News Forum - Anutin opposes limiting quarantine-free re-opening to 10 countries

[JohninDublin]

13 minutes ago, JamesR said:

I wonder where they live these "Deep State" people?

I tried to get £7000 out of my bank account earlier this year in person at the bank, all above board and legitimate, they said I had to fill this and that form in and I said I couldn't be bothered.

So I took £1000 a day from my ATM cash machine, they froze the bank account after four days and sent the police to see me at my house.

The police just laughed as I told them the cash was for a new kitchen etc, they left after a minute and apologised for waiting my time. 

I changed banks a few weeks later.

But my point is I have trouble getting a few quid out of my account in cash, how do all theses Deep State people operate with their billions.

Oh I know, because they are Deep State. 

My bank is a bit different. I have biz that is mainly cash. On earlier occasions, I used to be asked what I wanted large amounts of cash for. I didn't actually want to speak openly in front of other customers as there was the risk that the wrong person overhearing me might make me a target, so I was "always" buying second-hand cars.

I used to get annoyed at being asked what I wanted my own money for, so on one occasion, I said it was for a "drug deal" wondering what would happen. The cashier laughed and gave me the money. The following day, I got a call from a bank "Personal Banker" enquiring as to what other services they could offer me. Eventually the convo got around to, "We notice that you've made quite a few large cash withdrawals since you've been a customer with us. Is that anything we can help you with"? I explained the reasons for this, and strangely enough, I was never again asked why I wanted to withdraw such sums in cash.

[Chaimai]

47 minutes ago, JamesR said:

It is not my 'bogus virus' it is the 'bogus virus' of the mad conspiracy people.

Could you not see the comments from @JohninDubin and me were being sarcastic against conspiracy nutters?

I think the answer is maichai. 

You are too subtle for me.

 

Either that, or I need to read more of a thread before posting..........bugger! that could be tiresome.

[Stonker]

6 hours ago, Guevara said:

Have you considered the fact that the UK has carried out 312 million tests, hence the identified new cases. Unlike Thailand who have carried out less than 10 million tests. Perhaps if the UK stopped testing they would have virtually no new cases. Thailand is a powder keg with pathetically low testing figures. Likewise with vaccinations, I believe around 33% have been vaccinated (with the placebo or pseudo vaccination Sinovac).

No, I haven't considered comparing how many tests the UK and Thailand have done as I can't see what the point would be as far as the list of approved countries goes.

Thailand's testing and figures may well be garbage, I'm not disputing that although the two systems are totally different, but as Thailand can't put itself on the list of  countries visitors can come from to Thailand,  what would be the point of making a comparison???

All that should matter, which was my point, is how many known cases they have per capita, and however you spin it there's no possible way the UK or US are in the best 10 or anywhere near it.

[Stonker]

3 hours ago, Jason said:

Oh Dear.....what a mess! There's one thing the Thai Government doesn't seem to have taken on board yet (I can only hope they do...for their sakes). Thailand is not the "Covid Free Zone" it was a year or even six months ago. So treating other countries as "Riddled with Covid and not fit to enter our country" was last years narrative. Delta changed a lot. My own country had a large surge in Covid as a result of Delta. So a country that was once a Covid free zone, no longer is. The mindset needs to be a gradual reopening (not boom and the inevitable bust). Tourist hotspots sealed and highly vaccinated. Once the greater population is vaccinated (80% or better of the 15+ population), then an easing of restrictions. Thailand's vaccination rollout has been underwhelming. But don't lose heart! It's been that way pretty much everywhere :) It's the first time in 100 years (since the Spanish flu) that we've had to deal with a global pandemic. 

Agree entirely with you, @Jason, except you can't seal tourist hotspots unless they're islands.

It's not so much sealing them to keep foreign tourists in, but to keep transient Thais out - it's simply impossible.

