New "outbreak" changes Thailand's tune on opening up

At least they aren't trying to blame it on the Burmese this time... well, at least not yet but trust me, that time will come.

So Covid is back in full force in Thailand again and this conveniently coincides with increase in PCR testing (funny how that works huh?) and near 600 new cases were found and this in turn has caused a great deal of panic among the general population who seems to be a lot more concerned about Covid statistics than your average foreigner that lives here is.

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It was merely a few days ago that Thailand was talking about getting a travel bubble established with Singapore, Australia, and New Zealand but I guess we can forget about all that because now the government of Thailand has urged people to not travel and has closed bars and nightclubs in 41 locations. It's always the bars and nightclubs that are first to get shut down? Why is that? It's never the markets, or even moreso, the shopping malls, where there are a far higher number of people inside at any given point in time than most bars have in them.

Thankfully the area where I live in a suburb of Chiang Mai wouldn't listen to this edict even if it was extended to us. Chiang Mai has had enough of listening to this sort of stuff and most of the people I speak to who are Thai or foreign would rather catch Covid than have to be put through this prison planet shite any longer.

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_{I hope dollar vigilante doesn't mind me using this image of his, check him out if you haven't done so already. He's awesome}

I don't mean to be a tinfoil hat wearing conspiracy theorist but enough is enough already. The increase in cases comes right when the government starts instituting additional testing so what an amazing coincidence that once you start looking for something you tend to find it.

There has been 1 death from these 600 cases and the details on what the condition of the person was that died has not been released. I would bet the farm that it is someone really old that had a ton of other issues and the common cold would have likely finished them off.

In response to these increased cases there are actually 12 Bangkok hospitals that have stopped testing for Covid because they don't have enough space for all the people testing positive. These are primarily private hospitals that will not do the testing because it is expected that a hospital immediately admit you if you test positive. These private hospitals are for profit institutions and (my suspicion this is) do not want to get stuck with the bill of someone who can't or simply wont pay for the care they receive there.

It is important to note that a vast majority of the people that are testing positive in this "new wave" of cases don't even feel remotely ill and are primarily young people who as you know, have less than a 10th of a 1 percent chance of dying from it.

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So now the government is encouraging people to not travel inside the country at all and this is happening during Songkran festival week, which is the Thai new year of sorts and is one of the most joyous times of year for people all over the country.

Good luck getting people to not participate in this because of Covid fears. Last year the people didn't listen and this year the people are even more fed up with being told what they can and cannot do so my suspicion is that the people are going to celebrate and the police are not going to stop them from doing so. The police are fed up with this crap also and from what I have been told by the Thais in my suburb of Chiang Mai, they have no intention of enforcing any restrictions. Get ready for more resistance of this sort since Songkran is basically everyone's favorite holiday in this country.