron said:

This is what's known as a logical non sequitur.

 

If it's not a problem when he's not at school have you tested your theory at home by requiring him to wear a mask and monitoring him for symptoms?

He wears a mask at school, catarrh, he doesn’t wear one at W.E.s or holidays no catarrh, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to work out the connection.

[ozimoron]

1 minute ago, Jumbo1968 said:

He wears a mask at school, catarrh, he doesn’t wear one at W.E.s or holidays no catarrh, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to work out the connection.

No, it takes a doctor. You could easily test the hypothesis but prefer to cling to your conspiracy theory.

[NoshowJones]

4 minutes ago, ozimoron said:

Are you suggesting they just ignore other viruses and that big pharma don't bother to make vaccines for them? Or that government don't recommend use of those vaccines?

I most certainly am not. I just want them to be fair and not rip people off the way they have been doing in the past.

[ozimoron]

3 minutes ago, NoshowJones said:

I most certainly am not. I just want them to be fair and not rip people off the way they have been doing in the past.

The charges were high but I believe the hotels were just passing on their hospital costs which can be very high. Off site medical services aren't cheap anywhere.

 

That said, Marburg can't be compared to covid and quarantine would be in a hospital infectious ward.

Edited February 21, 2023 by ozimoron

[NoshowJones]

1 minute ago, ozimoron said:

The charges were high but I believe the hotels were just passing on their hospital costs which can be very high. Off site medical services aren't cheap anywhere.

That's true, you have to admit though that they do rip people off. They just have to be more fair with their prices.

[ozimoron]

1 minute ago, NoshowJones said:

That's true, you have to admit though that they do rip people off. They just have to be more fair with their prices.

I still have a bill for $2500 for quarantine in my own country. No argument there from me.

[NoshowJones]

1 minute ago, ozimoron said:

I still have a bill for $2500 for quarantine in my own country. No argument there from me.

If your happy that's all that matters.

[apophyss]

I will be sure only when TAT will announce it...

[edwardandtubs]

3 hours ago, Purdey said:

It is interesting that Thai people are still wearing masks on the whole while westerners hold their heads up proudly without a mask. Then you look at the statistics for infections and deaths in say, the UK, a country with a similar population size and you think, that's not the example to follow. If Thais want to wear masks let them. I don't see them harming anyone.

In the immortal words of Michael Gove in 2016, "I think the people of this country have had enough of experts." So the UK statistics prove. 

The problem with that is that the number of cases is meaningless as it just reflects the number of tests and how likely people are to report the result. The number of deaths is also meaningless as it depends not just on the level of testing but also the definition of a covid death. The wild differences in official statistics and analyst estimates of China's true number of deaths illustrates this. And masking didn't stop covid ripping through the population of China did it?

 

If you look at a statistic less open to interpretation - the number of patients with covid on mechanical ventilation - you'll see that the UK and Thailand are approximately the same and have been for a long time. 

 

Current number in England: 137

https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/healthcare#card-patients_in_mechanical_ventilation_beds

 

(Note: the UK total is no longer updated but if you look at the data table "by nation" you can see the numbers for England).

 

Number in Thailand 3 weeks ago: 179

https://www.thaipbsworld.com/thailand-reports-30-drop-in-covid-admissions-and-deaths-last-week/

Edited February 21, 2023 by edwardandtubs

[BananaStrong]

in 2022 my friends and I had 38 beers, 12 shots, 39 trips to the massage shop and we CALLED it that 2022 was the end of COVID.

 

we were pretty much right!!!!!

 

we'll take awards, money, celebration, fame........

[freedomnow]

Covid-19 - OUT

 

Alien Invasion - IN

[PETERTHEEATER]

17 hours ago, ozimoron said:

If not him, who is?

The Minister of Health has cemented his claim to that epithet....

[Dogmatix]

Unfortunately Dr Yong has zero credibility. So not worth reading anything he says.

[ukrules]

8 hours ago, Robbkk said:

The virus is the same.

It most certainly is not the same, it's very different to the 2019 version and yes it was 2019 hence the name COVID-19.

[jacko45k]

2 hours ago, Jumbo1968 said:

I have mentioned this before but I hope my sons school takes note, he now has constant catarrh in his throat which I am sure is caused by wearing a mask for 7/8 hours at school.

Gibson, Fender or bog standard? 

Have you perhaps tried a pollution mask, one of those with a couple of valves meaning breathing out is not filtered? Not really meant for Covid but likely the school won't know that!