[Stonker]

4 hours ago, Soidog said:

Well said  The U.K. is often said to be a risky country, the worst in Europe blah blah. Take Germany for example. It’s reporting around 8,500 cases. Wow, that’s fantastic.  4 to 5 times less than the U.K.  How many tests are they performing? 128,000 a day. Wow, that’s  7 to 8 times less than the U.K.  How about Spain? 8,500 new cases. Wow, that’s 4 times less than U.K.  how many tests? 92,000. That’s almost 10 times less than the U.K.  Italy? 12,000 cases and 125,000 tests. So if we normalise just these European countries based on the testing levels in the U.K. we would get the following daily 7 day average cases:

UK 35,000

Germany 60,000 

Spain 85,000

Italy 75,000

UK not looking too bad now is it ! 

You could, but it would be absurd to do so since it all depends on how the testing is done - random, zoned, voluntary, targeted, repeat, etc, etc, etc.

Unless they're all done using the same system the comparisons are meaningless for tests and cases.

Far more rational to count hospitalisations or excess deaths where it's possible to compare apples with apples, oranges with oranges.

Do that, and ..... oh dear ..... oops ..... better go back to apples and oranges

[Stonker]

4 hours ago, JamesR said:

But in the case of Thailand a claimed 33% have been vaccinated, I am assuming that is only one vaccine shot, so as you say when they do move around again to new jobs created by more tourists or are domestic tourists themselves and all the school reopen I can imagine a sudden sharp and deadly rise in the death rate due to the virus. 

No, half the population have been vaccinated with one or two shots with a third of the population being vaccinated with two.

The problem also isn't just schoolchildren, domestic tourists and people  moving to take up jobs in the tourist areas but a sizeable permanently transient population.

Some lottery ticket sellers, for example, are locals, but particularly in tourist areas many are there for a week then back home in Isaan for a week.

[Soidog]

3 hours ago, JohninDubin said:

I think that the suggestion that if the UK level of testing was applied to all countries, we would get those outcomes is a very flawed assumption as it fails to consider what other measures are in place as preventative measures. But if that's the metric you want to choose, then compare the UK to TH which has a similar population. 

The UK has carried out 35X more tests than TH so therefore we would expect based on UK results. 4.8 mill TH deaths, 48 mill active cases, 290 mill infections (requires everyone to be infected 4X). The actual figures are 18k, 107k and 1.8 mill. I accept that if TH tested at the same level as the UK, they would not be so flattering to TH, but even if this increased the "true" figures by 10X, the reality is that TH would still be ahead of the UK on every metric on just about every metric cited by Worldometers with the exception of critical cases.

If you want to limit to cherry-pick the countries you have, then it also needs to be taken into account that the UK, belatedly closed it's borders, while these other countries can't do so because of Schengen. That does not mean that those countries may have hidden problems that are going massively undetected because of different frequency of testing.

Looking at TH in particular, they were performing magnificently, especially compared to the UK, until Delta arrived. High rates of testing are useful, but the results of these can be distorted when number-crunching because of the different measures each country has taken to suppress the virus. The more effective these measures are, the less need there is for testing. 

Snapshot and not meant to be a piece of statistical analysis. The testing regimes are very different with Thailand doing targeted testing. However testing strategies in Germany, Spain and France are similar. It not to the same level, hence a more reasonable comparison.  All I was trying to say, as you have said, is that it is wrong to compare countries. It’s also wrong to say the U.K. is the worst in Europe. 

[Stonker]

2 hours ago, Soidog said:

 It’s also wrong to say the U.K. is the worst in Europe. 

Really?

Based on Covid deaths, excess deaths, hospitalizations or ICU cases?

Maybe you need to look again .....

[JohninDublin]

19 minutes ago, Soidog said:

Snapshot and not meant to be a piece of statistical analysis. The testing regimes are very different with Thailand doing targeted testing. However testing strategies in Germany, Spain and France are similar. It not to the same level, hence a more reasonable comparison.  All I was trying to say, as you have said, is that it is wrong to compare countries. It’s also wrong to say the U.K. is the worst in Europe. 

