Thailand Vaccine Registration - One Debacle after Another, a Lesson in Patience and a Test of Ethics ....(plus a top tip for Gmail users!)
The expat/immigrant community rejoiced on Friday as the news percolated through the forums and FB Groups that the Thai government was opening yet another portal for foreigners to register for a vaccine.
For many of us, this would be the umpteenth time we had tried to register on various private and governmental portals but this time, it would be an official, properly set-up and dedicated site.
The site will open at 10am and Sunday 1st of August it had proudly been declared. Within an hour, this had been changed to 11am and the already cynical expat communities guffawed in unison.
This morning, thousands were sat in front of their computers and phones, eagerly watching the time...
And at 11am on the dot, one final refresh brought us to the home page. Yippee!!
https://expatvac.consular.go.th/ If you're over 60 and overweight. Sorted!
Now the problem occurred when you typed in your Email address, hit enter and...
Refresh the screen, and try again but this time...
BOLLOCKS!
And so I tried and tried using a multitude of emails until I gave up and went for lunch, in the meantime, someone posted a list of the whole successful database on Facebook!
Yup, they'd managed to make the whole database of registrants visible to anyone with only a tiny knowledge of how a website works.
By the time I saw this and checked it out for myself at around twelve, the loophole had been closed, but still, I'd suggest there will be twenty-one thousand people shortly getting emails from the relatives of recently departed Nigerian monarchs!
Gmail Tips...
Like many people, I've been using Gmail for burner addresses from its introduction, but I never realised that if you insert a '.' anywhere into your address, any emails will come to the undotted actual address.
is the actual address which showed as already registered when I tried again so by changing it to...
the site accepted the new Email and returned confirmation to my actual address. I feel a little stupid not knowing that but it seems, neither did the vast majority of a panicking expat community who were no doubt trying to register millions of new Email addresses on Google!
Finally, using after repeatedly trying email addresses with dots in various locations, success!
And I followed the set link, completed registration, and will now wait indefinitely for an email giving me an appointment date which if the past experiences of most Thais I know apply, will be followed by another email cancelling the appointment about an hour before you're due to get it!
One step at a time!
The sad thing about all this is...
...that the genuine migrant workers from places like Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos are not included in this current program, and that according to WHO figures only 17% of the population have had at least one jab. And many of those have had the ineffective Sinovac jab which has proved so shit, the people who have had one will be getting AZ for their second! Many medical professionals who were the first to get vaccinated got two jabs of this Chinese manufactured crap and are now having to be jabbed again with AZ.
As for the scheme I finally managed to register for today. It is rumoured we will be getting some of the 150,000 does of Pfizer that the US donated to Thailand and failing that, some of the 450,000 does of AZ that the UK government donated and if I do get offered Pfizer, I am not sure if I will accept it as I'd feel dreadfully guilty as a foreigner and just 55, getting the gold standard vaccine while many locals are dying in the streets unvaccinated and cases and deaths are rising on a daily basis. I will cross that bridge when I come to it
That's all for now, as I am being interrupted by the constant ping of email notifications as the dozen attempts at registering an email address this morning that it now appears registered, despite the error screen, are driving me crazy. At least sixteen so far! We all know what happens next;
This post has received a 53.69 % upvote from @boomerang.