Coronavirus (Covid-19)

Top Thai epidemiologist pushes for 4 week nationwide lockdown

Published

5 months ago

Monday, January 4, 2021

Caitlin Ashworth

PHOTO: Facebook: Thira Woratanarat

Thailand needs a nationwide lockdown for at least 4 weeks to control the spread of the coronavirus, according to leading Thai epidemiologist Thira Woratanarat. But many governors and other public officials disagree with the idea of strict lockdown measures, especially on shutting down dine-in services, saying it could negatively impact on the poor.

Thira, who is on the faculty of medicine at Chulalongkorn University, makes regular updates on Facebook regarding the coronavirus pandemic. In the past, he’s stood firmly against reopening the country to tourism and has warned against shortening the mandatory quarantine period for people arriving in Thailand from overseas.

The doctor, who often warns about worst-case scenarios, says that if Thailand doesn’t immediately go into a nationwide lockdown, then the mortality rate could be as high as Japan.

SOURCE: Pattaya News

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News Categories: Coronavirus (Covid-19)

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59 Comments

John

Monday, January 4, 2021 at 6:17 pm

Unfortunately half lock downs never worked. They should lock everyone at home for 4 weeks and virus would be gone again so we could come back to normality we were enjoying last few months.

Reply
- Maverick
  
  Monday, January 4, 2021 at 6:25 pm
  
  What normality ? Poverty, financial distress and collapsed business’s – I’ve got a better idea close the roads it would save more lives – lockdowns do not work they just delay the inevitable – if you are worried about the virus stay at home.
  
  Reply
  - John Brown
    
    Monday, January 4, 2021 at 7:45 pm
    
    Why do scientifically-validated full lockdowns not work? Who do you think is transmitting the virus to whom during them, and how? Genuine question.
    
    Reply
    - Ipissonjohn
      
      Monday, January 4, 2021 at 8:12 pm
      
      the borders have been shut, mandatory quarantines in place. And we already did a nation wide lock down… it didn’t work… we need to do another it worked so scientifically well.
      
      Reply
      - John Brown
        
        Monday, January 4, 2021 at 9:37 pm
        
        Sorry, you didn’t answer the question: who do you think is transmitting the virus to whom during lockdowns (when people do not meet), and how?
      - Rasputin
        
        Monday, January 4, 2021 at 10:12 pm
        
        It was working quite well until the land boarders were ‘allowed’ to leak, with the inevitable results. A strict lockdown is now necessary to prevent Thailand ending up in the situation Europe, America and the UK are already in.
      - pascal
        
        Tuesday, January 5, 2021 at 6:49 am
        
        i follow rasputin on this one, lockdown is working very well in Australia if it is put in place rapidly, more the government waits more the spread will be difficult to contain.
    - A.K
      
      Monday, January 4, 2021 at 8:56 pm
      
      John ioannidis ,US university professor has a worldwide research about this.
      Lockdown is not the solution.Lots of testing is.
      Also in Thailand’s case we need vaccines,lots of them and fast.
      To your question regarding spread while in lockdown check how Europe is going with all the lockdowns.Since there are a symptomatic infected people ,they will spread the virus – if not tested – and spread it to everyone they are in lockdown with.
      
      Reply
      - John
        
        Monday, January 4, 2021 at 10:00 pm
        
        Virus stays alive in your body for 2 weeks if you asymptomatic, after that you are not infecting people. If infected asymptomatic people stay alone in their rooms as they did in Wuhan than after 2 weeks only the sick one with symptoms will be still infecting. As we don’t have enough testing and we can not test all 60 mln people in Thailand to know who has it and who doesn’t the only option is to isolate everyone from each other as much as we can , ideally stay in your room , don’t even mix with family members.It only works when public and people comply with the rules and really want to do that.The partial lockdowns the imposing now is unfortunately not enough, I hate it and enjoy outs night, but it is what it is and please do not give us euro or american lockdowns as example where mentally disabled people run around spiting at each other asking for freedom to infect others. Why won’t you look at China and lockdowns which actually were done correctly?
      - John Brown
        
        Monday, January 4, 2021 at 10:10 pm
        
        I’m not inclined to address Ioannidis’ “research” specifically, due to its poor quality, particularly as many others have already done so and more articulately than I would here. Easy to find online. So unless you insist, I will pass over it.
        
