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I recently came across this from ASEAN NOW, that is aseannow.com, the article is titled: Thailand detects first case of Omicron variant. Quoting directly: "The case was discovered in a male US citizen who had traveled to Thailand from Spain at the end of November." Quoting further: "Doctor Supakit Sirilak, Chief of Thailand's Medical Science Department told press on Monday." Quoting further: "Dr. Supakit urged the public not to panic in relation to the discovery of the Omicron variant in a person in Thailand." Yeah, the reason I am bringing this up and the reason for the title of this video and I don't really mean to be snarky or sarcastic here but I have seen and gotten correspondence from many people who are worried that there is going to be a mass re-imposition of lockdown and then there are some folks I have seen in the press that are really the only word I have for it is hysterical over this and begging the question out there that: "should we lock down.. da da da?"

My response at this point, the way I kind of look at it, it is one man's opinion however you want to take it but, if we are going to do that first of all I can't think of a more devastating economic decision than locking down again. I have to be honest just from what I have seen and people I have talked to in businesses here in Thailand; small, medium folks that are working in large corporations another major full-on lockdown honestly may bring economic activity to such a standstill that Thailand may never, well I hesitate to use the word never, never say never, but it may be the end of this decade before Thailand gets back to where it needs to be with respect to economics. I mean the definition of a depression and I am not an economist by training but I do read a lot on economics and the definition of a depression at least according to a guy I read rather frequently, a guy named Jim Rickards, also an Attorney but an economic analyst, he basically says that the definition of a depression is essentially "economic activity operating below the potential of that economy". So you know the ‘30s in the United States for example. There were ups and downs; there was money being made; there was economic activity occurring but it was happening in a threshold lower than what the output that the economy could be operating at or was operating at sort of baseline operation prior to in this case for example the '29 crash which led into the economic quagmire that became the 1930s in the United States; not to get too deep into that but the reason for the video. I am just kind of hoping cooler heads prevail on this. Let's everybody just have a look back at how this has all evolved. To date and I am happy to be corrected in the comments, if you got data that can show this, but to date no one has been able to show me that lockdowns have effectively done much of anything. If anything, and I have done videos on this going back into April and into May, stuff like this will get imposed and the numbers go up regardless. Then you look at countries like for example Sweden and it is tough to explain why that country had the track record it did. I will leave it at that. You can go out and look it up on your own without the need to impose quite the level of Draconian restrictions that other jurisdictions did. Again, I don't know the answer to these questions but what we do know unequivocally is the three lockdowns we have now gone through, the latest one being months, basically the latter half of 2021 for the vast majority especially of small businesses, it has been devastating. There is no doubt about that. I mean we have just seen the economics of lockdown, it is like nuclear winter for economics, for the economy. So we know that. What I fail to see and I haven't seen any data that really shows that they have had a tremendous benefit so when doing a cost benefit analysis I fail to see where that is at and then meantime, more than anything if we were to see another lockdown now, I just couldn't see, I am almost at loss for words, but a large number of businesses I just don't think would recover. It also begs the question as to whether people would feel confident about traveling to Thailand or anything in the future. 

Now let's be clear, and they have said this in this article this Medical Science Department doctor, Dr. Supakit, urged the public not to panic. Great, it is good to see that, that urging “not to panic in relation to the discovery of the Omicron variant in a person in Thailand”. It is my understanding and I am a lay person when it comes to you anything medical science related frankly, it is my understanding from reports that I have read including from Public Health Officials in South Africa for example that this thing is not quite the threat that maybe some in the media out there are purporting it to be, or at least implying that it is. That being said, again I don't know everything on this topic but what I do know is another lockdown and it also sort of begs the question if we are going to just do this every time someone reports something about this, a lockdown every time it is in the press that "oh this disease exists, people have it, they have contracted it etc." where do we begin and where do we end. Does it ever end? Are we going to go and lockdown forever and quite frankly and to get back to the thrust of this video, honestly the reopening and then the closure is the worst part for businesses. It is sort of the hope of putting in the money putting in the resources to get those businesses reopened only then to be just squashed and locked down shortly thereafter. I mean that is the worst part of this. If it is just to prolonged lockdown and then it reopens and we move on well that is what it is and people can argue if that was the right thing to do etc. but it is behind you but to have this continuously just open - shut, open - shut and to see these businesses, it has really been sad, difficult to watch some of these businesses go through the motions get things in place, get reopened only to be open a couple of weeks in some cases going back in the first half of this year I saw this quite a lot, only to be open literally for a matter of weeks, 4-6 weeks and then to be locked up again. I just don't see in a lot of cases that this can go on much longer if at all. I would actually argue it can't go on again. 

Now that said, again one man's opinion but I really am kind of concerned that there are folks out there that view this, don't seem to be able to sit down and do a cost benefit analysis at this point two years down the road where we do know what this thing is. Yes there are some risks but are those risks worth putting an entire economy completely on ice?