[rickudon]

Dr Jong just used to regurgitate the opinions expressed by other international virologists/disease experts. I never saw anything he said that i hadn't seen already somewhere in international news or science journals.

 

All i know was that i was already convinced we were in a Pandemic by end of January 2020 from the information i had seen, and cancelled my 2020 travel plans by Early February. Also advised relatives who were coming on holiday to Thailand that the country would lock down by the end of March. One chose to ignore this and had her holiday extended by 6 months..... Also second guessed most other developments.

 

Covid is not going away, just another respiratory infection in the common cold group of viruses. One type of Coronavirus that can cause colds has recently been linked as a possible culprit to a 19th Century pandemic, Russian flu.

 

Governments themselves are unreliable sources as what they say is distorted by 'economic' considerations - like in UK with BSE. When Selwyn Gummer was feeding his daughter a Hamburger for the press to see, I had already banned beef in my household, as i knew about Kuru (a somewhat similar disease in new Guinea) and didn't eat it for 15 years.

[Purdey]

1 hour ago, edwardandtubs said:

The number of deaths is also meaningless as it depends not just on the level of testing but also the definition of a covid death.

I see your point but I was thinking more about the overall numbers (defined as the result of Covid from early 2020 to early 2023) and not just the tail end.

Overall, two countries with almost the same population size had very different results. With respect, I doubt anyone can call the number of deaths meaningless without some hard evidence to back it up. We must have evidence to place doubt on them. 

In Thailand the total deaths attributed to Covid was 33,902, while for UK it was 206,246. The UK had 24,341,615 cases while Thailand had 4,727,831. In each case you could double Thailand's statistics and still not reach the level of the UK. Seeing westerners proud of their refusal to wear masks, every health agency is still saying that wearing is better than not wearing. https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/

https://www.gavi.org/vaccineswork/five-reasons-wear-mask-even-if-you-dont-have#:~:text=Since individuals who have not,wearer from COVID-19 transmission.

https://www.npr.org/2023/02/10/1155516547/are-there-places-you-should-still-mask-in-forever-three-experts-weigh-in

This Guardian articles explains why masks are still needed. Have a good day.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/feb/09/the-inconvenience-of-covid-masks-are-better-than-the-alternative

 

 

 

[edwardandtubs]

11 minutes ago, Purdey said:

I see your point but I was thinking more about the overall numbers (defined as the result of Covid from early 2020 to early 2023) and not just the tail end.

Overall, two countries with almost the same population size had very different results. With respect, I doubt anyone can call the number of deaths meaningless without some hard evidence to back it up. We must have evidence to place doubt on them. 

In Thailand the total deaths attributed to Covid was 33,902, while for UK it was 206,246. The UK had 24,341,615 cases while Thailand had 4,727,831. In each case you could double Thailand's statistics and still not reach the level of the UK. Seeing westerners proud of their refusal to wear masks, every health agency is still saying that wearing is better than not wearing. https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/

https://www.gavi.org/vaccineswork/five-reasons-wear-mask-even-if-you-dont-have#:~:text=Since individuals who have not,wearer from COVID-19 transmission.

https://www.npr.org/2023/02/10/1155516547/are-there-places-you-should-still-mask-in-forever-three-experts-weigh-in

This Guardian articles explains why masks are still needed. Have a good day.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/feb/09/the-inconvenience-of-covid-masks-are-better-than-the-alternative

 

 

 

You're talking about reported cases which doesn't reflect the actual number of infections. Most people in the world have been infected now. As Yong himself says in the article in the OP, "COVID-19 infection has subsided because more than 70% of population of each country has been infected." This includes Thailand:

 

https://www.nationthailand.com/thailand/general/40024418

 

As for deaths, this is defined in the UK as a death within 28 days of a positive test. How is it defined in Thailand? If the definition is different then comparison is meaningless.

Edited February 21, 2023 by edwardandtubs

[Jumbo1968]

2 hours ago, ozimoron said:

No, it takes a doctor. You could easily test the hypothesis but prefer to cling to your conspiracy theory.

What’s a Doctor going to tell me, probably ask the school for my son to be exempt from wearing a mask. LBH it was never proved scientifically that masks stopped the spread of Covid more so the cheap and nasty cloth ones which the majority of people wear, might as well tie a handkerchief round your mouth.

[BangkokReady]

19 hours ago, ozimoron said:

Please explain the mechanism by which government recommendations to wear masks enables political control. I've been at a loss to understand this conspiracy theory and nobody seems wiling to explain it. Will you? My understanding is that recommendations to wear masks saves lives, simple as that. You know, Occam's razor. The same recommendations have been made by every nation on the planet, yet it seems to have not resulted in political control.

