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

[JohninDublin]

11 hours 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. 

But in the UK, we had an 800 year history of seeing these things brought in by foreign travel. With that knowledge and the fact that we are an Island, border screening should have been our No 1 weapon in fighting this, but we never did anything about this for 5 months while there was no border screening.

I was in Pattaya when this got serious. Cutting my trip short, I wasn't allowed to enter the airport at BKK without a temp test. On arrival at LHR, I was able to clear immigration at T3 and walk across to T2 and nobody questioned me once regarding CV.

[JohninDublin]

1 hour ago, LoongFred said:

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

You only have to look at Phuket to see that once you start to open up, and it doesn't produce the "flood of tourists" that is predicted, the powers that be will be seeking further relaxations.

Out of curiosity I looked at the figures for tourism as GDP and how much of this was sex tourism. The first figure is 18%, and the figure for sex tourism is estimated at 10-12%. So with a max increase of 8% in GDP, this still represents an overall decline from pre-pandemic GDP, Tourism in general will still be badly hit. how long before the various mayors and provincial governors will be asking, not for the return of sex tourism, but the reopening of "Bars and places of Entertainment".

I'd say that that the bar flies and bar slugs add very much to TH's GDP, and it's all about the money

[JamesR]

12 minutes ago, JohninDubin said:

But in the UK, we had an 800 year history of seeing these things brought in by foreign travel. With that knowledge and the fact that we are an Island, border screening should have been our No 1 weapon in fighting this, but we never did anything about this for 5 months while there was no border screening.

I was in Pattaya when this got serious. Cutting my trip short, I wasn't allowed to enter the airport at BKK without a temp test. On arrival at LHR, I was able to clear immigration at T3 and walk across to T2 and nobody questioned me once regarding CV.

I repeat they were screwed if the did and screwed if they didn't.

Look at how many people are complaining about restrictions now even though we are fully open in the UK.

Hindsight is easy but once we realised what to do we had one of the fastest vaccine rollouts in the world, Thailand is still thinking about ordering vaccines or having meetings still about talking about ordering vaccines, what a joke. 

I left Phuket in August last year and flew from BKK airport, I was not required to have any test at or before going into the airport, no paperwork, I strolled around the airport at will, I did have to fill in a form online for the use in the UK before flying and I was and did have to isolate myself at home for two weeks after arriving in the UK.

Most of the people on the flight were Thai or from Taiwan (EVA Air) and most took their masks off during the flight. 

[Soidog]

7 minutes ago, JohninDubin said:

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. 

I agree with many of the comments here and as it was a long post it deserves a long comment 
 

The big difference between the U.K. and places like Thailand or Australia, is that the U.K. initially perused a policy of containment and allowing herd immunity to build and learning to live with Covid; something all countries are now having to do. I think they realised around March 2020 that wasn’t going to work and switched to a tougher lockdown approach while still learning to manage and live with Covid. I would also say that the U.K. was never in a position to isolate the country like some others could. I know it’s an island nation, but it is simply to integral to the global supply chain and reliant on imports. That said, they were very poor in screening even as we got in to April. I came back in April 2019 and strolled in to Heathrow as though nothing was happening. No temperature checks, no hand sanitisers. No mask wearing in the airport even at that time. That was utterly amazing given what I had experienced in Bangkok only 13 hours before. 
 

To compare any two countries is difficult, but to compare the U.K. with NZ or Australia is difficult enough and to compare it to Thailand is impossible. If the economy had been allowed to collapse to the extent Thailand’s has and yet still maintain the social support the U.K. has to do, there would have been anarchy and a total collapse of law. No doubt many things were done wrong and Boris is incapable of giving firm and direct bad news. Everything has to be sugar coated and slow to implement. I would also say that in the open democracy and 24hour news channels in the U.K., every single slight problem is reported as a “crisis” a “disaster”. We only have to look at the recent fuel “crisis” to see that everything is talked down and made to seem far worse than it would in many countries. I’m not blaming the news channels for the performance of Covid, but I do blame them for making people think the U.K. has performed far worse than in reality it has  
 