        I agree that lots of testing -particularly, dirt cheap at-home rapid antigen saliva tests with high sensitivity and acceptable specificity – would be very helpful. From both a medical and public health perspective, however, they alone are not enough.
        
        The vaccines are controversial, indeed they should be much more controversial than they are, and I think we will likely have a very clear idea why within 3-4 months. They will not work. I very much hope I am wrong, but I would be a fool to bet against this given what a conservative interpretation of the science, free from either lobbying or political influence, indicates, and we would be fools to rely on them.
        
        No country in Europe has done a hard lockdown correctly for COVID. To date, very few places have, and they are all in the Asia Pacific region. Hard lockdowns which are based on science work. See “Color zone pandemic response” (Shen & Bar-Yam, 2020) for details.
        
        Hard lockdowns are necessary when the aim is to get to COVID-zero. Without them we will be destined to cycle through 2020/2021-so-far, over and over again, for at least the next 5 or so years until we’ve developed and deployed acceptably effective and minimally-toxic therapeutics that can hopefully prevent, treat, *and* eradicate both the virus and its diseases, so that we won’t have to rely on antiviral suppressants the way we do now for many other viral infections. Getting to zero shortcuts around all that and is the best possible world.
      - Issan John
        
        Tuesday, January 5, 2021 at 12:26 am
        
        Plenty of people have “a worldwide research about this”, but not all are peer-reviewed and peer-supported. Ioannidis is not one of them.
        
        Lockdowns have been shown to work IF done effectively.
        
        “Lots of testing” has never been shown to work because no country has ever been able to do it. To do it adequately, the experts agree that a country’s entire population would have to be tested at least once every month, preferably once every fortnight; the closest any country has got so far is a quarter of the population once a year.
        
        It’s an ideal, possible in a limited area if rigidly enforced by a country like China, but beyond that it’s an impossibility however desirable it may be.
      - Issan John
        
        Tuesday, January 5, 2021 at 12:39 am
        
        “lots of testing -particularly, dirt cheap at-home rapid antigen saliva tests with high sensitivity and acceptable specificity – would be very helpful”
        
        Indeed it would, John Brown, and it would permit this elusive “screening”, unfortunately no such tests meeting all those criteria exist.
        
        The only difference between the saliva tests available and the swab tests currently more widely used is the method of sampling. They’re all either not “rapid” enough or not “sensitive” enough – or both, which is why no-one uses them except Japan and then only in limited applications.
    - preesy chepuce
      
      Tuesday, January 5, 2021 at 9:36 am
      
      Because they’re neither scientific nor validated.
      
      Science is not a destination, but a process, and the best science arises out of informed competition of ideas, where people are required to not simply prove the answers to their questions, but prove that their questions make sense too.
      
      In the current situation, in many countries, yuo have official government scientists dominating the debate, and protecting themselves politically by presenting the worst-case scenarios; you have a shrill, pushy activist-dominated media, whose audience and revenues are in terminal decline, and for whom anxiety-driving headlines generate audience and revenue.
      Technology has now made news immediate, and reach universal, so in the 20th century, the pace of news was much slower, and the bar to entry was much higher; in the 21st century news in now, and there is no bar to entry, this structurally facilitates mob dynamics.
      
      Add to this, politicians with short-term purviews and without strong principles tend to be led by self-preservation, and you have a perfect recipe for hysteria leading to worst-case scenarios being treated as the mainstream decision.
      
      There are credible and reasonable scientific voices being drowned out by the noise and the volume of it. At least, in this brave new world, it’s possible for them to find some outlets, but there is still a mainstream that is dominating discourse and suffocating dissent.
      
      The reason why lockdowns don’t work, is that, even if your lockdown was a perfect physical seal, with no ingress of viruses; it’s not a perfect temporal seal… meaning that you can’t realistically know when any asymptotic transmission ever took place, which means you are almost guaranteed (statistically) to have virus within your perfect seal, and of course, within your perfect seal, the controls will be relaxed if you believe that the virus is outside it, and thus the virus can spread even more within your seal than without it.
      This is not unlike the notion that masks, even if worn correctly at all times, can accumulate virus on their external surface, and transmit it from that external surface to anywhere else.
      
