Transcript of the above video:

I get a lot of correspondence from folks on this topic, sort of vaccination and requirements associated with vaccination here in Thailand. It mostly comes up in the context of Thai Immigration. I get a lot of correspondence: "Is this is going to be a mandatory thing?" "Are we are going to be required to do this?" and I am kind of out there with everybody else as far as I am just seeing what is coming out mostly out of the Press. Again, and I preface a lot of these videos where I discuss this, I am not an anti-vaccination guy by a long shot. I believe vaccines are a modern medical marvel. I have said that many, many times. Really frankly I don't even like that in a sense I have to preface it because people make a lot of assumptions about people with respect to one specific opinion they may have under a specific narrow set of circumstances and they think that that opinion applies to them in an overly broad context. In this case not at all. My issue is not with vaccines. I am happy vaccines have rolled out; I am happy that folks that want them have gotten them; I am happy that the symptoms of this disease have been mitigated in folks who were especially at risk. That is all great, that is fantastic. 

My concern generally on this whole topic lies in the notion of mandatory, in other jurisdictions notably. To Thailand's credit I want to be clear they have never said Government officials we have done videos, some folks kind of hinted at things but hinting is one thing. There has never been to my mind from what I have seen, any type of broad consensus in favour of anything akin to a mandate and it appears that is still the case. To be clear, my concern is more of a legal one and it is more from a notion of Human Rights. I have the same concern with respect to American jurisdictions, the states in America as well as the Federal Government and courts in the United States have pushed back on this. They have enjoined the Federal Government from a number of different mandates associated with medical decisions on a personal level and I think that is a good thing. People need to have the ability to make their own decisions and have their own medical privacy. I have noted this before. One of the big things that has bothered me throughout this is that medical privacy seemingly gets thrown out the window. I mean for example just things like testing in order to be able to travel. This was unheard of just not even 24 months ago and now it seems to be in a very ubiquitous sense, it seems to be kind of somewhat accepted or at least tolerated. Okay that may make some sense under narrow circumstances during a very brief period of time but again there is a notion of medical privacy, doctor - patient confidentiality. The decisions one makes with respect to their own medical situation should be that individual's own in my opinion and I think there is a lot of law for example on Doctor - Patient confidentiality that backs that up or medical privacy that backs that up.

That being said and the reason for the video is yeah, like I said, I have had a lot of correspondence from folks that seem to be concerned about whether or not certain things can be made mandatory and a recent article from ASEAN NOW, that is aseannow.com, the article is titled: Thailand Fails to Meet 100 Million Vaccine Target by Father's Day - no one is being forced to get vax. So there is a senior official of the Thai Public Health Ministry and I am going to quote directly now: "Dr. Kiatphoom Wongrajit said that 93 million on Saturday and an anticipated 94 million Sunday was still a good effort." So as they are talking about in the title, the thrust of this article was about Thailand failed to meet the 100 million vaccine target which okay, "failed to meet it" but 94 million, that is a lot of jabs in arms. So it was still a good effort as quoted here. But quoting further and more pertinent to this article. Quoting directly: "Pressed by the media", (and I will get back to that in a minute) "pressed by the media, people would be forced to have vaccinations in Thailand. Dr. Kiatphoom stressed that was not the case. Having a vaccination remained a matter of volunteering." He goes on in the article to note that it is a good idea to get vaccinated; folks should seriously consider it depending on their own health situation, those kinds of things. But a couple of things, first of all "pressed by the media"! The Media, in the last year and a half or so, I have started to kind of depending on the outlet and depending on the media actor, I have kind of taken some issue with the media especially if you go back to some of my videos in April, the way that they would kind of tilt things or the way they presented the narrative I felt in certain situations was a little bit concerning, I will leave it at that. That said, and quoting again directly from this article: "Having a vaccination remained a matter of volunteering". So again it is a volunteer kind of thing here in Thailand. Those who want to go ahead and do that, they can do that but as of now and quoting directly from this Doctor with the Thai Public Health Ministry, it remains a voluntary thing here in the Kingdom of Thailand.