Ultimately the U.K. performed badly and  won’t be in the top ten of performing countries if measured in deaths; but it won’t be in the bottom 10 either. Had it locked down in early March and had a better approach to elderly care homes, the number of deaths would be half what they are. If they counted deaths as many countries do, the deaths would perhaps be 60-70% less that they are.  The pandemic was and still is being politicised. That’s the worst aspect for me. Politicians come and go, pandemic planning and readiness is something that needs to be established, updated and maintained, just as we do to operate nuclear power stations. I’ve no confidence that is happening in almost any countries not just the U.K. When things do settle down at the end of next year, most rich countries will simply move on, raise taxes to pay off the debt and forget the pandemic. That’s something those who lost their life and the loved ones left behind won’t be able to do so easily. It’s a cruel world at times… 
 

 

[LoongFred]

On 10/14/2021 at 12:32 PM, gummy said:

Well its pretty damn obvious why one of those ten were on the list and health issues had nothing to do with it, rather I suspect it was a simple instruction to include it.

What exactly are you trying to say? Maybe you have inside knowledge or maybe you know nothing.

 

[LoongFred]

6 minutes ago, JohninDubin said:

You only have to look at Phuket to see that once you start to open up, and it doesn't produce the "flood of tourists" that is predicted, the powers that be will be seeking further relaxations.

Out of curiosity I looked at the figures for tourism as GDP and how much of this was sex tourism. The first figure is 18%, and the figure for sex tourism is estimated at 10-12%. So with a max increase of 8% in GDP, this still represents an overall decline from pre-pandemic GDP, Tourism in general will still be badly hit. how long before the various mayors and provincial governors will be asking, not for the return of sex tourism, but the reopening of "Bars and places of Entertainment".

I'd say that that the bar flies and bar slugs add very much to TH's GDP, and it's all about the money

I seriously doubt that the bar slugs contribute much, but it's not part of who I am. I'd vote to keep them closed and encourage real tourists.

[JohninDublin]

1 hour ago, JamesR said:

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

I'd like to think you are right, but the willingness of the UK to ignore an 800 year history of imported plagues makes me think "maybe not".

[JamesR]

13 minutes ago, JohninDubin said:

You only have to look at Phuket to see that once you start to open up, and it doesn't produce the "flood of tourists" that is predicted, the powers that be will be seeking further relaxations.

Out of curiosity I looked at the figures for tourism as GDP and how much of this was sex tourism. The first figure is 18%, and the figure for sex tourism is estimated at 10-12%. So with a max increase of 8% in GDP, this still represents an overall decline from pre-pandemic GDP, Tourism in general will still be badly hit. how long before the various mayors and provincial governors will be asking, not for the return of sex tourism, but the reopening of "Bars and places of Entertainment".

I'd say that that the bar flies and bar slugs add very much to TH's GDP, and it's all about the money

I can't agree with your figures, it must be the figure for sex tourism is 10-12% of the overall 18%.

I say this as Phuket for example is one of the most visited places in Thailand, most of the tourists are for a start Chinese (pre covid), they come in groups, do not go to the bars, they are more interested in eating at the many new restaurants open just for them, most other tourists are couples many with children or mixed male/female groups and go to the many music clubs etc.

The creepy old blokes looking for bar girls are gone, there must be a few of course but the majority have gone, they went years ago.

Also over the last 10 years 90% of the bars etc have gone and been replaced by hotels and shops, if the numbers are as you say this is not represented in Phukets as the ratio of bars etc to the number of tourists do not add up to your figures.

It may be the case in sleazy places like Pattaya though.

Edited October 15, 2021 by JamesR
typo

[JamesR]

14 minutes ago, Soidog said:

I agree with many of the comments here and as it was a long post it deserves a long comment 
 

The big difference between the U.K. and places like Thailand or Australia, is that the U.K. initially perused a policy of containment and allowing herd immunity to build and learning to live with Covid; something all countries are now having to do. I think they realised around March 2020 that wasn’t going to work and switched to a tougher lockdown approach while still learning to manage and live with Covid. I would also say that the U.K. was never in a position to isolate the country like some others could. I know it’s an island nation, but it is simply to integral to the global supply chain and reliant on imports. That said, they were very poor in screening even as we got in to April. I came back in April 2019 and strolled in to Heathrow as though nothing was happening. No temperature checks, no hand sanitisers. No mask wearing in the airport even at that time. That was utterly amazing given what I had experienced in Bangkok only 13 hours before. 
 

