Transcript of the above video:

This video is something of an opinion video and I suspect regular watchers of this channel will probably think this video is going to go in one direction but I am going to give you a bit of a preview. It is not probably going to go in the direction that you think. 

The purpose of this video If you read the title, it probably seems like one of my opinion pieces where I might be a little bit critical if you will of certain policies. That is actually not the case. I wanted to go ahead and quote directly, a tiny excerpt from the Bangkok Post, that is bangkokpost.com, the article is titled: Booze Prohibition Eases, but I want to quote this one sentence because when I read it, it just to me it seems so pregnant with information when you understand the overall context of what is going on over here that I thought it was noteworthy. So the sentence is: "He assured the people that the Government would prevent an excessive influx of foreign visitors", now "he" being the Prime Minister. When you first read this I could definitely see a contingent of the expat community, "Oh, prevent an excessive influx of foreign visitors! What are you talking about?" I actually took away from that something very different or maybe in my mind it is different. Maybe a lot of people took this in a way I don't know but when I first read that the kind of expat mentality in me said: "well what are they doing there?" Then I reread the article and it caused me to really think. There are a lot of different constituencies here in Thailand and different groups have different notions about how things should play out moving forward. As we have discussed at length in many videos on this channel, the overall economic concerns in my opinion should be paramount and when weighed against quite frankly I haven't seen any appreciable data anybody has been able to provide to me, especially these lockdowns the last 4 months have done anything to really have any kind of effect. I can't see any data where it did anything and I am perfectly happy to stand corrected. If folks have that data, I am happy to read it and if I am wrong I will get on here as I have done in the past and say I am wrong or say my opinion was unfounded, whatever you want to call it but I have looked and I can't seem to find that data. Getting back to the point of this video, I will just read this: "He assured the people that the Government would prevent an excessive influx of foreign visitors," and “excessive” is key there. There clearly is a contingent of folks in Thailand and I am not just pointing out Thailand here, the rest of the world, I see it in reports from the United States which I keep up with the news on rather particularly on a day-to-day basis where there is a contingent of people in my opinion are being a little bit, well maybe more than a little bit, irrational about this whole thing maybe to the point of a certain level of hysteria especially at this point in the game when we are years in, we know; this isn't April of 2020 where we don't know the score; we don't know the demography and we don't know the statistics associated, especially with deaths arising from this overall situation. We are also at a point in time, we have got countermeasures in place, vaccinations, various medications out there that folks can take that can mitigate some of the worst of the problems associated with this. Meanwhile, there is still is a contingent people that are genuinely very afraid and that's okay. I am not saying there is anything wrong with those folks; everyone has their own opinions. 

That said, sometimes, as the saying goes from Britain, "keep calm and carry on!" You just have to keep moving forward. I have made some critical videos in the past. I would like to say in this video that this one sentence said a lot to me and what it said to me was and "he" being the Prime Minister here and the Government, they have to balance a lot of different constituencies; they have to deal with a lot of feedback from a lot of different people and they have to make the best decisions as they see them at the time and I think they are doing a good job with that. We are seeing Thailand reopening November 1 here to foreign tourists with a massively truncated, virtually zero quarantine to come in if have your ducks in a row with respect to documentation, vaccination documentation etc. There is serious talk of basically full reopening looking at a month from now. My personal opinion, I think we should do it sooner rather than later. Leaving that aside, I do want to say that a lot of different voices have to be balanced; a lot of different concerns and I do think notwithstanding my critiques in the past, that at present as of this time I think that balancing the cost benefit is being done well right now and I think it is being done in such a way that is prudent and hopefully it is going to have positive ramifications for Thailand in the coming days, months and weeks.