Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, kind of like our videos on "travel bubbles" maybe a little bit, but I was reading a recent article from the Thaiger, that is thethaiger.com, the article is titled: Can we say good-riddance to the Thailand Pass on July 1? Good article, a lot in there. I urge folks who are watching this to go check that out but this little excerpt I thought was pretty funny: "Whilst the rest of the world has established new travel lanes and travel bubbles, Thailand remains in a Time Bubble, stuck in mid-2021 in a pre-Omicron world of curfews, restrictions, and incoming Travelers treated like extras in The Andromeda Strain (a 1971 sci-fi B-grade movie about a viral pandemic)."

Yeah, I think that is pretty spot on analysis there. Yeah it really does beg the question why we are continuing with this. I mean at this point I have a hard time not calling certain aspects of this kabuki especially where there are certain things going on that have been just proven outright to not be particularly effective. Other things have come up, we have done another video contemporaneously with this one where massive amounts of the data are being re-collated and we are finding a decrease in numbers that were supposedly shocking and then now they have been revised maybe it wasn't such a big deal. So look, I have said from some time ago and I will be the first one to admit, when all this first went down I was concerned and I thought Thailand took a number of measures that were far more prudent I think than counterpart countries around the world. But we are 2 years out, literally; literally two years ago now. This all began March 2020 with respect to all these protocols, the Emergency Decree promulgation. We have spent 2 years of being treated to quote again "treated like extras in the Andromeda Strain" and for what? I mean what has it honestly gotten us? I think any data driven analysis of the outcomes of a lot of these protocols, I just don't see where there has been a great benefit and I have discussed that at length. 

Long story short, especially economically, I think Thailand really, really needs to make some serious changes. We have made other videos contemporaneously with this one where we are comparing the entry protocols in other countries and those will be forthcoming as time moves through this week, as we move through this week. Credit where credit is due, Thailand opened, had tourists; you could get into Thailand when you couldn't get into a lot of countries here in Southeast Asia. I have got to give Thailand credit for that; I have got to give the Government policy makers credit for that and they did it in such a way that it didn't have a dramatic impact one way or the other negatively on the country so I have got to give credit where credit is due on that. To date Thailand has been one of the more accessible countries in Southeast Asia. That is quickly changing now here in March 2020 as we will get to later but other countries are not having the issues with re-entry protocols that Thailand currently is.

As a Thai, I find it concerning. Tourism is a major sector of the economy. Now yes we are going into "low season" but that said, generally speaking Songkran provides a bit of a spike in terms of Tourism numbers and even May, some of the holidays associated with that although it is probably more associated with folks that are related to Thais or Thais coming in from abroad to visit family and things. Even still as many foreign arrivals as we can get back here in Thailand and keep this economy rolling along the better as far as I am concerned. So let's get out of the "time bubble" and start looking at getting Thailand re-opened rather than being treated like extras in the Andromeda Strain.