To compare any two countries is difficult, but to compare the U.K. with NZ or Australia is difficult enough and to compare it to Thailand is impossible. If the economy had been allowed to collapse to the extent Thailand’s has and yet still maintain the social support the U.K. has to do, there would have been anarchy and a total collapse of law. No doubt many things were done wrong and Boris is incapable of giving firm and direct bad news. Everything has to be sugar coated and slow to implement. I would also say that in the open democracy and 24hour news channels in the U.K., every single slight problem is reported as a “crisis” a “disaster”. We only have to look at the recent fuel “crisis” to see that everything is talked down and made to seem far worse than it would in many countries. I’m not blaming the news channels for the performance of Covid, but I do blame them for making people think the U.K. has performed far worse than in reality it has  
 

Ultimately the U.K. performed badly and  won’t be in the top ten of performing countries if measured in deaths; but it won’t be in the bottom 10 either. Had it locked down in early March and had a better approach to elderly care homes, the number of deaths would be half what they are. If they counted deaths as many countries do, the deaths would perhaps be 60-70% less that they are.  The pandemic was and still is being politicised. That’s the worst aspect for me. Politicians come and go, pandemic planning and readiness is something that needs to be established, updated and maintained, just as we do to operate nuclear power stations. I’ve no confidence that is happening in almost any countries not just the U.K. When things do settle down at the end of next year, most rich countries will simply move on, raise taxes to pay off the debt and forget the pandemic. That’s something those who lost their life and the loved ones left behind won’t be able to do so easily. It’s a cruel world at times… 
 

Well said.

"Ultimately the U.K. performed badly and  won’t be in the top ten of performing countries if measured in deaths; but it won’t be in the bottom 10 either."

That we will never know, in a free society where it is free to report facts, plus the fact we carried out tens of million of tests and many other countries relatively few, then who performed the best or worst will never be dicovered.

 

[JamesR]

11 minutes ago, JohninDubin said:

I'd like to think you are right, but the willingness of the UK to ignore an 800 year history of imported plagues makes me think "maybe not".

Plagues for that period of time were all over the world not just a UK phenomena. 

[JohninDublin]

12 minutes ago, JamesR said:

Look at how many people are complaining about restrictions now even though we are fully open in the UK.

Hindsight is easy but once we realised what to do we had one of the fastest vaccine rollouts in the world, Thailand is still thinking about ordering vaccines or having meetings still about talking about ordering vaccines, what a joke. 

I left Phuket in August last year and flew from BKK airport, I was not required to have any test at or before going into the airport, no paperwork, I strolled around the airport at will, I did have to fill in a form online for the use in the UK before flying and I was and did have to isolate myself at home for two weeks after arriving in the UK.

Most of the people on the flight were Thai or from Taiwan (EVA Air) and most took their masks off during the flight. 

What is so onerous about screening at airports. A simole temp check, though it may not detect every case, takes seconds. That was the basis if TH's strategy.

Once we realised what we had to do. What we had to do was to introduce border screening and isolate suspected cases. We did this with the repatriated from Wuhan and those from the Cruise ship, and then the policy was abandoned. While those groups were being isolated, we were allowing infected Chinese Students from Wuhan to enter without let or hindrance.

Were you temp checked at the airport? 

[JamesR]

1 hour ago, JohninDubin said:

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.

I hope you do very well in your career, instead of just trading soles, don't you want to trade the upper parts of the shoe as well?

 

[JamesR]

28 minutes ago, JohninDubin said:

What is so onerous about screening at airports. A simole temp check, though it may not detect every case, takes seconds. That was the basis if TH's strategy.