GB is an Island Given the advantages that the UK has, it's record has been appalling. I am sick and tired of repeating this but it needs to be said: The UK and GB, has an 800 year history of hearing of strange diseases to the east of them and two years later, they make their way into the UK. Nearly 200 years ago, Doctors worked out that these diseases were brought in through Foreign Travel. 

The first case to be brought into the UK was from someone who had returned from a Skiing Holiday in Italy's Alps where the disease was known to be rampant. Within days there were other reports including two students who were returning to York Uni from Chinese New Year in of all places, WUHAN!. When most of the world were introducing screening at borders, the UK didn't implement border controls until July. When Transport Sec Grant Crapps (not a typo), was asked why the borders had not been closed, he responded, "Because the virus is already here". A year later after he had shut the stable door after the stable had burned to the ground, he was boasting that we had among the strongest borders in the world. That raises the question as to what was the point if "the virus was already here"?

Then there was Hopeless Hancock. I didn't call him hopeless. Bojo did, and he prefaced the word with "F******". Anyone recall the stunt he pulled to achieve 100k tests in a day by the end of April 2020? Or his "1 BN pieces of PPE", which included each pair of gloves counted as two items and millions of boxes of tissues being counted on the list. And let's not forget his "ring of steel" around care homes. The truth was that in order to "protect the NHS", they dumped elderly patients who were still suffering from Covid intp cate homes. The excess deaths in care homes in 2020 was 42000 based on the previous 5 years average.

But, I began by saying that GB is an Island. Utilising the advantages that gave us while waiting for a vax, was probably our best weapon, and I've already shown how Crapps cattled that device. How much of an advantage did that cost us. All I can say is that if you list all the islands on the planet with both a single gov, and a population of over 1 mill, the Island with the greatest mortality rate was GB at 2020 per mill. Next worse was Bahrain at 782. And if you looked at the Islands with populations greater than the UK, you have Indonesia, Japan and Phils, you get 515,143 and 361 respectively. What made the difference? They introduced strict border controls almost as soon as Pandemic was mentioned. 

But the icing on the cake for GB, was that there was Bojo, a man that couldn't organise a screw-up in brothel full of blind nymphomaniacs who in overall charge. I started out with high hopes that he would deal with the problem capably. I remember when he announced the buying up of 8500 Bupa beds, thinking that this was a "man with a plan". The beds were paid for but never used. So why weren't the elderly infected sent into these beds, rather than becoming unwilling accomplices to the mass slaughter that took place in care homes?

There is no doubt in mind that when everything is taken into account, the UK's performance was the worst in Europe. Bojo, Crapps and Hopeless - The Three Stooges

[Soidog]

9 minutes ago, JohninDubin said:

GB is an Island Given the advantages that the UK has, it's record has been appalling. I am sick and tired of repeating this but it needs to be said: The UK and GB, has an 800 year history of hearing of strange diseases to the east of them and two years later, they make their way into the UK. Nearly 200 years ago, Doctors worked out that these diseases were brought in through Foreign Travel. 

The first case to be brought into the UK was from someone who had returned from a Skiing Holiday in Italy's Alps where the disease was known to be rampant. Within days there were other reports including two students who were returning to York Uni from Chinese New Year in of all places, WUHAN!. When most of the world were introducing screening at borders, the UK didn't implement border controls until July. When Transport Sec Grant Crapps (not a typo), was asked why the borders had not been closed, he responded, "Because the virus is already here". A year later after he had shut the stable door after the stable had burned to the ground, he was boasting that we had among the strongest borders in the world. That raises the question as to what was the point if "the virus was already here"?

Then there was Hopeless Hancock. I didn't call him hopeless. Bojo did, and he prefaced the word with "F******". Anyone recall the stunt he pulled to achieve 100k tests in a day by the end of April 2020? Or his "1 BN pieces of PPE", which included each pair of gloves counted as two items and millions of boxes of tissues being counted on the list. And let's not forget his "ring of steel" around care homes. The truth was that in order to "protect the NHS", they dumped elderly patients who were still suffering from Covid intp cate homes. The excess deaths in care homes in 2020 was 42000 based on the previous 5 years average.

