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None Dare Call It Lockdown

Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing the concept of the term “lockdown” here in Thailand.

I have a few people who have contacted me on this topic basically ask me the question "Why does the Thai Press seem in many instances, to be going out of its way to say that this is not a lockdown?" Just as one for example and this is just one piece I found because I have seen this in other places, I have also seen the situation we are currently in colloquially referred to as a lockdown although it seems that they want to be very clear about the fact that technically speaking it is not a lockdown. I will get into that here in a minute but just as a for example, a recent article from the Pattaya News, thepattayanews.com, the article was titled: How to Register for Inter Provincial Travel in and out of High Controlled Zones including Chonburi, and again that is thepattayanews.com. Just a quick quote from that, it says: "It is also important to remember as officials continue to stress,” as officials continue to stress, “this is NOT A LOCKDOWN OR A BAN.” and they emphasize this. It is all in capitalization, it is all in bold letters “but it is a set of strict travel measures and regulations." I have seen this throughout a lot of official publications and things where they have said this is not a lockdown. They have made that very clear that it is not a lockdown but there are people or I should say there are provinces which are under strict control measures. There is different terminology out there, a different gradient system based on what is going. I have had people ask me "Why are they going out of their way to say that this is not a lockdown?" Well it appears to me and we have discussed this here in the office, I am not going to go into too much detail but long story short it looks like the terminology "lockdown" has certain legal implications here in Thailand. There are certain obligations that may spring to life as a result of something being deemed a "lockdown." It may actually trigger certain things in various types of contracts and things most notably things like force majeure may arise in certain contracts or you may be able to trigger a force majeure clause by having something deemed to be a "lockdown." Now again, not to go too deep into that because it is going to be very case specific, long story short, it appears there is a genuine hesitancy to term this current situation a "lockdown" because of the possible ramifications of so describing this situation.

We are going to keep you updated on this channel as a situation progresses as much as we can but long story short, for right now there are substantial restrictions including interprovincial travel restrictions which I am getting into in a video that we made contemporaneously with this one. Long story short yeah this terminology “lockdown” it is a for lack of a better term it is a "loaded term" and it does have legal implications. It is sort of pregnant if you will with legal ramifications and for this reason there appears to be official hesitance to use this term outright.