1. #3876
    Thailand Expat harrybarracuda's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Latindancer View Post
    Even if my chances of dying are only 1 in a million, I believe it can leave some people with severe lung damage.
    Imagine getting it in Chiang Mai then.

  2. #3877
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    Has outbound international air mail service been suspended? My tax return to the US which I mailed on Wednesday was returned to me today by our mail carrier saying that it could not be sent due to Covid 19.

  3. #3878
    Thailand Expat harrybarracuda's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Humbert View Post
    Has outbound international air mail service been suspended? My tax return to the US which I mailed on Wednesday was returned to me today by our mail carrier saying that it could not be sent due to Covid 19.
    Not much service if your postmen are working from home.


  4. #3879
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    I posted at the post office in Sangkha.

  5. #3880
    Thailand Expat harrybarracuda's Avatar
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    They just look like a bunch of fucking idiots, don't they?

    And of course anyone infectious has had 24 hours to spread it around.

    Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha has ordered 152 Thais who landed at Suvarnabhumi airport on Friday afternoon and refused to enter state quarantine to report themselves before 6pm on Saturday so that they can be put into state facilities.

    A total of 158 Thais — 103 from Japan, 11 from Qatar and 44 from Singapore — landed at the airport at 1pm on Friday, Dr Taweesin Visanuyothin, a spokesman for the government's Centre for Covid-19 Situation Administration, said on Saturday.

    But only six of them agreed to be sent to a place prepared by authorities, which is a hotel in Bangkok.


    Thai returnees told to report for state quarantine

  6. #3881
    Thailand Expat harrybarracuda's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Humbert View Post
    I posted at the post office in Sangkha.
    Well Thailand isn't on the list, but I guess if they had a number of direct non-stop flights they were using and they've been suspended....

    COVID-19 Forces US to Suspend International Mail to 22 Countries | Voice of America - English

  7. #3882
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    ^Interesting. That is probably what is happening.

  8. #3883
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    Quote Originally Posted by bowie View Post
    So, in broad terms, your chances of contracting the Covid-19 Virus are 144 in a million, and your chances of dying of the Covid-19 Virus are 8 in a million.

    And, to expand on this, these are todays figures – as times passes and further preventative measures are applied and enforced, your chances for survival will improve.
    Last month, the numbers were one tenth of the ones you quote, i.e. 1/10th of the risk in the figures you quoted. What will it be next month? Ten times the risk? What will it be in 3 months or a year?

    Your figures are a snapshot of now, and accurate as such but when the curve is still climbing so steeply, and the experience of the last few months shows that will continue as it spreads around the world. Some experts have said they're expected 200,000 deaths in America (the White House, three days ago, said they expected between 100,000-240,000), in a population a bit under 350 million - working that maths through is dramatically different from your statements above. I'm crap at maths, so somebody else needs to work through, but it looks like 1 death in every 2,000 people in the US is predicted - that's shockingly high and very different from your 1 death in every 8,000,000; the latest predictions in the US are 4,000 times higher than your noted (and correct, as far as my two bob maths can work out) numbers for today...

    It is as it was three months ago, factoring the potential of this virus leaves horrifying numbers.

    Having said that, it's unknown as of now and I hope you are right with regard to future projections.
    Cycling should be banned!!!

  9. #3884
    Thailand Expat harrybarracuda's Avatar
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    ^ I thought tax day had been postponed anyway?

    Added: Treasury and IRS to delay tax payment deadline by 90 days

  10. #3885
    Thailand Expat harrybarracuda's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Bettyboo View Post
    Last month, the numbers were one tenth of the ones you quote, i.e. 1/10th of the risk in the figures you quoted. What will it be next month? Ten times the risk? What will it be in 3 months or a year?

    Your figures are a snapshot of now, and accurate as such but when the curve is still climbing so steeply, and the experience of the last few months shows that will continue as it spreads around the world. Some experts have said thy're expected 200,000 deaths in America (the White House, three days ago, said they expected between 100,000-240,000), in a population a bit under 350 million - working that maths through is dramatically different from your statements above. I'm crap at maths, so somebody else needs to work through, but it looks like 1 death in every 2,000 people in the US is predicted - that's shockingly high and very different from your 1 death in every 8,000,000; the latest predictions in the US are 4,000 times higher than your noted (and correct, as far as my two bob maths can work out) numbers for today...

    It is as it was three months ago, factoring the potential of this virus leaves horrifying numbers.

    Having said that, it's unknown as of now and I hope you are right with regard to future projections.
    It's likely to be lower than current percentages because of all the people who either had symptoms and were never reported or were simply asymptomatic.