But, I began by saying that GB is an Island. Utilising the advantages that gave us while waiting for a vax, was probably our best weapon, and I've already shown how Crapps cattled that device. How much of an advantage did that cost us. All I can say is that if you list all the islands on the planet with both a single gov, and a population of over 1 mill, the Island with the greatest mortality rate was GB at 2020 per mill. Next worse was Bahrain at 782. And if you looked at the Islands with populations greater than the UK, you have Indonesia, Japan and Phils, you get 515,143 and 361 respectively. What made the difference? They introduced strict border controls almost as soon as Pandemic was mentioned. 

But the icing on the cake for GB, was that there was Bojo, a man that couldn't organise a screw-up in brothel full of blind nymphomaniacs who in overall charge. I started out with high hopes that he would deal with the problem capably. I remember when he announced the buying up of 8500 Bupa beds, thinking that this was a "man with a plan". The beds were paid for but never used. So why weren't the elderly infected sent into these beds, rather than becoming unwilling accomplices to the mass slaughter that took place in care homes?

There is no doubt in mind that when everything is taken into account, the UK's performance was the worst in Europe. Bojo, Crapps and Hopeless - The Three Stooges

Can’t disagree with most of that. Poorly handled at the start and only salvaged by a fantastic vaccination strategy and implementation plan. 

[JohninDublin]

2 hours ago, Soidog said:

Can’t disagree with most of that. Poorly handled at the start and only salvaged by a fantastic vaccination strategy and implementation plan. 

That bit, they did get right, but I am wary of the word "salvage". The dead can't be salvaged. 

By contrast, Ireland is now one of the most vaccinated countries in the world if you count over 18's only. When the first does of vaxxes arrived, they suddenly realised that they had not devised a distribution plan. Then after the first doses distributed, they realised that nobody had thought to order additional supplies. Then they changed the priorities nine times. My wife and I were both placed in Group 4 (Over 60's with underlying conditions) and were given an estimated date late-March to mid-April. My wife got hers in mid-May, I got mine June 1st (both first doses).

Plenty of countries made mistakes, but in the whole scheme of things, some were a lot more serious and almost unforgivable. 

[JamesR]

7 hours ago, Stonker said:

No, half the population have been vaccinated with one or two shots with a third of the population being vaccinated with two.

The problem also isn't just schoolchildren, domestic tourists and people  moving to take up jobs in the tourist areas but a sizeable permanently transient population.

Some lottery ticket sellers, for example, are locals, but particularly in tourist areas many are there for a week then back home in Isaan for a week.

So we agree in principle, you have just added a bit of extra 'meat'.

[Soidog]

30 minutes ago, JohninDubin said:

That bit, they did get right, but I am wary of the word "salvage". The dead can't be salvaged. 

By contrast, Ireland is now one of the most vaccinated countries in the world if you count over 18's only. When the first does of vaxxes arrived, they suddenly realised that they had not devised a distribution plan. Then after the first doses distributed, they realised that nobody had thought to order additional supplies. Then they changed the priorities nine times. My wife and I were both placed in Group 4 (Over 60's with underlying conditions) and were given an estimated date late-March to mid-April. My wife got hers in mid-May, I got mine June 1st (both first doses).

Plenty of countries made mistakes, but in the whole scheme of things, some were a lot more serious and almost unforgivable. 

I was referring to salvaging their political position. Massive mistakes were made by the U.K. government and many others around the world. It would bring some comfort to think lessons have been learned. They haven’t! 

[JamesR]

8 hours ago, Chaimai said:

You are too subtle for me.

Either that, or I need to read more of a thread before posting..........bugger! that could be tiresome.

True, in the end some threads just go around in circles.

[JamesR]

8 hours ago, JohninDubin said:

My bank is a bit different. I have biz that is mainly cash. On earlier occasions, I used to be asked what I wanted large amounts of cash for. I didn't actually want to speak openly in front of other customers as there was the risk that the wrong person overhearing me might make me a target, so I was "always" buying second-hand cars.

