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

[JohninDublin]

2 hours ago, JamesR said:

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re the number of bars and the number of tourists and the type of tourists and the fact 90% of the girly bars have been replaced by hotels due to demand.

The problem is that these people tend to be rather good at guessing numbers based on observations of similar models. So what can you produce in the way of data? I doubt that you can even back up your claim about 90% of girly bars have been turned into hotels. 

[Manu]

On 10/14/2021 at 9:03 AM, 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 ! 

Completely obessed... I thought the main target during a pandemic is to avoid people dying, not to test as many people as possible. The UK have not not done very well and has one of the worse death rate since the beginning of the pandemic. Not so surprising with a health care on the edge of collapsing, and with generally a very unhealthy and obese population. Same goes for the US.

14 October 2021

:

UK 206 deaths

Germany 72 deaths

Spain 21 deaths

Italy 37 deaths

Well done UK!!

And finally, sometimes it also goes very wrong with the testing in the UK:

More than 40,000 may have received false negatives after Covid PCR tests | Evening Standard

[LoongFred]

23 minutes ago, JohninDubin said:

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.

Where is your estimate of 10-12% contribution come from? I frankly think you made it up or were told by your pals at the bar. 

[Rookiescot]

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. 

But those cheap drunks at the bar are two week millionaires. And they keep coming back year after year.

Now personally I dont like Pattaya. 

But I do not judge the guys who do. Its up to them how and where they spend their money.

[LoongFred]

2 minutes ago, Rookiescot said:

But those cheap drunks at the bar are two week millionaires. And they keep coming back year after year.

Now personally I dont like Pattaya. 

But I do not judge the guys who do. Its up to them how and where they spend their money.

Those on a TV aren’t the problem, but it’s strange to go on a long trip to sit in a bar. Those here on a long term are the problem. Many reportedly nurse a beer for hours and do there utmost to take more than they spend. 

[Rookiescot]

1 minute ago, LoongFred said:

Those on a TV aren’t the problem, but it’s strange to go on a long trip to sit in a bar. Those here on a long term are the problem. Many reportedly nurse a beer for hours and do there utmost to take more than they spend. 

I would argue that 'most' here have a Thai wife and possibly kids. Rent or bought a house. Bought a car and or motorbike. Spend their earnings/pension in the local economy. Do their visa's and 90 day reporting as required. Never give police or immigration any problems. Because they are never an issue you dont hear about those guys.

In short they, as a group, contribute a lot of money into the Thai economy.

You need to explain how, as a westerner retired in Thailand, you can possibly take more than you spend?

[Soidog]

20 minutes ago, Manu said:

Completely obessed... I thought the main target during a pandemic is to avoid people dying, not to test as many people as possible. The UK have not not done very well and has one of the worse death rate since the beginning of the pandemic. Not so surprising with a health care on the edge of collapsing, and with generally a very unhealthy and obese population. Same goes for the US.

14 October 2021

:

UK 206 deaths

Germany 72 deaths

Spain 21 deaths

Italy 37 deaths

Well done UK!!

And finally, sometimes it also goes very wrong with the testing in the UK:

More than 40,000 may have received false negatives after Covid PCR tests | Evening Standard

Completely obsessed with what? 
 

Do all those countries have the same populations as the U.K.?

Do they all count deaths due to Covid in the same way as the U.K.? 
 

Are all of their businesses and schools fully open as in the U.K.? 
 

Death rates/100,000

Italy  218

Uk  206

Spain 184

Germany 113

Not top & not bottom. 
 

As for the failure of one lab. When you are resting 800,000-1,000,000 a day using multiple labs, is it any wonder you have a problem at one such lab. get it in to perspective please. 
 

The UK healthcare system is not on the edge of collapse. It remains one of the finest and well funded healthcare systems in the world, the envy of many developed countries. If you are British then hang your head in shame. If you aren’t British then what do you know? 
 

Now can we please get back on topic relating to Anutin! 

[JamesR]

54 minutes ago, Stonker said:

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.

I can see this going into a circular discussion so we can leave it at that :)

[JamesR]

48 minutes ago, JohninDubin said:

The problem is that these people tend to be rather good at guessing numbers based on observations of similar models. So what can you produce in the way of data? I doubt that you can even back up your claim about 90% of girly bars have been turned into hotels. 

I will send you some pictures of the hotels when I am there (Phuket) next. 

