News Forum - Mask up! Foreign visitors warned of penalties for violating disease control laws

[Manu]

5 minutes ago, Soidog said:

Hi @Manu. I wasn’t looking to have a go or anything. Rereading my post it could look that way but not intended. I was just stating that laws are made and people should abide by the law, not make it up as they see fit. I think the law of wearing a mask on an open beach is utterly crazy, but if it stopped me getting a fine id wear one, or not go on the beach. I’m not prepared to part with 6,000 baht for the sake of wearing a piece of cloth on my face. I normally wear PM2.5 face mask when I’m riding a bike in Thailand as far too much vehicle smoke or smog, so I guess I’m more accepting of face mask. 
 

Anyway, no worries and apologies if it read like I was having a go. It was unintended

Mate, I was not at all taking your response as "having a go". Not at all. My response was not mean to be either, simply my opinion. I understand fully what you are saying, nevertheless I continue to stick to my statement.

What I meant in my last paragraph was really to emphasise the fact that quite a few of commentators in this thread who keep saying something like"if you do comply to the law, never mind how stupid, you should not be in Thailand" etc.. are the same ones that are breaking regularly the highest law in Thailand by insulting or criticising the monarchy. Not meant at you. Perhaps I should have made a separate comment on this subject.

[Graham]

12 hours ago, Stonker said:

No, not "targeted" but reminded.

I don't see many farangs here, dirty or otherwise, but the only people I've seen not wearing masks are always farangs - only a handful, but still the only ones and enough to let all others down.

If you're not prepared to obey the rules here, whatever they are and whether you like them or not, then either don't come or leave.

I am merely stating that the government needs to apply the same rules to all, if it's good for the goose, it's good for the gander. I know we are are in someone else's country and yes, I know we have to abide by their rules, I am not a retard.

TIT.

[AussieBob]

13 hours ago, Bob20 said:

Contrary to the previous posters, I welcome the move. Seeing the number of people ignoring the rules and the fact that Covid isn't under control, it was incomprehensible that things weren't enforced. 

I can understand it's not what you want in your holiday, but you knew that before you booked!

Now just hoping it's not just more rhetoric without action.

I dont disagree with you Bob - but the problem is that TAT (and others) are not telling people that Thailand is not 'open' - in fact they are lying and marketing Thailand as open again. They are not mentioning mandatory insurance, mandatory quarantine on arrival, mandatory PCR tests, mandatory hospital quarantine if you test positive (or sit next to someone that does), bars are not open in many places and you can be arrested, masks are compulsory in many places and you can be fines, travel is limited between many places, some Provinces have locked down (Chiang Mai), and that the rules and restrictions can change at any time.

Dont come to Thailand now - if coming for a short holiday.  

[ThaiEyes]

14 hours ago, Rebel said:

I have comed to the point where I advise friends, family  and business associates  to stay sway from Thailand until they ease up with all the requirements to come here.  The only way Thais learn is when it hurts in the pocket.

While I really don’t like it when any Thai official takes aim at foreigners in a broad swath, I do think that if westerners and other foreigners want to flout the laws here in Thailand, it’s best for them to skip a holiday here unless they’re willing to accept the consequences. They are guests in this country and unfortunately expats are too, only they sometimes get treated worse than tourists

[AussieBob]

1 hour ago, Disenfranchised said:

Out of Germany.

BBC News - Germany Covid: Health minister's stark warning to get jabbed https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-59378548

Phaarrk.  Meanwhile in Japan everything is dying down and infections have dropped dramatically. 

WTF is going on.  This thing aint over by a long way.  I said 2023 a while back (and again recently). Hope I am wrong, but maybe I am right (for a change). 

[Bangkok_Gary]

"... given the transmissibility of the current Delta variant, no country can truly consider themselves highly vaccinated ... until they inoculate 95% of their total population [otherwise] unvaccinated pockets of society will still drive transmission." -- Sam McConkey, head of the International Health and Tropical Medicine department at the RCSI University of Medicine and Health Sciences in Dublin.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/19/europe/europe-covid-vaccination-rates-fourth-wave-cmd-intl/index.html

The only way governments would get 95% vaccinated would be to go full authoritarian.

[Disenfranchised]

6 minutes ago, Bangkok_Gary said:

"... given the transmissibility of the current Delta variant, no country can truly consider themselves highly vaccinated ... until they inoculate 95% of their total population [otherwise] unvaccinated pockets of society will still drive transmission." -- Sam McConkey, head of the International Health and Tropical Medicine department at the RCSI University of Medicine and Health Sciences in Dublin.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/19/europe/europe-covid-vaccination-rates-fourth-wave-cmd-intl/index.html

The only way governments would get 95% vaccinated would be to go full authoritarian.