I used to get annoyed at being asked what I wanted my own money for, so on one occasion, I said it was for a "drug deal" wondering what would happen. The cashier laughed and gave me the money. The following day, I got a call from a bank "Personal Banker" enquiring as to what other services they could offer me. Eventually the convo got around to, "We notice that you've made quite a few large cash withdrawals since you've been a customer with us. Is that anything we can help you with"? I explained the reasons for this, and strangely enough, I was never again asked why I wanted to withdraw such sums in cash.

The difference is the account I described was a personal account which is different to a business account.

I had a Thai restaurant in the uk for 22 years run under my limited company (Ltd) so it was a business bank account, paying large amounts of pounds in once a week was OK as they knew where the money came from, taking out big cash lump sums was again OK as they knew it was to pay for suppliers, casual workers and staff.

It is different for personal accounts and still is. 

It is not the banks fault really as by law they have to ask where cash came from in personal accounts due to money laundering etc otherwise they can be fined. 

[JamesR]

9 hours ago, JohninDubin said:

The 33% figure applies to double-vaxxed but most of these will have been Sino vaxxed and will still require a Western vax. A further 16% have received one jab, but again, it is likely that most of this is Sino. It would appear that there is tacit admission that anyone that has not had two jabs including at least one Western shot, is not considered fully vaxxed.

This is getting complicated now suddenly, it might have been the four white rum and cokes I have just had, signing off now as me brain hurts init! 

Where did I put that bottle down...........

[JamesR]

18 minutes ago, Soidog said:

I was referring to salvaging their political position. Massive mistakes were made by the U.K. government and many others around the world. It would bring some comfort to think lessons have been learned. They haven’t! 

Hindsight is a great thing, we have not had such a pandemic since the Spanish Flu so I think anyone in charge including ourselves would have made mistakes, they were screwed if the did and screwed if they didn't. 

[Soidog]

8 minutes ago, JamesR said:

Hindsight is a great thing, we have not had such a pandemic since the Spanish Flu so I think anyone in charge including ourselves would have made mistakes, they were screwed if the did and screwed if they didn't. 

Yes I agree about mistakes. Can you imagine the uproar had the U.K. locked down when only 10 people had died? What concerns me more is how little I think has been learned. A pandemic 5 years from now would result in the same differences of approach by different  nations. Surely there is a best practice that works for all? 

[Stonker]

5 hours ago, JamesR said:

So we agree in principle, you have just added a bit of extra 'meat'.

I've said it ad nauseam.

The problem isn't the foreign tourists, who at worst will bring in or catch and carry a minimal amount of Covid.

The problem is that  they can't live here in a bubble so they're the catalyst for opening bars, encouraging travel, removing masks and social distancing restrictions, etc, and if that happens before enough people are adequately protected by vaccinations then  the country will go one step forward and ten steps back.

[Stonker]

10 hours ago, Soidog said:

Poorly handled at the start and only salvaged by a fantastic vaccination strategy and implementation plan. 

"fantastic"?

What does that make Portugal's, which is now the most vaccinated country in the world, with no restrictions any more, minimal Covid hospitalisations and deaths (under 5% of it's peak) and "floods" of tourists?

[LoongFred]

4 hours ago, Stonker said:

I've said it ad nauseam.

The problem isn't the foreign tourists, who at worst will bring in or catch and carry a minimal amount of Covid.

The problem is that  they can't live here in a bubble so they're the catalyst for opening bars, encouraging travel, removing masks and social distancing restrictions, etc, and if that happens before enough people are adequately protected by vaccinations then  the country will go one step forward and ten steps back.

Best that the bars stay closed. The bar flies and bar slugs add nothing. 

[JamesR]

3 hours ago, Stonker said:

"fantastic"?

What does that make Portugal's, which is now the most vaccinated country in the world, with no restrictions any more, minimal Covid hospitalisations and deaths (under 5% of it's peak) and "floods" of tourists?