[Rookiescot]

1 minute ago, JamesR said:

I will send you some pictures of the hotels when I am there (Phuket) next. 

I have seen this in Udon as well. A plot of land which had bars on it is bought up and a generic hotel is built in its place. Often way overpriced and usually sits with little occupancy. 

However the bars just reappeared further down the road.

This is of course prior to the current pandemic. 

Currently I see plots being bought up for development and obviously no-one is opening bars. But as tourism and normality get back I would wager good money that bars will spring up. And this is in Udon. Not exactly a tourist hotspot. 

 

[JohninDublin]

2 hours ago, JamesR said:

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. 

It was me who made the first comment on this issue. I specifically mentioned that the UK's history with plagues was hearing of strange diseases in the Mediterranean, which two years later would arrive in England in ships. That was excusable at one time when people believed this was the result of breathing in bad air, but by the 1850's, this myth was well and truly debunked.  

And I am not sure what you mean by "hindsight". Are you suggesting that I am being wise after the event? Why do you think that when the gov did it's repatriations from Wuhan and the Cruise Liner, it quarantined those people? Why do you think so many countries starting introducing border surveillance to detect these cases? In both cases, the answer is that the govs were aware that any infections were going to be brought in by foreign travel. And I am well and truly fed up with hearing people saying, "We don't know what the real figures are Ruritania or Freedonia". 

You've just challenged a post that I made on the basis that my data source was "guessing", even though they have a history of looking at models and being pretty good at guessing. Then what do you do? You guess? In support of the figures from TH, is the fact that in the first four months after the pandemic was announced, they introduced border screening at every post of entry, and detected over 8k suspicious cases out of 4 mill entrants. These people were then subjected to further screening and were only allowed to enter after being cleared. By Mar 31st this year, reported cases were 29k for TH. then just about the time Delta hit, there growth pretty much mirrored what was going on in other countries. 

If you want to look at this graph  https://ourworldindata.org/excess-mortality-covid you will see that not only were there no excess deaths, in Feb 2021 there was a 4% decline. For the period Jan 31st 2020 to Feb 2021 most of the time, deaths were less than expected, and when these were increased, they never exceeded 5% and were in negative territory more often than not in that time frame. And if you compare the figures with the UK, at one stage the UK were declaring 107% excess deaths, while TH was reporting minus 7%. It's only been since late March that TH has outdone the UK for excess deaths, and most of that will be due to the arrival of Delta and the lag in vaxxing TH. Recently, as the effects of vaxxing kick in, TH is again narrowing the gap and it looks like they may soon start reporting fewer excess deaths than the UK.

Put simply, if there was any real evidence that TH has suffered many more deaths from CV than reported, it would show up in the excess deaths, and that evidence is clearly missing. If you are looking for a plausible explanation as to why there were so many fewer deaths in TH than might be expected, I'd suggest that it might have to do with lockdowns seriously impacting the 38 deaths a day suffered by motor cyclists.

[JamesR]

2 hours ago, Andrew Reeve said:

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

I suppose once a topic has been thrashed to death and we are just going around in circles it is easy for the us to go off topic and on to something connected to the topic.

>Rule 6. Take note of the 1st line<

All text and posted content must align to the topic and/or the first post under that topic. Posts must be accompanied by a personal comment & direct link (URL) to any quoted text or data image for verification.

 

 

[JohninDublin]

3 hours ago, JamesR said:

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. 

As one of the most common symptoms of CV is a higher than normal temp, I would not be quite so dismissive about it's usefulness.

And you know the machine was inaccurate because....?

[Soidog]

39 minutes ago, LoongFred said:

Those on a TV aren’t the problem, but it’s strange to go on a long trip to sit in a bar. Those here on a long term are the problem. Many reportedly nurse a beer for hours and do there utmost to take more than they spend. 

Just out of interest. How do you know this? Have you surveyed and researched it yourself or do you hear it second or third hand? 

[JohninDublin]

52 minutes ago, LoongFred said:

Where is your estimate of 10-12% contribution come from? I frankly think you made it up or were told by your pals at the bar. 

I've already published the link. Now would you mind desisting from the gratuitous snide comments? 

[JohninDublin]

23 minutes ago, JamesR said:

I will send you some pictures of the hotels when I am there (Phuket) next. 