      In short, you would have to put the whole planet in prison lockdown and solitary confinement, with everyone wearing sealed biohazard suits to have any chance of it working.
      Hence, the decision to do a lockdown looks political, not scientific.
      Statistically, the elderly and infirm comprise a majority of the approximately 0.1% of fatalities, and those people tend to have accumulated wealth, and tend to vote more.
      
      The stated goal of the lockdown is to protect supposedly fragile health systems. Rather than invest billions into expanding healthcare provision, the poltiical decision is to hand it out in lieu of pay, whilst suppressing the economy and prompting staistical recession, which reduces the available funding for public healthcare.
      Hence, this doesn’t look like an economic decision.
      
      In short, the lockdown agenda looks to be mainly political, and mainly about fending off blame in the future when there are public inquiries and judicial review about the the performance of government officials and politicans, and the potential reporting of that in the media.
      It seems this ostensibly short-term view has been ambushed by a long-term situation, and that is fomenting a crisis. It’s only states like North Korea that can maintain a permanent state of crisis. Without extreme police state measures, there may be growing pressure from the public against the measures, and we may be heading towards a repetition of scenes seen in summer 2020. The activist media, politicians, and officials are caught in a decision loop, where they can’t concede to being wrong.
      
      There’s more to this than science, and what science there is, is looking shakier as we go, because scientific debate is being suppressed and attacked by activist media, certainly in the west.
      
      It’s fertile ground for conspiracy theorists, but also for the complacent, who ignore the lessons of 20th century history…
      
      Reply
  - chris
    
    Tuesday, January 5, 2021 at 1:22 am
    
    only an idiot would claim that quarantine does not prevent the spread of a virus.
    
    Reply
    - preesy chepuce
      
      Tuesday, January 5, 2021 at 9:42 am
      
      Only an idiot would claim that is does.
      
      You can’t “prevent” the spread of a virus; you can suppress/reduce/mitigate it, but quarantines aren’t perfect, even if you were sealed naked in a glass cube, suspended by a titanium thread in a giant orbital space hangar with your brain plugged into the internet getting a constant stream of nooooz…
      
      Reply
  - pascal
    
    Tuesday, January 5, 2021 at 6:46 am
    
    man you should give a chance to your brain, don t act like a goose, think what you are just saying si the worst stupid thing i ever read.
    
    Reply
- Facts
  
  Monday, January 4, 2021 at 7:52 pm
  
  This is based off what exactly? On nothing but hot air. The virus wouldn’t go away, and locking people in their homes for a virus with a 99.9%+ i is beyond tyranny. The virus coming back is from illegal migrants from Burma who Thai government admitted is impossible to stop with the unprotected border. We need to carry on like normal and protect the people like elderly or already sickly who are the only ones affected by this virus.
  
  Reply
  - Issan John
    
    Tuesday, January 5, 2021 at 12:46 am
    
    “We need to carry on like normal and protect the people like elderly or already sickly who are the only ones affected by this virus.”
    
    Even if they were “the only ones affected” (which they’re not, but let’s leave that on one side) how, exactly, would you do that in Thailand?
    
    Reply
- Think hard
  
  Tuesday, January 5, 2021 at 12:32 pm
  
  Where this doc graduate from?
  
  Reply
- Mark
  
  Tuesday, January 5, 2021 at 1:29 pm
  
  Totally agree….just wondering why the ‘journalist’ whom wrote this story added that this epidemiologist ‘often warns about worst case scenarios’ sounds like bias rather than reporting…. doesn’t surprise.me given the new owners are property developers
  
  Reply
MJE

Monday, January 4, 2021 at 6:28 pm

The recent outbreaks are in no way attributed to recent ASQ international arrival. Yes, there has certainly been a number of positive results from the International ASQ arrivals, however, the focus should be on the illegal crossings that have been aided by big business that has come off seemingly unscathed and thus far held unaccountable.

