Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing the prospects of a High Season in Thailand or lack thereof. I don't mean to laugh, but like gallows humour here because it looks to me like probably what we traditionally think of as High Season is probably just not going to be on the cards for 2021 going into 2022.

The reason for this is quoting from a recent article from the Bangkok Post, bangkokpost.com, the article is titled: Reopening Delayed for Nightclubs, Bars. Quoting directly: "CCSA spokesman Taweesilp Visanuyothin said the CCSA meeting chaired by Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha decided to defer by another month a plan to allow pubs, bars and karaoke's to reopen on December 1. The new tentative reopening date," (tentative, keep that in mind), "the new tentative reopening date was set for January 16 and only for some areas, depending on the COVID situation." Again, and “only for some areas!" So this is not like a blanket thing. 

I was originally going to make a ranting video on this topic and I am not going to. It is not because I am not upset and it is not because I think that a lot of this at least on a certain level and I really have certain questions and as you have seen in other videos I have been pretty critical of the CCSA and a lot of the things that we have done especially from the standpoint of data; where is the data that shows that this is doing anything, A. We have the data economically; we know it is destroying economically it is a real question as to just how crippled the entertainment sector will be coming off of this. Clearly I have my critiques of a lot of this stuff. That is not the reason why I am not going to make a ranting video here. The reason I really thought about this and it ultimately came down for me in how I reacted to this after my initial reaction which was not great and then I thought about it a little bit more, it comes down to good faith at the end of the day. Do you believe that folks are acting in good faith with respect to these policies? For this last time I am going to say I believe them. I get it and here is why. I was trying to put myself in their shoes. I don't know if this is how they are thinking but I was trying to put myself in their shoes. That is kind of how you have to reason sometimes especially when you are dealing with law and with laws that are especially susceptible to policy changes; Immigration is one of them. I got to thinking about it I said "why would they do this?" I mean they know the downside. They know it. Meanwhile look at the numbers. I mean we are not seeing millions of people coming into Thailand; tens of thousands, it is looking like those numbers are going to be viable November into December. Look this will probably have a substantial negative impact on overall numbers moving outward because as I have discussed in other videos, people look at what is going on now to plan for 3 months from now, but 3 months from now we are already getting into what we would call Low Season again anyway. So I understand the argument that there might not be a huge upside potential to just getting things reopened. At the same time I understand the argument that if we are going to get reopened, entertainment venues and whatnot look for whatever reason entertainment got utterly vilified going back in April as the cause of a cluster that spread everywhere and blah, blah, blah. Well you could have pointed to a million different clusters that had spread. I don't know why entertainment was sort of pointed out. There were political ramifications because there were certain folks that went to various venues that had political connections or affiliations and it became a political thing. Any time anything becomes political, reason often times gets thrown out the window and then it just becomes a kind of a political theater. I am not getting into all that but I think the entertainment sector got a really bad rap as a result of that. I actually think people at a policy level understand this here and the reason, on this time, that whole tentative I think I will have a very different attitude come January 16th if we are still seeing more waiting and waiting and "yeah well tentatively we are maybe going to do this down the road" but for now if the thinking is and this is what just getting into the heads, trying to think as a policy maker here would, there is not a huge upside benefit, we are already down. If entertainment venues open is it really going to result in huge spike a tourist or something? Unlikely, okay? Meanwhile if the thinking is “look if we are going to open we want to open and just be done with this and put this behind us”, maybe that is not a bad thing or maybe that is not a bad way of thinking. Now I don't necessarily agree with that logic especially based on the data associated with this whole thing. It is not really within the scope of this video and frankly I am a layman when it comes to that kind of thing so I am not going to get into that but if that is the way the thinking is right now, that “look if we are going to do it let's do it right and let's just reopen and be done, put this behind us” then okay I see the argument. I may not necessarily totally agree with it but I understand it and for that reason I am going to go ahead and just cool my heels on being upset about all of this for now and just as usual "hope for the best, plan for the worst" but I am really hoping that policymakers understand, we do need to get reopened. This entertainment sector and the sectors of food and beverage that are massively, massively, negatively impacted by this, we need to put this behind us but it basically what we are saying is “this is the last hill we have got to overcome and then we are moving on”, I can get with that if that is really the case.