Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing travel and freedom to travel. I am making this sort of over the backdrop of what I have seen described throughout sort of the ether that is the internet as this sort of almost “fear porn” for lack of a better term, related to the so called monkey pox. I am really concerned about this on a number of levels most notably because I don't really see that comparing this to what we dealt with 2 years ago is really an apples to apples comparison. I am not a medical professional, I am not going to get into all that and there's a ton of stuff out there that is pretty informative, but to compare these two things, compare what was going on in quarter one, the end of quarter one 2020 and what is going on here, I just don't really see it and I really question why the media is out clutching its pearls, gasping for breath as it sort of engages in hyperbole over this whole thing. Disease exists, it just does exist. Now to their credit I will say the Thai Government has thus far maintained a pretty calm demeanour on this whole thing. 

That said a recent article from the Bangkok Post, bangkokpost.com, the article is titled: Monkey pox monitoring centre formed. Quoting directly: "As monkey pox spreads around the world, the Department of Disease Control (DDC) has set up a Public Health Crisis Command Centre to monitor the situation worldwide and set short, mid- and long-term response strategies. Dr. Opas Karnkawinpong, DDC Director General said on Sunday that the Centre was established in response to widespread interest in the spread of monkey pox." I would really love to know where this widespread interest came from okay because a week ago I wasn't bumping into people on the streets in Thailand or seeing people in restaurants or bumping into friends in a pub or something. I wasn't seeing anybody say: "Hey, I am very interested in monkey pox." I would really love to know where that came from. Quoting further: "Especially reports of cases in the United Kingdom." Again from what I have read, it is my understanding this has existed for quite some time; there are treatments associated with it. Yes it is not an unserious disease but it is also, it is not something that is coming out of nowhere. It is not something, again what happened in the first quarter of 2020, I mean I would argue it was unprecedented insofar as we saw it coming. I would make a strong argument that this is just sort of the way virology works. Again I am not a medical profession, I am not claiming to be but just a commonsensensical retrospective look at history, diseases come and they go. Viruses pop up; they start off oftentimes very virulent, very lethal and then they sort of evolve into such a way that they are not so lethal overtime. It's not something really pleasant to go through when you have to go through it but it does happen.

So this, I guess my real concern is this sort of paradigm and I saw it 20 years ago in the United States where there was all of this the breathlessness and "we have to change everything because X" and that X seems to just be today it is disease, here in 2022. We have to change our lives, upend our rights, not be able to do what we used to do just because "disease". I don't really agree with that overall notion. Yes reasonable steps are required to be taken when there are public health issues that arise? Sure, and I have been in favour of those things. I have never claimed I am not, but to just run around constantly hysterical, grasping at any disease to continue one's hysteria, to me that just doesn't make any sense.