Reply
- James Pate
  
  Monday, January 4, 2021 at 7:54 pm
  
  Wrong attitude. It’s easy to see through this. Next month, he will pontificate again. “See! I told you so!” How on earth are his comments constructive or helpful in any way? Duh! I don’t need to be a “top virologist” to foresee what’s in store. Another academic in an ivory tower, stating the obvious about what’s supposed to happen in an ideal world. So what? How can a “nationwide lockdown” help when viruses and infected people don’t observe borders?
  
  Reply
  - Issan John
    
    Tuesday, January 5, 2021 at 1:04 am
    
    I’m lost by what’s “wrong” with MJE’s “attitude” – or his facts, for that matter.
    
    True, “viruses and infected people don’t observe borders” but if the borders are closed successfully then they don’t cross the borders either.
    
    Policing alone can never achieve that with a land border like Thailand’s, but a clampdown on employing illegal migrants can with an amnesty for those already here (done, box ticked) and enforced heavy penalties for the employers not complying, as MJE suggested (no sign of that).
    
    “How can a “nationwide lockdown” help”?
    
    Simples. As a bonus (but not an aim), while the nationwide lockdown is in force, although illegal migrants could still cross the border they couldn’t go anywhere, giving you the breathing space to control the virus, give amnesty to those illegal migrants already here, and heavily penalise the employers not complying.
    
    Reply
  - preesy chepuce
    
    Tuesday, January 5, 2021 at 9:45 am
    
    To be honest James, the problem is the lack of academics, and the mass of quasi-academics, who prattle on endlessly as if they know what they’re talking about, quoting nothing of substance… Looking at you IssanJohn.
    
    Reply
- Maag
  
  Tuesday, January 5, 2021 at 6:49 am
  
  Why not 6 months or 1 year……ridiculous , we should learn to live with virus !
  
  Reply
Bill Fischer

Monday, January 4, 2021 at 6:52 pm

How generous of him to offer more financial suffering while he’s getting a fat dependable salary. BTW, lockdowns don’t fully work here for one good reason: no real enforcement. During the peak of the biggest lockdown, it was easy to find people, especially food servers and those overly cool food delivery clowns, not wearing masks or social distancing. Cops were nowhere to be seen. They didn’t seem to take it seriously.

Reply
- Ipissonjohn
  
  Monday, January 4, 2021 at 8:15 pm
  
  And this is why i live Thailand and hate America…
  
  Things are just chill here. a virus that killed 60 people in 1 year and people are not scared
  
  The govt is a bit crazy, but nothing like USSA or AUSS where you get tackled and hauled off to jail
  
  Reply
  - Michael
    
    Tuesday, January 5, 2021 at 5:45 am
    
    Where did you get that from?
    
    5 year prison sentence for breaking the curfew… In a Thai prison, so that can be as well as death penalty…
    
    Reply
- Issan John
  
  Tuesday, January 5, 2021 at 1:08 am
  
  So … lockdowns don’t work here because they’re not done properly?
  
  Then maybe the answer’s to ensure they’re done properly …
  
  Reply
  - preesy chepuce
    
    Tuesday, January 5, 2021 at 9:53 am
    
    A typically specious response… how do you do them properly?
    How do you ensure that all masks are being worn properly? Are not saturated with moisture from breath? that they are put on and taken off by the straps only and placed down outside surface first that sterile gloves are being worn when using them? that hands are washed with soap and warm water between each usage of them? Or that masks don’t fall on the ground, or that doornobs and handles are regularly disinfected? How do you do that without a billion drones and an error-free AI system watching everyone all the time?
    
    The latest drum your banging is a straw man. You can’t ensure that “lockdown is done properly”, it’s a conceptually incipient premise for a conclusion where the inference doesn’t stand.
    
    You can’t do it. It doesn’t work. Testing is in-situ, not continuous, you can’t collect data that isn’t out of date the moment you analyse it. You can’t control all actions of all people, and you can’t live in a perfect sterile world where nothing goes wrong. You waste a lot of coulombs and calories pumping out your faux expertise because your conceptual start points are not properly reasoned (nor evidenced).
    