Once we realised what we had to do. What we had to do was to introduce border screening and isolate suspected cases. We did this with the repatriated from Wuhan and those from the Cruise ship, and then the policy was abandoned. While those groups were being isolated, we were allowing infected Chinese Students from Wuhan to enter without let or hindrance.

Were you temp checked at the airport? 

"Were you temp checked at the airport?"

Yes probably just as I was temp checked at Tesco, Makro in Phuket so many times, great I thought as it caused a long queue of people all bunched together with no spacing waiting minutes to be checked, plus the fact the same person was temp testing thousand of people a day, she had a good chance of getting the virus and passing it onto the people she was temp checking, no screens etc, just a person temp checking wearing a thin mask.

Best not  to temp check in those circumstances. 

Edited October 15, 2021 by JamesR
typo

[JohninDublin]

1 hour ago, LoongFred said:

I seriously doubt that the bar slugs contribute much, but it's not part of who I am. I'd vote to keep them closed and encourage real tourists.

That sounds a lot like like, "I don't like it, and that makes it OK to ban it". So how does that help the TH economy. Do you really believe that TH can recover when GDP will remain at about 90% of pre-2020 levels for years to come. During the meantime, TH tourism will watch how this trade migrates to the rest of SEA. 

As for your comment about encouraging "real tourists", that's what most press releases from TAT imply. Have you noticed how every time TAT make an announcement, it usually draws the greatest number of mocking posts from other forum members? 

[JohninDublin]

1 hour ago, JamesR said:

I can't agree with your figures, it must be the figure for sex tourism is 10-12% of the overall 18%.

I say this as Phuket for example is one of the most visited places in Thailand, most of the tourists are for a start Chinese (pre covid), they come in groups, do not go to the bars, they are more interested in eating at the many new restaurants open just for them, most other tourists are couples many with children or mixed male/female groups and go to the many music clubs etc.

The creepy old blokes looking for bar girls are gone, there must be a few of course but the majority have gone, they went years ago.

Also over the last 10 years 90% of the bars etc have gone and been replaced by hotels and shops, if the numbers are as you say this is not represented in Phukets as the ratio of bars etc to the number of tourists do not add up to your figures.

It may be the case in sleazy places like Pattaya though.

 

This if from the London School of Economics. https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/gender/2019/10/24/what-you-want-to-see-is-what-you-get-realities-representations-and-reputations-of-sex-tourism-in-bangkok/

 

Extract: 

 

Thailand possesses the reputation of a country with a thriving, unconfined landscape of sexual exploration, especially in the West. Scholars even report that the sex industry contributes an estimated 10-12% to Thailand's overall GDP.24 Oct 2019"

 

 

 

 

[JohninDublin]

1 hour ago, JamesR said:

Plagues for that period of time were all over the world not just a UK phenomena. 

What has that got to do with anything? For most of that 800 year history it was not understood that humans were vector for these. The rest of the world now understands that risk can be reduced by border surveillance although not many of these have the benefit of being islands. Regardless, you only have to look at the performance of those islands like the the UK that had a single gov, to see that our death toll was nearly 3X that of the next worst.

When the rest of these Islands were introducing border controls, we did nothing for months. The rest of the world was aware that CV was going to be introduced by foreign travel. So were we. They did something to mitigate this. We did nothing until it was far too late. 

 

[JohninDublin]

53 minutes ago, JamesR said:

"Were you temp checked at the airport?"

Yes probably just as I was temp checked at Tesco, Makro in Phuket so many times, great I thought as it caused a long queue of people all bunched together with no spacing waiting minutes to be checked, plus the fact the same person was temp testing thousand of people a day, she had a good chance of getting the virus and passing it onto the people she was temp checking, no screens etc, just a person temp checking wearing a thin mask.

Best not  to temp check in those circumstances. 

So there was in fact some restrictions placed on you at BKK airport.

[LoongFred]

24 minutes ago, JohninDubin said:

That sounds a lot like like, "I don't like it, and that makes it OK to ban it". So how does that help the TH economy. Do you really believe that TH can recover when GDP will remain at about 90% of pre-2020 levels for years to come. During the meantime, TH tourism will watch how this trade migrates to the rest of SEA. 

