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"Show Your Papers" for October Dining in Thailand?

Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, yes it appears at least from Press reports that folks will need to "show their papers" in order to dine in Thailand in October of 2021. I got this from the Bangkok Post print edition, that is Bangkok Post, Monday September 6th, 2021.

We will go ahead and put the online version up just so people can see what I am looking at here, but going ahead and quoting directly: "Starting October 1, only those who have been fully vaccinated against Covid-19 or have a negative antigen test result will be allowed to dine-in at restaurants and seek out services deemed a high risk for virus transmission in "dark red" provinces, where maximum Covid-19 restrictions apply." Quoting further: "According to the Health Department's Director-general, Suwannachai Wattanayingcharoenchai, the move is part of the Government's push to allow businesses to re-open while the number of Covid-19 cases continues to increase." I will get into that in a minute. Quoting further: "In addition, they will be asked to show their Vaccination Certificate or a negative Covid-19 antigen test result taken no longer than a week prior before entering the premises. Former patients must show records which show that they have recovered." Yeah for those who watch this channel, I am sure you are well aware, I find this news extremely troubling. A couple of things.

Let me go and preface any further commentary on this by saying first of all let's take note, this is from Bangkok Post. Not casting aspersions on the Bangkok Post or any of the Press for that matter but we have seen some really how do I put it, sensational things said sometimes in error, and I will cite one. I did a video on this. Going back, it has been within the past like 6 months, going back there was an article, it was front page print edition of the Bangkok Post as well, where it was presumed that and it stated in the article, that it looked like everyone was going to have to get COVID Insurance in Thailand. Well it turned out that was entirely incorrect. The Official being cited was noting it only for O-A Retirement Visas. Now am I saying that is what is happening here? No. Am I saying that there is anything wrong with mistakes? No, I am not saying that. I am not trying to cast blame. What I am trying to do is hopefully calm everybody down because this is supposedly the Health Department Director-general. This is something they are saying. This is not the person that ultimately gets to make the decision, presumably. This would have to be ratified; this would have to be promulgated presumably in The Royal Gazette for it to come through. Now my personal opinion is I have serious issues with the legality of this. I know what part of the Law they are going to base this on. We have done videos on this before specifically with respect to the mask mandate and some of the other mandates. We have noted that within the provisions of that particular Act and again I am simply citing this for informational purposes. An adjudication is what it is. I am not saying what I think an adjudication would result in but from the plain language, and I have discussed this with Thai Attorneys here in our office, the plain language of both the English which is not controlling and Thai is that the Government can promulgate certain rules from the Emergency Decree and from the Public Health Act as amended back in 2015, to prevent certain things, not compel certain things and I have gone into that previously. Now getting into the difference between prevention and compulsion is not really the scope of this video but first of all I would say I have got serious legal questions about whether or not this can even be done, can even be promulgated. Secondly, it may not happen. We have heard a million different things and things always change. I am hoping they rethink this because I think this is a terrible idea for a host of different reasons most notably I think it is a massive violation of basic human rights; I think it is a massive violation of basic Thai freedoms that just are inherent to Thais, period. A couple of things I do take a little solace in is 1) the 'deemed a high risk for virus transmission in "dark red" provinces where maximum Covid-19 restrictions apply'. Well presumably if a province ceases to be "dark red" perhaps this doesn't apply at that point. I might be being a little optimistic on that. The Emergency Decree which was presumably temporary, it was promulgated in March of 2020, and we are still dealing with it. So, how temporary would this be, I am not sure. It is one of the reasons frankly I am so concerned about it because I don't really want to see us get stuck with these requirements because it is just in my opinion I am not even going to speak from a legal standpoint or as a lawyer, this is just awful. How can anyone think that this is in any way what a free society does? I am sorry, and let me be even more clear. I don't even blame particularly Thai 'anybody' for this. To me this is Western or International thinking being shoehorned into Thailand and in my opinion it is completely unwarranted based upon the circumstances. In my opinion it is completely unwarranted based upon the "threat".

We have talked a lot on this channel about cost benefit analysis. There was a great article by Glenn Greenwald the journalist, I think it is on Substack out there and he was talking in an American context about what happened to cost benefit analysis. Why have we just dismissed the notion of cost-benefit analyses? We haven't stopped driving cars because accidents happen and as we have discussed on this channel before, there is an argument to be made in the car context with the same kind of restrictions if you think the logic is sound with respect to these truly Draconian restrictions associated with just living your life here in Thailand with respect to this showing your papers to go eat in a restaurant. I know that there are those out there, perhaps those mostly in the western context, which will sort of say, "oh get over it”, oh you can't go eat at the restaurant if you don't comply. Well too bad for you." Hey! Thailand is very different than the west in one key respect with respect to this overall issue. People don't eat in like they eat in in the west. I am not saying this for everybody but in Thailand, we eat out a lot. Be it street food, restaurants whatever, people eat out and Thais socialize, heavily in restaurants and eateries. This is a major and fundamental change to the way in which Thai people are going to live their lives on a very basic level and it is being done ostensibly for quite frankly a disease which albeit is dangerous, is not an existential threat like we were worried about perhaps a little over a year ago. We know what this is and we are handling it and we can handle it in my opinion without resorting to measures which can only be described as Orwellian. I mean honestly, you have to present paperwork to sit down and eat a meal? That to me, again one man's opinion, but to me it is ridiculous. 

Now like I said before, maybe I am overreacting a little bit. As I said, we have seen things reported in the mainstream press that have ultimately turned out to be incorrect. That could be the case here. At the same time policies could change; people could take a look at this and perhaps see that this is not a road that we really want to go down. Finally, it may be a situation, and I have done a video on this where I talk about in the Common Law tradition anything that comes along that changes things really, really scares me because in the Common Law you use precedent. Once you set a precedent, it is very hard to get over that. One thing I do love about Thailand and I like about its legal system, albeit it is very foreign to me or it was when I first started dealing with it and interacting with it, I have come to find it actually comforting in a way and this is a good example of a situation where I find some comfort, is that they do rescind things when they are no longer needed, when they are no longer necessary. So, when I see it said, 'in the places that are "dark red" zones' well presumably, Bangkok for example the district, the metro area, or any of the other changwats, the provinces that are "dark red" zones, if they cease to be "dark red" zones, presumably this will be rescinded and this won't be necessary. In Thailand I actually take a little bit of comfort in that although I hate seeing any of this come online because I truly am afraid it just becomes permanent and I don't think there is good reason and I don't think we really want to live in a world in which this kind of requirement is permanent for just undertaking basic human functions in a society. That being stated, yeah I do feel a little bit more comfortable with it in the Thai legal context because there is not this precedent thing that stubbornly gets people caught up in the whole issue of precedent in a Common Law tradition. That said, overall if you can't tell from the context of this video, I am not real happy to see this happening and I hope that cooler heads prevail.