It will be more useful if you can send "before and after" pics, showing the 90% of bars they replaced too.

[JamesR]

39 minutes ago, Soidog said:

Completely obsessed with what? 
 

Do all those countries have the same populations as the U.K.?

Do they all count deaths due to Covid in the same way as the U.K.? 
 

Are all of their businesses and schools fully open as in the U.K.? 
 

Death rates/100,000

Italy  218

Uk  206

Spain 184

Germany 113

Not top & not bottom. 
 

As for the failure of one lab. When you are resting 800,000-1,000,000 a day using multiple labs, is it any wonder you have a problem at one such lab. get it in to perspective please. 
 

The UK healthcare system is not on the edge of collapse. It remains one of the finest and well funded healthcare systems in the world, the envy of many developed countries. If you are British then hang your head in shame. If you aren’t British then what do you know? 
 

Now can we please get back on topic relating to Anutin! 

No come on this is more fun, the Anutin topic has been flogged to death already.

[JamesR]

12 minutes ago, JohninDubin said:

It will be more useful if you can send "before and after" pics, showing the 90% of bars they replaced too.

I will get my time machine ready.

I could of course take pictures of the bars as they stand now and you will see compared to the ten million who visit Phuket each year (pre covid) proportionally there are not many bars. 

Oh yes and how many are almost empty in even in normal years, they are slowly dying off. 

[JamesR]

36 minutes ago, Rookiescot said:

I have seen this in Udon as well. A plot of land which had bars on it is bought up and a generic hotel is built in its place. Often way overpriced and usually sits with little occupancy. 

However the bars just reappeared further down the road.

This is of course prior to the current pandemic. 

Currently I see plots being bought up for development and obviously no-one is opening bars. But as tourism and normality get back I would wager good money that bars will spring up. And this is in Udon. Not exactly a tourist hotspot. 

There are no new plots to build on once the bar has been replaced with a hotel in Phuket further down the road, I don't think they will be knocking multi-million dollar hotels to build empty bars on. 

[JohninDublin]

4 minutes ago, JamesR said:

I will get my time machine ready.

I could of course take pictures of the bars as they stand now and you will see compared to the ten million who visit Phuket each year (pre covid) proportionally there are not many bars. 

Oh yes and how many are almost empty in even in normal years, they are slowly dying off. 

I am sure you can do what I do when I am offering evidence in support of my post. I use the Internet. There must be plenty of YT clips showing what used to be on Site X, and the hotels that are there now.

Your offer to show me pics of hotels only does nothing unless you can show what was there prior.

I don't doubt that they are dying off. It's economic evolution. Every time I go back, I see one of my favourite watering holes has changed into a resto or 7/11 type store. Or alternately, a non-girly bar such as the Beer Garden at Pattaya, has declined in it's charms. A lot of these places have have failed to evolve with what customers want, or with a strong currency are no longer so attractive. But as Mark Twain said, "Reports of my (their) death have been greatly exaggerated.

It's one thing for the gov to say that they don't want to be associated with sex tourism, and I genuinely believe that. But until something better comes along, they are seriously addicted to the money that this brings in.

[Soidog]

Someone with Anutins email send him this will you. The subject line for the email should read:

This is what opening properly looks like:

Covid: US to lift travel ban for fully jabbed on 8 November https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-58929441

[JamesR]

2 hours ago, JohninDubin said:

I am sure you can do what I do when I am offering evidence in support of my post. I use the Internet. There must be plenty of YT clips showing what used to be on Site X, and the hotels that are there now.

Your offer to show me pics of hotels only does nothing unless you can show what was there prior.

I don't doubt that they are dying off. It's economic evolution. Every time I go back, I see one of my favourite watering holes has changed into a resto or 7/11 type store. Or alternately, a non-girly bar such as the Beer Garden at Pattaya, has declined in it's charms. A lot of these places have have failed to evolve with what customers want, or with a strong currency are no longer so attractive. But as Mark Twain said, "Reports of my (their) death have been greatly exaggerated.

It's one thing for the gov to say that they don't want to be associated with sex tourism, and I genuinely believe that. But until something better comes along, they are seriously addicted to the money that this brings in.

"But until something better comes along, they are seriously addicted to the money that this brings in."

It already has come along in Phuket and bars are disappearing faster than rats up drain pipes.

"I don't doubt that they are dying off. It's economic evolution."

