Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are talking about lockdown. I am going to file this, at least internally in my mind, under an opinion piece. 

I have had a lot of correspondence from folks, talked to a lot of people over the course of about the last 10 days. There have been all these discussions about these variants and things out of South Africa even though it is my understanding that the Head of their Medical System down there has basically said it is really not something that appears to be something to go crazy about just yet. Nonetheless there seems to be a level of concern which I would somewhat argue borders on hysteria regarding this. A lot of people have been asking me: "Well how likely do you think it is that Thailand will go into lockdown again?" Just sort of engaging my opinion. So let's be clear, this is an opinion piece. I have no idea what exactly the Government could do tomorrow or two weeks from now or 2 months from now; the future is difficult to predict. 

However, I would first of all posit that well we have not actually left this lockdown really. I mean the so-called whatever you want to call it the third wave, whatever happened in April the third lockdown, we will call it that. That occurred in April and we really haven't fully come out of that. Thailand has especially here in Bangkok, yes there are some easing of restrictions notably alcohol served in restaurants here in the city but for example Pattaya, it is my understanding they are not really out of any kind of real lockdown. I mean they are under pretty substantial restrictions continuing now so do other provinces here in Thailand. Bangkok, okay yeah there is some easing and yes it is now easier, far less quarantine to the point of arguably saying there is no quarantine now. It requires one night stay in a hotel upon arrival and then folks can just move on. So it is hard for me to say we ever came out of lockdown first of all. Then the next question is: "Well will they re-impose restrictions, go into a new lockdown, however you want to look at that I guess it is a semantic point?" But it seems unlikely to me because things are kind of moving ahead and everything seems to be relatively positive. 

Now I have been wrong in the past and I will certainly correct myself if I am wrong but I don't think it is really likely we are going to see a reversing of the course that is moving right now. In fact I think it would be exceptionally economically detrimentally to Thailand to do that. I think the tourism sector would suffer tremendously. I think there would be a lot of consternation in the small business community were that to happen. 

Now leaving that aside, anything is possible but it looks to me and I said this in another video when we were talking about, they pushed off any notion that they were going to reopen the entertainment sector, the Nightlife sector until mid-January. When I did that video I did it on the premise that okay if this is what we are going to do because we are trying to really just reopen, it made sense to me. Then having seen especially in the Western media, this flurry of hysteria on a certain level about this whole thing, leads me to believe that Thailand made the right call. Let's just go ahead and get open right so that we don't open up and then get scared of our shadow and then just shut back down. Let's just do it one step at a time and then when we are re-opened we will just be re-opened. So I am hoping that that is the case and hopefully we will see that be the case in the days and weeks to come.