    Reply
Issan John

Monday, January 4, 2021 at 7:07 pm

Yes, Khun Thira.

YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES

Reply
- Nipral
  
  Monday, January 4, 2021 at 8:55 pm
  
  are you feeling well ? Sure ??? Too much commenting maybe…
  
  Reply
  - Pat
    
    Monday, January 4, 2021 at 10:48 pm
    
    Maybe ? Lol. Seems like that guy just sits in front of the screen waiting for the next Covid related article to comment 55
    
    Reply
  - preesy chepuce
    
    Tuesday, January 5, 2021 at 9:55 am
    
    Might be a bug in the programming of Wumao-Issan-John-1.0.exe
    
    Reply
Ray

Monday, January 4, 2021 at 7:12 pm

If anything we can take away from the Chinese it is that a full lockdown works. Western countries only used partly lockdowns. The measures had only limited results. In the west we are already battling the virus for 9 or 10 months and it is just getting worse. In Wuhan it took only three months to stop the pandemic. Thailand should go into full lockdown. It is not too late. ASQ international arrivals can continue imho when strictly enforced and controlled. Just my two cents.

Reply
- Jake Pattaya
  
  Monday, January 4, 2021 at 10:05 pm
  
  Completely agree.
  
  Reply
  - Issan John
    
    Tuesday, January 5, 2021 at 1:09 am
    
    Ditto.
    
    Reply
    - preesy chepuce
      
      Tuesday, January 5, 2021 at 10:04 am
      
      You are all wumao stooges, and I claim my 5 jiao…
      
      Reply
- preesy chepuce
  
  Tuesday, January 5, 2021 at 10:03 am
  
  Epic Facepalm.
  Why do you believe anything Chinese Communist Party says, when it suppressed news of the virus and arrested the doctor reporting it, and led to their death; and rushed out a vaccine without completing trials?
  
  This is a regime that puts people in concentration camps and sterilises them in order to take over their country by handing out their land to it’s own citizens.
  It’s a regime with armies of online activists dedicated to shutting down dissent and flooding comment sections to control information. It’s a country that blocks most of the internet for its people, blocks them from taking money outside or leaving and makes people disappear for daring to challenge the status quo (Jack Ma seems to have gone a bit quiet since asking for finaicial system reform).
  It’s a regime that controls all its companies, and has a currency it sets the price of and prints as much as it wants of a currency that can’t be traded, and sits on the possibly the largest ocean of debt the world has ever seen.
  
  It’s a country that violently crushed Hong Kong for daring to resist totalitarianism.
  
  the list is endless…
  
  Reply
Maag

Monday, January 4, 2021 at 7:17 pm

We should live with covid ….only a few death is nothing !

Reply
- Jake Pattaya
  
  Monday, January 4, 2021 at 10:15 pm
  
  How many is few dead? Nearly 400k in US so far or 80k in UK? With Thai health care system would it be 200k or half a million dead? Would you see doctors and nurses being happy about working in conditions where they risk their lives and their families lives so you could finally be happy and stop being so impatient. Wear a mask, stay at home , get a vaccine or go and voluntarily infect yourself but after that please do not spread to others and stay at home, and make sure you don’t beg anyone for help when your lungs stop working.
  
  Reply
  - Ling
    
    Monday, January 4, 2021 at 10:52 pm
    
    Man, just because the media say “Covid deaths” it doesnt mean every positive died because the virus. That phrase is just a wrong one. X doctors around the world are telling this, but no one hears it..the media likes panic..and you maybe should stop reading “quality news” so you could use your thoughts and stop being scared
    
    Reply
Kristof

Monday, January 4, 2021 at 8:18 pm

Unfortunately this is the right thing to do. And i say that out of genuine greater concern not just for people’s lives but for the economy as well. Making sacrifices now will prevent much greater sacrifices down the road. Right now we’ve risked losing the real Thai holiday of Songkran again to allow a foreign-date New Years 4 days ago. The same is true for economic function: don’t lose long-term for a small short-time profit which really wasn’t very high anyway. And to note: i’m not happy at all with any lockdown. I merely recognize it as the reality we must face and sacrifice we must make for the greater long-term good.