As for your comment about encouraging "real tourists", that's what most press releases from TAT imply. Have you noticed how every time TAT make an announcement, it usually draws the greatest number of mocking posts from other forum members? 

Go back to your warm beer and self pity. My concern that a few cheap drunks at the bar don't help the economy. 

[JamesR]

28 minutes ago, JohninDubin said:

This if from the London School of Economics. https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/gender/2019/10/24/what-you-want-to-see-is-what-you-get-realities-representations-and-reputations-of-sex-tourism-in-bangkok/

 

Extract: 

 

Thailand possesses the reputation of a country with a thriving, unconfined landscape of sexual exploration, especially in the West. Scholars even report that the sex industry contributes an estimated 10-12% to Thailand's overall GDP.24 Oct 2019"

 

 

 

Read it all, it is an opinion and a guess at the numbers not fact.

I thought as much as I say the figures are not reflected in Phuket re the number of bars and the number of tourists and the type of tourists and the fact 90% of the girly bars have been replaced by hotels due to demand.

[JamesR]

33 minutes ago, JohninDubin said:

What has that got to do with anything? For most of that 800 year history it was not understood that humans were vector for these. The rest of the world now understands that risk can be reduced by border surveillance although not many of these have the benefit of being islands. Regardless, you only have to look at the performance of those islands like the the UK that had a single gov, to see that our death toll was nearly 3X that of the next worst.

When the rest of these Islands were introducing border controls, we did nothing for months. The rest of the world was aware that CV was going to be introduced by foreign travel. So were we. They did something to mitigate this. We did nothing until it was far too late. 

I mentioned the world because whoever made the first comment just seems to think it was only the UK with 800 years of plagues etc. 

Re the rest of your comments hindsight is a great thing.

Plus we can not compare figures on deaths and cases as we did tens of millions of tests, places like Thailand are doing very few and I can imagine lots of deaths in the many small villages around Thailand who died of the virus were not tested at all and so were not recorded. 

[JamesR]

32 minutes ago, JohninDubin said:

So there was in fact some restrictions placed on you at BKK airport.

Yep a bird with a Chinese inaccurate temp machine who 'checked me' for five seconds, that will save the world, except I was more at risk of catching the virus from her seeing as she must have been within half an arms length to thousands of passengers as she checked them. 

When you mentioned 'tested' originally I naturally assumed your meant a covid test as the temp test above is as useful as a chocolate teapot, unless you want to eat the teapot of course. 

[Soidog]

Wasn’t this topic called - Anutin opposes limiting quarantine-free re-opening to 10 countries

Its clear the Thai authorities are simply stalling for time while trying to give the outside world and foreign investors some confidence things are on track. They know they can’t open up, which is why they have only really opened to 3 countries. It’s typical Thai strategy of say one thing and do another and hope no one notices. 
 

I see the Foreign Exchange traders are starting to see what a load of BS it is. The gains made earlier in the week are starting to recede. I would rather invest on a horse race or lottery ticket than invest anything in Thailand. 
 

[Andrew Reeve]

When we go off topic, we go off topic....

The subject of this thread is:

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

[JohninDublin]

2 hours ago, LoongFred said:

Go back to your warm beer and self pity. My concern that a few cheap drunks at the bar don't help the economy. 

Why do you find it necessary to indulge in gratuitous abuse? Have I abused you in any way?

As for your "concern", a 10-12% contribution to GDP says you are wrong.

[Stonker]

5 hours ago, JamesR said:

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.

Most vaccinated in terms of both total population (85%) and eligible population (95%).

I can't agree with you about it being "easy to vaccinate a small country with a small population of around 10 million people" as that's hardly logical.

Yes, if it's a country as small as Lichenstein or Monaco, but if the population densities and health care ratios are similar, the only difference is availability of vaccines  -  and countries like the UK and USA have had stock / deliveries of far more vaccines per head than Portugal. 

They simply had the right person and the right team running the vaccine rollout.