    That won't be known until there is a lot more testing and that includes testing for people who have .... wait for it ...... antibodies.

  11. #3886
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    dragonfly

    that said, coming back as a tourist here is quite pleasant, and much less stressful
    in a nutshell.

  12. #3887
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    Quote Originally Posted by harrybarracuda View Post
    It's likely to be lower than current percentages because of all the people who either had symptoms and were never reported or were simply asymptomatic.

    That won't be known until there is a lot more testing and that includes testing for people who have .... wait for it ...... antibodies.
    Yes, I know it's just not known until a lot of analysis which will be years later. I simply factored through the predicted deaths in US by the White House figures... It's also country by country with, say Korea looking really low, but some countries such as the US looking like they could have extremely high numbers, nevermind India, Africa, Mexico, etc. It's still really hard to believe the Chinese figures - possible, but I'm guessing the numbers are at three times (maybe 5 to 10 times) the official figures.

  13. #3888
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    Quote Originally Posted by harrybarracuda View Post
    I thought tax day had been postponed anyway?
    Not urgent, just wanted to get it out of the way.

  14. #3889
    The Fool on the Hill bowie's Avatar
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    Well, the biggest unknown is in the testing. Itself. Initial reports concerning the testing for the virus was swabs sent to a laboratory for analysis and several days for results. Additional reports of false negatives and false positives also clouded the data. Add in the cost of the tests (who's paying?). Now we are hearing reports of "fast" testing, and much greater availability of testing.

    Initial reports, and still reported somewhat today, is that tests are only available for those who show symptoms, are medical professionals or have come from "hot spots".

    Now this would equate to a much higher "positive" rate per 1,000 tests than if the testing was performed without prescreening.

    Couple in the fact that 80% (and this figure hasn't changed since first being reported) of infected persons exhibit minor, few, or no symptoms.

    It is highly likely that as testing becomes more prevalent, quicker and cheaper, far more persons will be tested and many will test negative. Without the prescreening out of those who are unlikely to be infected, it is expected that the ratio of positives to test per unit population will decrease. And, possibly decrease significantly.

    Although there is still the factor of the "discomfort" of getting tested. Those who have been deep sinus swabbed report it is far from a pleasant experience.

  15. #3890
    Thailand Expat misskit's Avatar
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    Remember where this all started? It’s not getting much better for them.


    Wuhan Warns Public to Stay Home as Financial Impact Starts to Bite
    Authorities in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, where the coronavirus epidemic emerged, have warned that the public aren't paying enough heed to disease control and prevention codes.


    The municipal health commission said in a statement on its website that the public is now "slacking off" in its attitude to the disease, and called for strict controls on residents' movements to continue.


    The notice sparked concerns in the city that the lockdown may not now be lifted as planned on April 8.


    The notice warned that large numbers of people are beginning to arrive in the city from elsewhere in China, with all forms of traffic on the rise ahead of the lifting of restrictions.


    It called on the ruling Chinese Communist Party's neighborhood committees, which have direct control over the lives of people in residential compounds and housing projects, to continue with a closed-door policy for all residential areas, preventing all but essential comings and goings.


    The notice was also carried by state-run media, and the message reiterated on other official government websites.


    Comments on the social media platform Sina Weibo expressed concern that the lifting of the lockdown, which has lasted more than two months, may not now go ahead.


    "Will the lockdown still be lifted in five days' time now?" one comment said, while another said. "I haven't left my residential compound for 80 days now; I have job interviews but I can't get to them."


    "The government should subsidize the people of Wuhan ... because we still have to pay rent," said another comment.


    Masks and distancing remain


    A resident of Wuhan surnamed Zhang said she has been confined to her home for around 50 days now.


    "There aren't many people on the streets," Zhang said. "They are mostly staying home, as much as possible, in the absence of urgent business."


    "When we go out, we wear masks and try to keep a distance ... they are also measuring body temperature and give us feedback about that," she said.


    Zhang said she worries about her lack of income if the lockdown isn't lifted soon.


    "Some people in the private sector won't have anything to live on, no source of income, if they don't work," she said.


    Authorities in Hubei lifted travel restrictions on March 25, calling on people to observe the disease prevention guidelines, but allowing them to travel around freely.


    A resident of Hubei's Yichang city surnamed Li said there were already large numbers of people on the streets on Friday, as the population returned to work.


    "The green code indicates that I've never had coronavirus, so I can go anywhere, including shopping malls and supermarkets," Li said.


    "There aren't quite as many people out as before [the epidemic], but there are still quite a lot walking around, and a lot of vehicles too," he said.


    "Some sectors haven't resumed, such as movie theaters and big restaurants, where you have to get takeout; you can't eat it in the restaurant."