Isn't that what happens when a country goes to war? The only difference is the enemy is a virus which can kill anyone!

And if you think those "in charge" don't do what they f.....ing well like then you are kidding yourself.

[Bob20]

11 minutes ago, Bangkok_Gary said:

"... given the transmissibility of the current Delta variant, no country can truly consider themselves highly vaccinated ... until they inoculate 95% of their total population [otherwise] unvaccinated pockets of society will still drive transmission." -- Sam McConkey, head of the International Health and Tropical Medicine department at the RCSI University of Medicine and Health Sciences in Dublin.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/19/europe/europe-covid-vaccination-rates-fourth-wave-cmd-intl/index.html

The only way governments would get 95% vaccinated would be to go full authoritarian.

We've known all along that with Delta's R-rate, we'd need at least 86% vaccination of the total population to get below 1. That's not going to happen.

Besides, most quoted figures of vaccination are about "target" population etc. so the actual figure is much lower than quoted, when applied to the "total" population.

Fortunately, we also still have some of the other preventative measures in place to reduce the R-rate like face masks, distancing, lockdowns etc. (as we had to use before the vaccines were available).

Meanwhile, we have to make the best of everything available and proceed with caution.

[Cabra]

It's embarrassing to see so many foreigners walking around Bangkok without even attempting to wear a mask (let alone the ones who seem to be confused on how to wear them properly). My Thai girlfriend commented just yesterday on foreigners not wearing mask. Not saying all Thais are innocent.  Just pointing out that foreigners are their own worst enemies when it comes to creating a positive impression of themselves while guest of the Kingdom. 

[Maxlou]

12 hours ago, JohninDubin said:

Yes! She was really a Martian, but I thought it would be a good idea to blame the Yanks instead.

Seriously though: Why would my identifying her nationality suggest some sort of bias? If I had said she was Canadian, would you have asked the same question? What does your question say about you? Nationalism does not thrive well on this forum in my experience.

I once overheard an Irish woman in New York say the city was nice except for "all the blacks" ...so i guess all Irish are racists ...how you like them apples?

[Stonker]

8 hours ago, kmc said:

Masking reduces 10% infections over the course of 30 days.  This reduces to practically nothing by the end of 60 days.  Flattening the curve is latin for prolonging this "scamdemic" for as long as humanly possible.

That has to be the best one I've seen anywhere!

A mask is passive protection - how can any effectiveness reduce over time ???

Maybe someone forgot to tell you you're not meant to wear the same one for 60 days !

 

[Stonker]

4 hours ago, Graham said:

I am merely stating that the government needs to apply the same rules to all, if it's good for the goose, it's good for the gander. I know we are are in someone else's country and yes, I know we have to abide by their rules, I am not a retard.

TIT.

Well, you seemed to be saying rather more than that !

Any reason to think the government aren't applying the same rules to all?

[Jason]

All I can say is that when I come to Thailand, I'll be wearing a mask for sure. I'm vaccinated already, but I know it won't stop me catching the virus. So I have to take the same precautions  as I have done in my own country. I will be even more vigilant because, where I come from we have far less cases than Thailand. But I take responsibility for my own health as we all should.  

[vlad]

After reading the last comments its apparent members like to post about Falangs not wearing Mask's or ignoring the rule's well in my opinion who gives a flying f   k about them concentrate on yourself and stick to the rule's its simple. Who cares if someone near isn't wearing a mask you can't pull him ignore him. Same for the RTP ignoring rule's its none of our business  ok it annoys us but it won't make 1 iota difference if you complain about them just follow the rules and enjoy. If you get a pull for not having a helmet its your fault no 1 else so you cant complain if the traffic cop has a bald tyre you broke the rule's same as mask wearing you know and understand the rule break it and expect a fine. 

[Shark]

Let's be simple, I kinda got frustrated at first when i was reading Foreigners are not masking up.
Where I live 99% of the Thais aren't doing it.... but again "dirty farang", this message is getting old.

[JohninDublin]

3 hours ago, Maxlou said:

I once overheard an Irish woman in New York say the city was nice except for "all the blacks" ...so i guess all Irish are racists ...how you like them apples?

I've heard that in the US, white people murder black people just for fun. More apples for you. But did I ever say that the woman I mentioned was representative of all Americans?

You started with a dubious assumption, and no doubt you are now making more dubious assumptions that I am some thick Mick Paddy because I live in Dublin. How much more stupid do you want to get with this thread? 

I think you need to pull your neck in. 

Incidentally, did you notice that I mentioned her friends cringed when she said that. Was I disrespecting Americans when I made that point in their favour? If you'd been there at that the time, based on your posts so far, I get the impression you would have rushed to her aid and called the French, "surrender monkeys" or similar with your penchant for stereotyping. Don't you get it? The woman behaved badly, and embarrassed her friends. She just happened to be American. If she'd been a Martian I would have reported similarly mentioning that fact.