When you say Portugal is the most vaccinated country in the world I take it you mean proportionally as it is easy to vaccinate a small country with a small population of around 10 million people.

[JamesR]

10 hours ago, Soidog said:

Yes I agree about mistakes. Can you imagine the uproar had the U.K. locked down when only 10 people had died? What concerns me more is how little I think has been learned. A pandemic 5 years from now would result in the same differences of approach by different  nations. Surely there is a best practice that works for all? 

I am confident the UK has learned from this and will be much better placed for the next one.

As far as some other nations go it will vary, there is no international plan or agreements for such outbreaks due to each country fighting for power and playing politics.

As a side issue, this also makes me laugh when the conspiracy theorists go on about how all of this was planned so the government of the world could control us, we with the EU can not even agree on how sausages should be made re the Northern Ireland protocol so the world getting together to create the virus is a great joke. 

[JohninDublin]

10 hours ago, Soidog said:

I was referring to salvaging their political position. Massive mistakes were made by the U.K. government and many others around the world. It would bring some comfort to think lessons have been learned. They haven’t! 

I wasn't necessarily looking to score points with my last post, but to concede that others also made mistakes.

But pretty much throughout this whole affair, I was left with impression that the UK gov's main focus was on looking good politically rather than saving lives. So we had Hancock pulling strokes to get to 100k tests in a day. That was followed by "1 BN pieces of PPE". Then there was the "World Class Track and Trace App". The training of 25k track and trace operators, who were being paid £16 per hour to logon and wait for calls that never arrived because most of this work was given to the people who had prior experience such as those who do the job for STD clinics. And at one stage, there was hardly a day when questions were not raised about some dubious "outsourcing", and whether or not there was cronyism involved, we can be fairly certain that most of this money was wasted. If it had not been, the gov would have boasted about a "job well done"

But what really infuriated me most about all this, was that initially they did do all the right things. Those repatriated from Wuhan and the cruise liner were put into quarantine. They decided that test, track and trace was the right way to go. They bought up hospital beds in the Private Sector (but never used these). But as soon as these became problematic, they abandoned these, always placing the blame elsewhere. 

Testing was abandoned because they claimed there was no spare capacity. Labs came forward saying "WE have capacity, but nobody has asked us". Then it was a shortage of reagents for the initial swab testing. Again pharmaceutical businesses were saying, "We have these. Nobody has asked us, What do you need"?

I have a friend in Texas whose wife was working for a bio-medical company on a CV test, who I know for a fact, that when her company faced shortages of these reagents, sourced them from the UK.

But for the most critical part of this entire event, we have to look at our 800 year history of plagues etc, being brought in by foreign travel. We were never going to be able to keep it completely out of the UK, but look at TH who in the first place, introduced border screening and detected and isolated about 8k suspected cases at the border following screenings, and despite all the jibes we have at the Thais, did a magnificent job in suppressing the virus until Delta arrived,

But apart from the vax rollout, two other areas where the UK does deserve praise, is the Furlough Scheme, and Therapeutics. Regarding the latter, at it's peak, you had a 2.7% chance of Covid killing you, that has reduced by 90%, and together with the French we have become world class in this demographic regarding the worst affected countries. But, and there always is a but when you look at the UK performance, you are still about 20 times more likely to be killed by Covid than in a road traffic accident. 

[JohninDublin]

11 hours ago, JamesR said:

The difference is the account I described was a personal account which is different to a business account.

I had a Thai restaurant in the uk for 22 years run under my limited company (Ltd) so it was a business bank account, paying large amounts of pounds in once a week was OK as they knew where the money came from, taking out big cash lump sums was again OK as they knew it was to pay for suppliers, casual workers and staff.

It is different for personal accounts and still is. 

It is not the banks fault really as by law they have to ask where cash came from in personal accounts due to money laundering etc otherwise they can be fined. 

Just a couple of matters: I am a sole trader, so it was a personal account. The other is that I was never asked where I got the money from when making deposits. They only ever asked me what I wanted the withdrawals for. They never questioned the deposits, though I am sure the revenue were aware of these.