Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are circling back to a prior video made back in April of 2021 regarding the so-called mask mandates. We will go ahead and put up a link in the description to this channel to that video. It is a pretty long video I will say. It is about 30 minutes long because at that time when this so-called mandate for masks came out, I was at loss and I can be corrected, but I was at a loss to find any legal basis for this notion of a mandate to wear a mask. 

Sort of in follow up here, a recent article from the Thai News Bureau, and specifically it is thainews.prd.go.th, Government website here okay? The article is titled: Ministry of Public Health, (MOPH for short) Confirms No Legal Obligations for People to Wear Face Masks." Quoting further: "Thailand's Public Health Minister confirmed that there are no laws forcing people to wear face masks." So that kind of sums things up. I made another video where I kind of talk about this in a different context, in a more broad context with respect to the kind of the media whatever and the way that these announcements get made that are about "hey this is a suggestion" as best as I can put it. It seems like there are sort of policies that are put out of how the Government would like things to be let's put it that way. Then it sort of gets picked up in the media and it is stated as if it is a concrete legal necessity. The fact is as we did the analysis back in April 21, I can't find, me and legal researchers we have here in the office and we expended a lot of time and resources going over that, combing into it and we could not find anything that you could really hang your hat on as far as legal authority. 

So the thing to take away from this video is one, for me from here on and I am not pointing to any one outlet, a lot of different media outlets have just sort of taken certain things and run with it. I see this a lot in an Immigration context where they take hold of something specific and they make it sound like it is a fact. We have seen this a lot for example with the so-called 10-year Long Stay Visas. This is being reported, seemingly throughout the internet here in Thailand, as a foregone conclusion; this is just happening; these are possible. Well we haven't seen a regulatory structure yet. The only thing we have seen is that they are "approved in principle", whatever that means. 

So again, the point of this video is to understand that maybe take things with a bit of a grain of salt in the future with respect to media reports and kind of do a little bit of your own research as to the legality. When somebody says, "this is the law!", "this is clearly the way it is!" Well where? Cite your sources. What are you basing your argument on? As I said earlier and in the link you will see, we could not find any legal basis based on the announcements that were made back in April; we were at a loss to find any legal basis. Yet again, I am always happy to stand corrected but quite frankly, and I just want to read this headline again: Ministry of Public Health, Confirms No Legal Obligations for People to Wear Face Masks. Quoting from the article: "Thailand's Public Health Minister confirmed that there are no laws forcing people to wear face masks." There aren't!