    April 8 lockdown lift still on


    An official who answered the phone at the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission on Friday said the current guidelines still state that the lockdown in the city will end on April 8.


    "They have also issued this announcement, which means that residential compounds will remain closed; people won't be able to come and go freely," the official said.


    "People who have a green code can still come and go, if they have to go to work."


    An Wuhan resident surnamed Song, who runs a store near the epicenter of the epidemic, the Nanhua Seafood Market, said many business owners are anxious to open up again.


    But he said many will likely go under.


    "It's hard for small and medium-sized enterprises to survive right now," he said. "Factories have their plant costs, wages, no orders, and rising prices of raw materials."


    "There is no way to borrow money, and loan probably wouldn't save them anyway," Song said.


    Zhang Gong, a retired economics professor at Sichuan University, said the economic impact of the pandemic will be huge.


    "If the epidemic continues to spread globally, the consequences will be very serious -- similar to the impact of a world war," Zhang said.


    "Now it's not just the butterfly effect, it's the domino effect," Zhang said. "For example, aviation is hit hard, real estate is hit hard, and shipping is hit hard."


    "How will the financial industry escape that impact? This is far more serious than the 2008 financial crisis," he said, adding that, in China, the most affected are migrant workers and people with mortgages.


    The impact looks set to reverberate around China, not just in the worst-hit areas of Hubei and Wuhan.


    Social media users have been posting photos of stores on Nanjing's popular Xinjiekou shopping district which have started displaying "For Sale" notices in their window.

    Wuhan Warns Public to Stay Home as Financial Impact Starts to Bite

  16. #3891
    Thailand Expat Pragmatic's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Seekingasylum View Post
    I got Battyboob's number yonks ago, he's just another impoverished neurotic failure eking out a living in some undemanding backwater biding his time, waiting until his folks croak it and he inherits enough dosh to return to Blighty with his squaw whose settlement visa he will then afford.
    Before you fade away to a better land could you do a few more profiles as to how you see other TD posters? Go easy on me please.

  17. #3892
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    Bowie, I don't agree with your testing logic for one simple reason: the virus is so contagious. In some places, such as Taiwan, and to some extent Korea, where every case is tracked and hotspots are closed down very quickly then there's some chance to control the virus - still yet to see if this will be effective over time. In most places, certainly Europe and the US, it was not initially contained, so social distancing measures work to slow the spread down, not to slow the end of day total spread rate. If a vaccine comes quickly then the social distancing will have slowed the rate down and it can then be effectively stopped, but the longer it takes to get a vaccine (and remember, experts are still saying 12-18 months), the more the virus will spread thoroughly through societies/countries. Look at the US in a week's time, a month's time, the numbers will already be far huger than you earlier stated - social distancing (which the US and Europe have failed at thusfar) only slow down the spread, they don't stop it.

    With the numbers in the US today, actual real figures today for the USoA, 1 person in every 1,300 has corvid-19; that's 5 times higher than your global statistic today, in the US - and the US is growing so fast; the US is probably, what, as a rough guess based on Italy, Germany, etc, 1/10th of what it'll be in a month?. It's not gonna get any better in South America or Africa or Indian sub-continent is it?

    If you tested everyone today and most were negative, that has no meaning when in 1 years time if you tested again most people on the planet might have had the virus - it just takes time to spread; lots of negative tests early in a virus lifetime isn't indicative of end of day figures.

    With such a virus, that spreads so quickly and easily, the only thing that can stop massive numbers, thousands of times higher than your prediction, is a vaccine. If it's developed almost immediately then your figures can be right, let's hope so.

  18. #3893
    Thailand Expat misskit's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Bettyboo View Post
    that's 5 times higher than your global statistic today
    There’s still a shortage of tests so only the very sick and suspect get tested.

  19. #3894
    Thailand Expat Pragmatic's Avatar
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    Missus came home after meeting up with some friends asking me if this was true? She said that all her friends, from different sources, have been told that America developed the virus and planted it in China. Are they right?

  20. #3895
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    British American Tobacco working on plant-based coronavirus vaccine

    Cigarette maker says tobacco plants offer potential for faster and safer drug development





    BAT says tobacco plants cannot host pathogens, which cause human disease, potentially making them safer for vaccine use.

    British American Tobacco, the maker of brands including Lucky Strike, Dunhill, Rothmans and Benson & Hedges, has said it has a potential coronavirus vaccine in development using tobacco plants.BAT has turned the vast resources usually focused on creating products that pose health risks to millions of smokers worldwide to battling the global pandemic

    “If testing goes well, BAT is hopeful that, with the right partners and support from government agencies, between 1m and 3m doses of the vaccine could be manufactured per week, beginning in June,” the company said.
    The London-listed company used the announcement to trumpet the positive aspects of its tobacco empire, saying that “new, fast-growing tobacco plant technology” put it ahead of others trying to develop a vaccine.

