Transcript of the above video:

I have been reading a lot lately about the proposed presently out there in the ether proposed WHO Pandemic Treaty. We have discussed this a little bit previously. A couple of things, I was reading, I think it was either the New York Times or the Washington Post, an article and I am not going to cite any articles in this, it is just kind of an opinion piece. They were saying and they brought up a good point; they said look this is not happening imminently. It is going to take some time to move this around. Yeah maybe, I suspect they are probably right but that doesn't mean people should be complacent when you are looking at major legislation, major International agreements that can have substantial impacts on people. 

Let's be clear, I think history will probably look back on the last couple of years and wonder how we all collectively lost our minds and allowed a lot of this to happen. Now candidly, as I have said before, in the beginning phases of this whole thing when we didn't know what was going on and we didn't know what it was, I think that there was some logic in being overly prudent if not to the point of overly cautious. As this has progressed, clearly there is politicization of a number of different aspects of this. One really does start to wonder if there aren't bureaucracies that rather enjoy newfound prerogatives that have arisen out of this kind of stuff and I think common sense dictates that reasonable people need to question the need for some of these things. Then it comes up, I know there has been a lot of hyperbole on this topic, and to be clear I don't think this video is going to be quite to that point. One, again I don't think it is quite as imminent as people think although one thing that does kind of make me uneasy is how especially in the US how they are going to try to ratify it. If they are going to do it as a proper Treaty as they should which is what it is, or if they are going to try to do it through some kind of different administrative sort of function and do it as like a rule making exercise or administrative changes or something. Again, if it is a Treaty and it goes through the proper due process of being ratified by the US Senate, I am not overly concerned for a number different reasons, most notably because that is sort of the way things work in the US.

With respect to Thailand, some concerning things I have seen in discussions on this. Talk of a body that is not in Thailand and not really under Thai Law as being able to dictate to Thailand what is a pandemic and can also apparently, and this is just what I am reading and these are early days, I don't think a lot of this is firmed up but also discussion of "oh we can use data outside the country" and "we don't need to sort of confer or get in counsel with a given country when we are determining whether a pandemic exists or whether we are determining whether specific stringent measures need to be taken". One of the things I truly love about Thailand and one of the reasons I became Thai, Thailand has a deft hand at dealing with International organizations, International players, be they Colonialists if we are going back over 100 years ago; be they Cold War powers going back about half that time. At the same time, Thailand has always and I really like this about Thailand, Thailand always charts her own course. Thailand looks at what is good for Thailand and acts accordingly and this is something I really hope that policymakers out there really think about in the coming months and years when this is probably going to be discussed more urgently as this thing does start to be firmed up. Thailand fended off Colonialism once and okay I am not saying this is the same thing but when you have outside powers telling Thailand what to do, my hackles go up when I think of that. Thailand can take care of herself. We don't need anybody else telling us what to do as far as I am concerned. It is just something to think about.

I do think folks that are getting really overwrought about this, this probably is not ripe enough to be overwrought about right at this minute. I am not saying it is not a concern; I am not saying it is not something to keep a close eye on but I would rather get things kind of back to the way they were status quo ante going back to March 2020, kind of get things moving in the right direction more on the ground, more at the street level but I do think that it is important to keep an eye on this issue because it could have tremendous ramifications for Thailand in the long term.