Politicians using fear, particularly fear of an external threat, to control people has been going on probably as long as we have had politics, possibly longer.  You must surely know about this.

 

Covid and foreigners are the external threats and mask wearing is a way of keeping it in people's minds.  Also it ensures they are more likely to do as they are told, as they are already following one or two measures.

[Dcheech]

4 hours ago, Dogmatix said:

Unfortunately Dr Yong has zero credibility. So not worth reading anything he says.

Article from last summer, on the future of covid from a number of research scientists. For the US, estimate were 100K to 100-250 K deaths per year from "endemic covid". Far more than endemic flu. A couple also felt it could just as easily go the other direction, get worse,  if a new more deadly variant emerged. It was a sobering read.

 

OTOH this toll would be mainly oldsters, so no need to worry, unless of course, you are an oldster 

 

 

Edited February 21, 2023 by Dcheech

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

23 minutes ago, Dcheech said:

For the US, estimate were 100K to 100-250 K deaths per year from "endemic covid".

For some time now, the U.S. daily death rate from COVID has been in the 400 to 500 deaths per day range, with the more recent daily tallies being around 420.

 

If you annualized that current COVID death rate in the U.S., it would equal about 146,000 deaths per year... which is far and way more than any annual total the U.S. has had of flu deaths in any recent years.

 

Even if the COVID deaths are/were all "oldsters", which they're not -- last stats I saw had about 25% of the U.S. COVID deaths being among people age 64 and younger -- that still a lot of deaths above and beyond the norms.

 

"Going strictly by the numbers, COVID-19 is still claiming around 400 lives per day in the U.S., which is roughly 3 times as many as the flu. A recent report used death certificate data and found COVID-19 to be four times as deadly as the flu in England and Wales."

 

https://www.goodrx.com/conditions/covid-19/flu-vs-coronavirus-mortality-and-death-rates-by-year

 

 

Edited February 21, 2023 by TallGuyJohninBKK

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

3 hours ago, Jumbo1968 said:

What’s a Doctor going to tell me, probably ask the school for my son to be exempt from wearing a mask. LBH it was never proved scientifically that masks stopped the spread of Covid more so the cheap and nasty cloth ones which the majority of people wear, might as well tie a handkerchief round your mouth.

Still going on with your continuing anti-mask tirades... against all recommendations from the U.S. CDC, WHO and various other public health/COVID experts.

 

Most people were never trying to prove that masking alone would have "stopped the spread of Covid" as you put it. Rather, the consistent public health advice has been that masking, along with other precautions, REDUCES people's risk of contracting COVID.

 

And, it DOES!

 

 

 

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

Strange thing about COVID in Thailand....

 

Once the government decided to stop testing for and counting COVID infections here (now they only count hospitalizations and deaths), suddenly there isn't any COVID in Thailand anymore...

 

Except, recognizing that the official looking the other way policy fails to recognize that there are still COVID infections out there who continue spreading the virus, one Chula expert (not Dr. Yong) recently estimated in a news item reported here that Thailand is probably running 2800 to 3900 new infections PER DAY.

 

 

 

Just because people now don't require hospitalization or die as often as they did at earlier points in the pandemic, that doesn't mean COVID carries no health consequences, short and long-term, for those infected.

 

Edited February 21, 2023 by TallGuyJohninBKK

[Jumbo1968]

32 minutes ago, TallGuyJohninBKK said:

Still going on with your continuing anti-mask tirades... against all recommendations from the U.S. CDC, WHO and various other public health/COVID experts.

 

Most people were never trying to prove that masking alone would have "stopped the spread of Covid" as you put it. Rather, the consistent public health advice has been that masking, along with other precautions, REDUCES people's risk of contracting COVID.

 

And, it DOES!

 

 

 

I am not anti mask, I wore one when I was required to do so, I am on about the quality of the masks, the majority sold here in Thailand wouldn’t be effective against Covid, paper thin and not regulated by anyone.

Did mask wearing stop the spread of Covid, it certainly didn’t in the U.K., we will never know if it did. anywhere on the globe. I could provide links from eminent people saying it didn’t, you could probably provide links by eminent people to say it did.

 

Thailand was very liberal with the figures, it wasn’t because everyone wore masks, people were scared to get tested as in the early days they if fortunate were shipped off to a hospital or a converted warehouse. I am sure in the villages there would be no testing probably self isolation.
In the early days yes we all wore masks but as far disinfecting ones hands prior to entering premises it was never observed by the majority.