    “Tobacco plants offer the potential for faster and safer vaccine development compared with conventional methods,” the company said.
    BAT said its US biotech subsidiary, Kentucky BioProcessing (KBP), has moved to pre-clinical testing and that it will work on the vaccine on a not-for-profit basis.
    In 2014, the tobacco firm bought KBP, which has previously worked on a treatment for Ebola. BAT said its work was “potentially safer [than conventional vaccine technology], given that tobacco plants cannot host pathogens which cause human disease”.

    BAT said it had engaged with the Food and Drug Administration in the US and the Department for Health and Social Care in the UK to “offer our support and access to our research with the aim of trying to expedite the development of a vaccine for Covid-19”.
    Dr David O’Reilly, the director of scientific research at BAT, said: “Vaccine development is challenging and complex work but we believe we have made a significant breakthrough with our tobacco plant technology platform, and we stand ready to work with governments and all stakeholders to help win the war against Covid-19.
    “KBP has been exploring alternative uses of the tobacco plant for some time. One such alternative use is the development of plant-based vaccines.”

    BAT said it had cloned a portion of the genetic sequence of the coronavirus and developed a potential antigen. The antigen was then inserted into tobacco plants for reproduction and, once the plants were harvested, the antigen was purified. It is now undergoing pre-clinical testing.Advertisement



    The tobacco firm is more typically on the receiving end of criticism from campaigning groups, including the use young and attractive models to entice younger demographics to try e-cigarettes and vaping technology.

    British American Tobacco working on plant-based coronavirus vaccine | Business | The Guardian
    I am not a liberator , Liberators do not exist , The people liberate themselves , Ernesto Che Guevara .
    Read more:

  21. #3896
    กงเกวียนกำเกวียน HuangLao's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Humbert View Post
    Has outbound international air mail service been suspended? My tax return to the US which I mailed on Wednesday was returned to me today by our mail carrier saying that it could not be sent due to Covid 19.
    Might be easier to do it electronically or have a online tax prepare service handle it.
    I believe that's what there trying to push these days, anyway.

  22. #3897
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    Quote Originally Posted by misskit View Post
    There’s still a shortage of tests so only the very sick and suspect get tested.
    Yes, that's right, we have no idea of the 'real' number of infected people.

    If we try to predict total numbers of people who will get the virus (not mortality rates, that's much tougher to predict because every country seems to use a different way to calculate their statistics, and many just lie or don't have the capability to analyse the rates) then we can see in the last month it climbed x10. Now, with it being in the early cycle in so many countries (nearly every country in the world), to predict a x10 increase during April or even April/May if you wanna be really conservative, leaves 7.5 billion divided by 10 million = 1 in 750 people will have the virus (globally). I know it sounds ridiculously high, impossible, just by April/May, but those are the growth rates we have been consistently seeing. &, that's just people who are showing up on the statistics as having Covid-19 - who knows what the actual number of people are; ok 80% don't show many symptoms or get too sick, but with those kind of numbers, just 20% needing treatment...

    Let's check back in a month and see what the numbers on the John Hopkins Dashboard are.

  23. #3898
    Thailand Expat jabir's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Bettyboo View Post
    ... It's still really hard to believe the Chinese figures - possible, but I'm guessing the numbers are at three times (maybe 5 to 10 times) the official figures.
    I read/heard that US intel believe the Chinese lied by a factor of around 14x, which would indicate some 42-45k dead.

    Just an observation, that democracies working great in peacetime buckle easily when things go wrong, while harsher regimes can more effectively cope through difficult conditions.

  24. #3899
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    Well, that's a pretty blind observation isn't it....

    Jabbberrjabberjabberrjabbbering fool...

  25. #3900
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    Quote Originally Posted by Troy View Post
    Well, that's a pretty blind observation isn't it....

    Jabbberrjabberjabberrjabbbering fool...
    Hey, Troy - here's a statement for you to have a scream/complain at: if Covid-19 rates of death increase inline with the predicted (by me... ) Covid-19 global infection total then half a million people could die from Covid-19 infections caught in the next 30 days alone. Although, due to treatment/time of having the virus to recover/death, the number will be delayed by, what, 4-6 weeks?

    The point being, at this stage, as 'Arry pointed out a page or so ago, the numbers for April then May are gonna be horrific and stay horrific for the next 3 months or so before levelling off/decreasing.

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