Reply
- Kristof
  
  Monday, January 4, 2021 at 9:06 pm
  
  To add to my own comment, i have to confess that as stated it is fairly insensitive to those folks and businesses that must suffer greatly from a lockdown. I also want to be clear that those folks deserve some sort of compensation, at least enough to get thru the lockdown and restart their business when things do ease up. I can’t retract the necessity of drastic measures. But while sacrifices must be made, i don’t want anyone thrown under the bus either.
  
  Reply
  - Jake Pattaya
    
    Monday, January 4, 2021 at 10:23 pm
    
    As you said , full lockdown is in the business owners long time interest. Once the gin is out of the bottle we will be struggling with some part BS lockdowns for another year until 70% of society will get vaccinated.
    
    Reply
Nipral

Monday, January 4, 2021 at 8:58 pm

Who is he ? Utterly unknown I am afraid.

Reply
Ben

Monday, January 4, 2021 at 10:06 pm

Facts:

-UK population = 67M
-Thailand population = 70M

-UK COVID deaths = 75,024 (as of today) and increasing by 500 to 1,000 per day
-Thailand deaths = 65 and would likely be higher than the UK because people live in multi-generational households and health care infrastructure isn’t as good as the UK

So Maag, it isn’t about a few deaths and it’s something! And FACTS, it’s not 99.9%. Stop using inaccurate percentages to minimize the deaths that are occurring around the world. A lot of people are losing mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, etc. You’re 99.9% gives you zero credibility.

So it’s a trade off between closing down for 4 weeks and saving A LOT OF LIVES and the 80% of the economy that was functioning before these latest cases OR just letting it get totally out of control like the UK, utilizing a lot of body bags and destroying part of the 80% of the economy that’s still intact.

The Thai government has done a good job of controlling the infection and limiting the damage to the economy. If it spread there like the UK or USA then the economic damage would have been worse. Look at China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, etc. where they’ve applied similar policies and their economies are faring much better than the UK or USA.

If the Thai government has lost control of the situation then they should consider a short lockdown to regain that control which they had for most of 2020. They should also deploy the entire army to guard its borders because this is a war. If a foreign force was about to storm their borders and potentially kill 100,000+ people then they wouldn’t be sitting in their barracks.

This virus transmits via human contact and if you minimize that then the virus has nowhere to go. That’s how they did it the first time,

George Fowler, the reason why California and other places are being hurt economically is the behavior of the people there, They gather and party without masks and this is the result. Hospitals are overwhelmed, people dying and the economy is in shambles regardless of a lockdown or not. Masks work. Masks don’t work when people gather without wearing them. Look at the White House. You’re obviously an anti-masker and anti-vaxxer kid of guy. That line of thinking isn’t even remotely a starter in Asian countries. It’s your opinion but a flawed one for this situation. The anglo, my civil liberties line of thinking doesn’t play in Asia.

Reply
- Jake Pattaya
  
  Monday, January 4, 2021 at 10:41 pm
  
  Very well said Ben, but unfortunately the the anti vaxer anti masker idiot think that you are brain washed and it’s the aliens who are manpiulating us because the government wants to nationalize his bar and yes, this is scary because I hear those kind of BS from people I would not expect. Fortunately it’s just a few, majority believe that we humans want good for that world and 200 governments around the world did not get into some kind of pact with devil to close his beer bar and his girlfriend massage shop.
  
  Reply
- preesy chepuce
  
  Tuesday, January 5, 2021 at 10:07 am
  
  These are not facts… they’re conjectures… there is no credible evidence to verify all of these figures.
  
  Please stop pumping out this bogus narrative: It’s not scientific, it’s political.
  
  Reply
John

Monday, January 4, 2021 at 10:32 pm

Covid is not HIV, you are only spreading it for 2 weeks once you got infected so if you don’t pass it to anyone for 2 weeks it will disappear from your body. If others behave rationally and stop spreading this nonsense like masks don’t work we will be fine.
Look at proper lockdowns in China and stop bragging about half euro and us lockdowns where to much liberty is killing in hounded of thousands.
I love freedom but have some sense and adjust so we can have this thing behind us.