That is exactly what I am saying you are just using different words.

I am only on this site for a bit of a break between programming as I work on my computer, I don't take it seriously enough to have to root around sorting out evidence.

If you believe me then fine, if not then Ok but I can't think of any reason for me to lie, I am not going to profit out of my comments, they are just "coffee breaks".

"Every time I go back, I see one of my favourite watering holes has changed into a resto or 7/11 type store. "

Can you send me proof of that please, please complete a full investigation and send it to me.

 

[Stonker]

2 hours ago, Soidog said:

Not top & not bottom.

Well, yes, but that leaves a lot of leeway and it's hardly in the middle either.

In terms of deaths from Covid per million of the population it's 22nd out of 155, with 2,062 deaths per million.

Not too bad until you see that Thailand is in 89th, with 258 deaths per million.

3 hours ago, Soidog said:

The UK healthcare system is not on the edge of collapse. It remains one of the finest and well funded healthcare systems in the world, the envy of many developed countries.

Well, that's not what anyone working for the UK healthcare system says, or those on it's now over five year waiting list.

It may be the envy of some in the US but I can't think of any other developed countries that would be envious.

3 hours ago, Soidog said:

If you are British then hang your head in shame.

Fortunately that wasn't addressed to me, as I've never understood why anyone should be proud or ashamed of something they're not responsible for but is just an accident of birth, from their nationality to their sexual orientation - or the state of their national health service.

[Stonker]

3 hours ago, JohninDubin said:

If you are looking for a plausible explanation as to why there were so many fewer deaths in TH than might be expected, I'd suggest that it might have to do with lockdowns seriously impacting the 38 deaths a day suffered by motor cyclists.

I recall that I posted a link to this months ago, with a detailed study breaking down the reduction in deaths in hospital  against previous years. 

Motorcycle deaths were way down, as were traffic accidents generally, from the lockdowns,  curfews and alcohol controls, but there were also virtually no deaths from flu (three in a year IIRC) and far fewer assorted cases of hepatitis and similar infections  down to social distancing, masks, and increased hygiene / hand washing.

[JohninDublin]

6 minutes ago, JamesR said:

"But until something better comes along, they are seriously addicted to the money that this brings in."

It already has come along in Phuket and bars are disappearing faster than rats up drain pipes.

"I don't doubt that they are dying off. It's economic evolution."

That is exactly what I am saying you are just using different words.

I am only on this site for a bit of a break between programming as I work on my computer, I don't take it seriously enough to have to root around sorting out evidence.

If you believe me then fine, if not then Ok but I can't think of any reason for me to lie, I am not going to profit out of my comments, they are just "coffee breaks".

"Every time I go back, I see one of my favourite watering holes has changed into a resto or 7/11 type store. "

Can you send me proof of that please, please complete a full investigation and send it to me.

To read your posts, it appears that all the prospective mongers thinking of visiting Phuket, will be able to share the same cab from from the Airport. I've never been to Phuket, but we are talking about the whole of Thailand. I doubt that 90% of bars in Phuket have closed and been changed into hotels, but even if they have, does that mean that 90% of all the bars in TH have gone the same way? There's where my problems with your posts lay.

As for not "rooting out evidence", how difficult would it be. When someone posts BS on here, it usually takes a few seconds to maybe a couple of minutes to find and show the real facts. It appears from you post that you are Programmer. Should be a piece of cake for you. But instead, you remind me of the Mexican Bandit in "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre". To paraphrase him, "Evidence? Evidence? We don't need no stinking evidence".

As for your extremely immature comment about my favourite watering holes. That really is childish. On the one hand you claim that my post supports yours because I admit that some bars have closed, but then you try to pretend that I might be lying so you need me to send proof. I can show you pictures of one hundred cows that I say are all called Horace. but pictures without proof are pretty worthless. But how difficult would it be for you to show pictures of all these new hotels in Phuket which have replaced 90% of bars, when there is such  documented wealth of bars on Phuket on YT over many years?

As I say, I've never been to Phuket, but when I've viewed posts on YT from BKK 112 in particular he shows dozens of Bars on Bangla Rd. I would think there upwards of 50 bars on that strip, and numerous other on the Sois of it. So if my estimate is correct, if there are that many bars there now, then 450 must have closed. And then there is Patong. Assume the same figure again, and that leads me to ask, could there really have been 900 bar closures in recent years?