Transcript of the above video:

For those who are unaware, and I don't think there is anybody here in Bangkok that is unaware, yes there are a number of current restrictions being imposed on folks in the Government's efforts to respond to COVID-19. We have done a number of videos on this channel discussing that; my opinions on that; just sort of the overall situation. 

The reason for this video, I was reading recent article from Thai PBS World, that is thaipbsworld.com, and the title is: Complete Lockdown in Two Months Possible if COVID-19 Figures do not Improve (DDC). Quoting directly: "More intense COVID-19 measures may be imposed in Thailand in the next two weeks with a complete lockdown of cities a possibility in the next two months if the rate of infections and deaths does not abate by then, said Director General of the Department of Disease Control, Doctor Opart Karnkawinpong  yesterday.” Sunday. Quoting further: "If the new infection rate is still high in the next two months, there is a possibility that we might have to impose a lockdown like in Wuhan, China to control the spread of the virus where people have to stay at home and are not allowed to travel to a point where food and water will be delivered to homes, Dr. Opart said adding that the measures will gradually intensify until the situation is under control."

Well, I have done another video on that where we have gone into the notion that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result. Here where they say "gradually intensify until the situation is under control". What does that mean? This has gradually intensified since April of 2020 to where we are now. Actually specifically March of 2020 is where it sort of started up until now and nothing has abated. If anything cases have gone up because unfortunately viruses spread exponentially and really another part and parcel of this is where has this notion come from that it is a foregone conclusion that these lockdowns work at stemming the tide of these viruses? Because here we are, at the 16, 17-month mark with this and the data out there, especially in the countries especially that were heavily locked down a year ago, seems to suggest and I put up on other videos on this channel newspaper articles and things talking about this, I am not going to go too deep into it, but the data seems to suggest at best that these lockdowns really don't make much of a dent of any kind in rising cases. It just doesn't. That is just part and parcel of it. We have seen it anecdotally here. For example, restrictions have been piled on since April and have we seen any reduction in numbers yet? I haven't. It seems like they keep going up despite to quote this article "gradually intensifying" to paraphrase the article. It seems to have gone up despite that. So the point of this video is, quoting directly: "like in Wuhan, China, impose a lockdown like in Wuhan, China." I would have thought that after last year, we all collectively understood that was pretty bad for lack of a better term. I mean it is my understanding in Wuhan, China people got like welded into their apartment complexes. It was an intense Draconian lockdown. We are not talking about mild measures here. We are talking about very intense measures and there doesn't seem to be any data out there that suggests that it worked. I mean the thing has spread around the world so I am at the point where I see this stuff being bandied about kind of cavalierly and at leads one to ask the question "why are we making these presumptions? why are we assuming, again the assumption that these heavy lockdowns have worked?"

You could make a good argument in the beginning of this when Thailand went into a true quarantine which was very different than Western countries which were still allowing inbound travel, Thailand took that approach and I think that was a wise approach in the beginning. And okay we had the first round of lockdown and we were isolated from this to begin with but at a certain point there is no being isolated. We have discussed this in other videos, this notion, this paradigm of containment does not seem to apply to the facts at hand. In point of fact as we have discussed in other videos, the Health Ministry down in Singapore is now taking the position that "hey we are going to have to deal with this as an endemic matter not a pandemic. We need to stop thinking about it from a containment standpoint and we are just going to have to live with it and learn to deal with these things." I am not saying that no measures are necessary but the notion that a "Wuhan style lockdown" is a particularly positive course of action under the circumstances, to me not only seems to be quite a bit premature but also I just don't see where that is a good idea. Wuhan was like Ground Zero for this so it made some sense to impose a heavy, heavy lockdown to try to contain but when containment proved to not be possible, as I don't think it is particularly possible now that this thing has gone global, where containment is clearly no longer possible, isn't it possibly time to seriously consider other methodologies?