Reply
David Beckman

Monday, January 4, 2021 at 10:38 pm

If you believe only 60 people have died from covid in Thailand the I want to sit with you on a flying horse and watch elephants fly to the moon because that is more realistic.

Reply
Issan John

Tuesday, January 5, 2021 at 1:17 am

Not much “maybe” about it – you’re a selfish a-hole, end of story.

Reply
Kristof

Tuesday, January 5, 2021 at 1:59 am

If this is your genuine position then essentially you are saying your right to drink and party in a nation that is not your home supersedes the people of that nation’s right to safety. No disrespect but you might seriously reconsider making a public statement like that in a foreign country, especially one with a military style govt.

Reply
- Ipissonjohn
  
  Tuesday, January 5, 2021 at 8:00 am
  
  Where am I going to go drink. Everton
  Everything is shut due to compliance..
  
  Wait a second though… its not out of disrespect.. 65 supposedly died in the past year… i don’t see the danger.
  
  I will not drink and drive. That’s showing respect.
  
  Reply
- Ipissonjohn
  
  Tuesday, January 5, 2021 at 8:18 am
  
  I’m not saying that at all. I’m saying it’s not a real threat. And as an individual I have the ability to make my own choices and assess the risk… if the govt hunting me down.
  
  Reply
Geoff

Tuesday, January 5, 2021 at 4:41 am

Western lockdowns are often spoiled by people who disregard the rules, for whatever reason. Here in Thailand, it seems to be illegalities that have caused the current situation. A current article suggests pandemics may be another “new normal” in which case countries like China will be successful, Western countries will always struggle because of perceived “human rights” instead of “responsibilities” and Thailand will go downhill fast. Let’s hope the various vaccs. prevent these scenarios.

Reply
K

Tuesday, January 5, 2021 at 6:41 am

Obviously this man has lot of money, he doesn’t care if people closing their business, millions loosing jobs

Reply
pascal

Tuesday, January 5, 2021 at 7:11 am

i am afraid when i do read peoples saying lockdown is not efficient or let the virus spread there are not many death …….. insane to read such a thing.

Lockdown is the only way to stop this virus, we can not relie on peoples to do the right things at least not all of them. Australia north territory, small population with aboriginal population at very high risk. border were closed right away, only imported case are recorded here no community transmission. the virus get in only via peoples whom already have it, all detected in during quarantine.

make no mistake guys this virus is bread due to bad peoples behaviours or no respect of the rules, Victoria Sate cluster, a quarantine guard did not have better idea than to f—- around with a traveller coming back from oversea, result hundred of community transmission.

Only 1 infected person is enough to create chaos in high density population area. YES lockdown everything and intensive testing, isolate contaminated peoples. whoever says lockdown is useless is stupid.

this virus follow human behaviour.

Reply
Googel

Tuesday, January 5, 2021 at 12:06 pm

As usual the strongly divided factions are out in force. A lockdown protects mostly humans who are already pretty much on the edge with their health, Covid gives them the nudge to push them over the cliff.
So a lockdown is the harshest possible way to protect them, the government probably still not sufficiently upgraded health system in Thailand and it costs a big proportion of Thais their jobs, their future, their education and everything they worked for all their lifes.
So there are the ones now who are scared and feel little impact, they want to close things down, and the ones who are worried about their future who think its the wrong way to deal with the issue.
Thankfully I dont have to make this decision, you can basically only get it wrong because indeed both sides have their very valid points and one will always complain heavily.

It all comes down to one question: How much should a society restrict itself to protect other peoples lifes? 20k dead on the roads every year, how many die prematurely due to pollution? 400k in the EU, so thats probably 100k per year in Thailand. Should we shut down the factories and cars because of that?

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Caitlin Ashworth

Caitlin Ashworth is a writer from the United States who has lived in Thailand since 2018. She graduated from the University of South Florida St. Petersburg with a bachelor’s degree in journalism and media studies in 2016. She was a reporter for the Daily Hampshire Gazette In Massachusetts. She also interned at the Richmond Times-Dispatch in Virginia and Sarasota Herald-Tribune in Florida.