Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, I am posing the question "is this really an efficient use of public resources here in Thailand?" In a way, this is almost kind of a video for me to make just to kind of suss this out in my own head to a certain extent but reason I decided to make the video, I was reading this on ASEAN NOW, that is aseannow.com, the article is titled: At least 30 people arrested at Pattaya beach bar for allegedly gathering, drinking alcohol and breaking COVID-19 rules.

As we have discussed in other videos, a lot of these "COVID-19 rules" are the result of the fact that for whatever reason, I don't mean to laugh I just sometimes do find some of this to be you know for lack of a better term absurd, but Pattaya was not designated a Blue Zone as was Bangkok and some other zones. So some of the things that these folks were caught doing in this article, some of them could have gotten you into some problems here in Bangkok for example but some of them would not so there seems to be an arbitrary and capriciousness to this overall situation but getting away from that for a moment, quoting directly: "Pattaya - At least 30 people were arrested last night November 3rd at a bar in Pattaya Beach for allegedly breaking the Chonburi Disease Control Order designated to prevent the spread of the COVID-19 Coronavirus according to the Pattaya police." Quoting further: "Police found that the bar was opened and many foreigners were found gathering in the bar. Officers found at least 30 foreigners and Thais who were according to Pattaya Police drinking alcohol, gathering, (that one, kind of okay) and breaking current rules around COVID-19. Alcohol was allegedly found inside paper glasses." 

Okay I don't mean to be overly snarky about this stuff but I do find this concerning for a couple of reasons. One, frankly on a taxpayer level I kind of don't want the police worrying about this stuff. I want them worrying about real police issues. If nothing else, I want police dealing with traffic stuff or something; something that is for the public good. I do know that there are a lot of people out there who are concerned about this overall situation. We have gone through it in our videos many, many times. Yes there are risks out there; yes people can die. My personal opinion and it is just my opinion, based on the data that we have seen in the 18 months now that we have been dealing with this, to me I think a reasonable person could infer that those risks are acceptable risks; long story short based on the data we have seen thus far. We have made other videos on this channel going into that, I am not going to go into that here. But just to go back on this, okay drinking alcohol, there is still an alcohol ban in Pattaya. Fine. I disagree with it but fine. Gathering!  Breaking current rules around COVID-19!  It just seems like we are and by we, I mean folks here in Thailand, even in a policy level, are kind of worrying about the wrong things. Again I don't think the data suggests that the risk of people gathering and drinking some alcohol, that the risks are so extreme that we need to stop that. I just have real problems with that argument now especially more than 18 months down the road where we know what this is. April 2020, May 2020, March 2020, different scenario. We didn't know exactly what we were dealing with. I can understand the argument. But now, it is really hard for me to think that it is a good idea, I mean 30 people. How much time did it take for the police to do that? How much time did it take for them to process those people through? How much money was spent? Those man hours could have been, in my opinion they could have been used elsewhere for something far more productive. 

I understand there are people that have real concerns about this but I think we all need to perhaps get a firm group on reality here and understand that there are risks in this world, they are just there. They are inherently there. You can get hit by a bus crossing the street. Does that mean you are never going to cross a street? And I know that that is not quite an exactly fair analogy but long story short I would hope we start seriously rethinking how we are allocating resources right now because I can think of way better things that the police could be doing than going after folks like this.