I'm an atheist, but I would never be so disrespectful as to go into someone's place of worship and behave badly, let alone harangue those who try to remind me that I am in a place that is sacred to them. I take it you've been to TH. Have you noticed how they have rules there about how people should behave when visiting temples? Where is your criticism of her crass conduct. 

[Maxlou]

Haha So then why did you feel the urge to single out the American lady in the first place if not to generalize about Americans? You cant have it both ways...if you want to generalize about the people in a country, ignorant as you seem to be, then have the cojones to admit it...

[Janneman]

If it is the law, it is the law. So wear a facemask when you have to.

BUT

It is not really clever if a minister calls potential visitors 'dirty farangs'. Not because of the discussion on whether or not to wear a mask. But because of the signal that goes from it to both the potential visitor, and to the local population. I, as a potential visitor do not feel really welcome if that is how the government thinks of me. And I feel even less welcome if the population starts seeing me as a dirty disease-spreading farang.

[Soidog]

All this talk of percentage of people wearing masks and percentage of people taking the vaccine, reminded me of something I heard on TV recently. The program was discussing the recent and often violent protests taking place in many European cities as a result of newly imposed Covid restrictions. The person on the program was an expert in social behaviour and quoted something I’ve never heard. She said that study after study had shown that in a democracy, if only 3.5% of a population protest peacefully, the government have basically lost. It has to be peaceful or else it alienates people and strengthens the governments position with the electorate. I’d not heard the figure of 3.5% and was surprised to hear it being so low. I guess it translates to big numbers. For example 3.5% of the U.K. would mean a protest of 2.3 million people. However as a percentage it’s small when you consider how democracy claims to work. If you look at vaccine hesitancy it is running much higher than 3.5% in most countries.   

[Shark]

1 hour ago, Janneman said:

If it is the law, it is the law. So wear a facemask when you have to.

BUT

It is not really clever if a minister calls potential visitors 'dirty farangs'. Not because of the discussion on whether or not to wear a mask. But because of the signal that goes from it to both the potential visitor, and to the local population. I, as a potential visitor do not feel really welcome if that is how the government thinks of me. And I feel even less welcome if the population starts seeing me as a dirty disease-spreading farang.

I agree 100% and I'm here already but believe me the 'dirty farang' and then this continual upon it is no good for Thai <-> Foreigner relationship - I don't mean this romantically now, just you know the way people look at us.... potentially doing the same thing as they're doing but we've got the name and a minister now highlighting it again.

[JohninDublin]

1 hour ago, Maxlou said:

Haha So then why did you feel the urge to single out the American lady in the first place if not to generalize about Americans? You cant have it both ways...if you want to generalize about the people in a country, ignorant as you seem to be, then have the cojones to admit it...

Oh dear! Still no condemnation of the woman's bad behaviour who embarrassed her fellow Americans. If this was an anti-American rant, do you think I would have included the reaction of her fellow Americans discomfort at her behaviour?

So for your benefit, I am going to re-write and delete any reference to her being an American: 

"I recall walking around Notre Dame Cathedral one Sunday morning, and seeing two groups of American Martian  Women who were also doing the sight-seeing bit during the middle of a service. Suddenly one woman recognised another in the other group, and she did that thing that I've seen other AmericanMartian women do when they see a friend for the first time in a while. She let out a whoop. Immediately several of the congregation  "shooshed" her. He response was to express outrage at this admonishment and after questioning "how dare they", she went into a rant about how grateful the French should be that she was in their country spending US dollars. You could see her friends cringing, but I guess she felt disrespected by the French".

Of course we all know that when Martians visit Paris, they bring US Dollars.

Try to indulge in a bit of critical thinking. Don't you think that as soon as I mentioned "how grateful the French should be that she was in their country spending US dollars" people could have worked out that she was American? Duh!

You assumed that I was Irish. I was born in England, but that does not preclude me from being critical of my fellow Englishmen: https://thethaiger.com/talk/topic/8369-news-forum-mask-up-foreign-visitors-warned-of-penalties-for-violating-disease-control-laws/page/2/#comment-110602 Have you noticed the failure of the other English on this thread to go nationaballistic (my own word for it)?

And if you want to attack the Irish as tourists, let me tell you a true story about an Irishman being interviewed on TV during the 2002 World Cup which took place in S. Korea and Japan.

He was asked why the Irish were so welcomed everywhere they went. He said there were two reasons for it. The first was that they had never invaded anyone else's country. The other was when they had invaded other countries, it was to show them how to throw a good party.

 

[Bob20]

1 hour ago, JohninDubin said:

Oh dear! Still no condemnation of the woman's bad behaviour who embarrassed her fellow Americans. If this was an anti-American rant, do you think I would have included the reaction of her fellow Americans discomfort at her behaviour?

So for your benefit, I am going to re-write and delete any reference to her being an American: 

"I recall walking around Notre Dame Cathedral one Sunday morning, and seeing two groups of American Martian  Women who were also doing the sight-seeing bit during the middle of a service. Suddenly one woman recognised another in the other group, and she did that thing that I've seen other AmericanMartian women do when they see a friend for the first time in a while. She let out a whoop. Immediately several of the congregation  "shooshed" her. He response was to express outrage at this admonishment and after questioning "how dare they", she went into a rant about how grateful the French should be that she was in their country spending US dollars. You could see her friends cringing, but I guess she felt disrespected by the French".

Of course we all know that when Martians visit Paris, they bring US Dollars.

Try to indulge in a bit of critical thinking. Don't you think that as soon as I mentioned "how grateful the French should be that she was in their country spending US dollars" people could have worked out that she was American? Duh!

You assumed that I was Irish. I was born in England, but that does not preclude me from being critical of my fellow Englishmen: https://thethaiger.com/talk/topic/8369-news-forum-mask-up-foreign-visitors-warned-of-penalties-for-violating-disease-control-laws/page/2/#comment-110602 Have you noticed the failure of the other English on this thread to go nationaballistic (my own word for it)?

And if you want to attack the Irish as tourists, let me tell you a true story about an Irishman being interviewed on TV during the 2002 World Cup which took place in S. Korea and Japan.

He was asked why the Irish were so welcomed everywhere they went. He said there were two reasons for it. The first was that they had never invaded anyone else's country. The other was when they had invaded other countries, it was to show them how to throw a good party.

Yeah, you're definitely not the king of anecdotes, but you get an A for trying though

[MrNovax]

21 hours ago, JohninDubin said:

What is it you are asking me to explain?

The implication i got from your posts was that these, in my opinion, foolish measures have somehow done anything to "slow the spread" or protect people from the beer bug.  So my point is that if you plot the cases, deaths, or whatever metric you prefer compared to the "precautions" taken in those areas its will show no statistical difference.  And when i see countries that i have attachment to (Thailand) enact what appear to be self destructive measures i become frustrated.  

 

[PfizerModernaJohnson]

On 11/22/2021 at 2:03 PM, JohninDubin said:

If you look at infection rates in Asia where most countries are still heavily restricted, and compare them to Europe, can you honestly say that TH has got it wrong? Currently, you are 21X more likely to become infected in Europe, than in Asia.

Your post looks like you are saying that they should be punished for being cautious, but we can see what lack of caution is doing  in Europe. 

You believe their numbers ? LoL

[JohninDublin]

26 minutes ago, MrNovax said:

The implication i got from your posts was that these, in my opinion, foolish measures have somehow done anything to "slow the spread" or protect people from the beer bug.  So my point is that if you plot the cases, deaths, or whatever metric you prefer compared to the "precautions" taken in those areas its will show no statistical difference.  And when i see countries that i have attachment to (Thailand) enact what appear to be self destructive measures i become frustrated.  

So looking at the 7 day figures from Europe and Asia, there have been respectively 2.3 mill and 600k new infections. Europe's population is 1/6th that of Asia. Europe has very few restrictions. Asia has maintained most of theirs.

How about looking at the UK graph which shows that as soon as they introduced border controls, the new cases fell in a matter of weeks from 5k to nearer 500 a day? Then they started to increase a couple of months later and as more stringent measures were introduced, they reduced from 30k a day to 13k in under three months. Then Bojo decided that he didn't want to spoil people's Xmas, so he dropped most of these. Over the next 4 weeks, the rate went to 50k+ plus a day at which stage restrictions were reintroduced. Eventually they peaked a week later at 68k. During the meantime, vaxxing started to kick in and three months later by April 1st, the figures were in the 4k range. Things remained steady for a while, and then along came Delta. We then see the figures start to rise quite rapidly, during which time, Bojo dumped most of the restrictions, and now we are seeing over 40k cases a day. That pattern is fairly often repeated throughout Europe with the "waves" oscillating in sync with the level of restrictions, vaxxing etc. 

Have you noticed that each time that the restrictions are eased in the UK, how numbers shoot up, and when they are reintroduced, the numbers decline? Have you noticed how most of Europe has dropped most of it's restrictions and the numbers have shot up, while the opposite is true of Asia. Rightly or wrongly, there is a clear pattern here, and in the absence of you offering alternative credible explanations, I am going to rely on these.