Transcript of the above video:

As can be surmised by the tag, the photo tag on this video as well as the title, this is something of an opinion piece. As discussed in a prior video, we are taking affirmative steps to go ahead, in my opinion and this video strayed a little further from what our usual in my opinion our mandate is on this channel, but it initially started right in line with what I view our bailiwick to be here and then it strayed later as I got to thinking about it. But as I have seen a lot of your feedback and it looks like yeah I will be firing up a channel where I will talk a little bit more just on my opinions if you want to look at it like that, regarding these matters or regarding what is going on around us at any given time. However, this is really one of the most pressing concerns at the moment, the current situation in Thailand. It pertains to travel; it pertains to Immigration; it pertains to just living here, expat life, so I definitely think it is within the realm of this video. 

The reason for the title when I was initially contemplating this video, I was contemplating the following quote from the late President Ronald Reagan on August 12th, 1986 and the quote is quoting directly: "The nine most terrifying words in the English language are "I am from the Government and I am here to help." And I have always found that quote to be rather interesting and I am here to tell you those words ring rather poignantly to those I think in Thailand at the moment because I would say that at best there is ambivalence about how the Government has been operating the past few weeks. Now as I will get into in a little bit, I don't know if some of the negativity toward the Government is necessarily fully warranted in the sense that it is even the Government's job to have to deal with some of these things but let's get into that when we get into it. When I talk about the mood of what is going on here in Thailand, I think it is best encapsulated in a recent article I read from the Thai  Enquirer, that is thaienquirer.com, the article is titled: Opinion: The summer of discontent continues. Quoting directly: "I have written elsewhere on these pages about my contempt for the apathy the Thais have for the political system and how it has 'come home to roost' at a time of national emergency. Not caring about politics and the people that govern us has ensured that we have the worst Government we have seen in decades managing the country at the time of global pandemic." You can go into that article and read that again, thaienquirer.com, we will put that up there. Opinion: The summer of discontent continues. Now I have read these articles written by this same writer and there are a lot of interesting thoughts in there but at least in my personal opinion, when it comes to the apathy Thais have towards the political system that is governing us, I have to say on my part I am guilty of that especially and let me be clear, within this specific context to COVID. Up until about the last month I have taken the position of, "well nobody is going to let it spiral too far out of control." In the back of my head it has been "well the adults in the room will come in and clear things up." Well clearly that may not be happening and various ways you can interpret that phrase but long story short, I completely understand the discontent felt among Thai people regarding the current situation. I however have a different take on it insofar as my thinking is the very notion that a Government can eradicate a virus to me is like saying 2 + 2 = Albuquerque. One doesn't have anything to do with the other and quite frankly, in the history of time it never has. Now let me be clear in what I am saying about that with what I think here. Governments instituting a quarantine for example on people coming in and out of the country, yes clearly there is not only precedent for that, but it has been proven that that can be done and be done effectively by a Government. At the same time, dealing with things like setting up a remote hospital, that can be done. That specific task can be done. The notion that the Government should or has some sort of mandate or even could conceivably eradicate COVID to me seems quite strange because my next question is, HOW? How is the Government supposed to go about doing that? Like I said, it is like saying I am going to do algebra by chewing gum, or I am going to cut my hair using a snow blower. One doesn't have anything to do with the other. Government's job is to govern and yes, there are administrative functions, and yes when this all started, and I have stated this on this video, Thailand took a hard line. They did a proper standard quarantine, they locked out their own citizens from returning to Thailand for a brief period of time and then they instituted quarantine measures, the Government instituted quarantine measures but those were specific tactical goals. What has been bugging me in this entire narrative, let's just leave it between the people and the Government for the moment, is that the people are really enraged at the Government for not fixing COVID. And then the Government goes out and does a lot of things in an effort to do this, that have unintended consequences that have all kinds of terrible results or just have direct consequences that have all kinds of terrible non-COVID related results and meanwhile cases still go up. We saw the full lockdown last year and here we are a year later and we are still dealing with this. It is not like it went away and let's be clear, this isn't just me directing this at the Thai Government, the US Government and it has been odd this past month or so, watching Thailand go through this cycle this year. It has been like déjà vu because I keep pretty close tabs on US News, this is what the US was doing last year. Just as a for example, a recent article from the Bangkok Post, that is bangkokpost.com, and the article was titled: Business baffled by gaffes, and just to go ahead and it is a small excerpt but it just hit me like a ton of bricks. Quoting directly: "He said an urgent task for the Government is to flatten the curve to prevent the country from facing the same situation as India which was severely impaired after recording a massive amount of infections." That 'flatten the curve' just hit me like a ton of bricks because this has just been within the last couple of weeks that I read that article and I remember a year ago in America, in my mind '2 weeks to flatten the curve' was the narrative; that was the catch phrase. It is going to be 'two weeks to flatten the curve'. We are shutting down two weeks; we are going to be reopened but we need to 'flatten the curve'; get that curve flattened so the hospitals can handle this and we can all get back to business. Two weeks to flatten the curve. In my mind two weeks to flatten the curve is going to be kind of the 'mission accomplished'; George W. Bush standing on that aircraft carrier saying 'mission accomplished' about Iraq. It rings the same way in my mind is 'oh well, just two weeks to flatten the curve.' If it is not outright disingenuous one would argue it is to levels of naiveté, especially in hindsight, that rise to the level of wondering if someone is being willfully naïve. So when I heard this I started thinking about all of this and at first this video was going to be about Government and it was going to be about you know Government vs. the people and as I said the people get upset with the Government that the Government isn't "fixing COVID". Then the Government flips out and responds by trying to "fix COVID". Well they do it with these mechanisms that in my opinion don't make a lot of sense and we will get into some of that here in a moment but the purpose of this video, what it evolved into as I was analyzing this feedback loop, this people vs. Government and what they wanted and how they ended up in this negative feedback loop, where there is a certain segment of the population that wants even harsher restrictions although in my opinion at this point there is no real bona fide proof that it has done anything other than wreck the economy. Maybe reasonable people can disagree; maybe certain measures need to be implemented and certain measures we could do without. Things like for example just the blanket alcohol ban just made no sense to me especially when you allowed dine-in restaurants. I don't know where that thinking came from but again it is like the people get angry and then the Government feels it needs to be seen "doing something" and so they go out and do something that is not necessarily a good thing. For example in a prior video we did, we talked about the shutdown of restaurants and the alcohol ban and I mentioned off hand in that video that 'nobody was talking about shutting down construction sites' and I stated that in that video thinking it was self-evident that 'No we have to do a cost benefit analysis. You can't just shut down construction sites.' Well then turn around and within a day or two they did shut down construction sites. Friends of mine actually brought up to me that they truly believe that they may have done it because I said it. I am here to tell you I don't think anybody is listening to me that hard. But the long story short is that ended up having unintended consequences because I think the Government wanted to be seen doing something and then they shut those down and then people left them and there has then been subsequent reports that the virus spread further which if they would have just been left alone in the first place, presumably those people wouldn't have left those sites to thereby spread the virus. Again you see the cascading effect of unintended consequences coming from this 'people/ government' feedback loop. Now there is a missing component to that. When I was first looking at this I was saying to myself 'oh yeah, it is just this feedback loop'. No, there is one other component and in my opinion it exacerbates the problem hence the reason for this video.

That quote from Reagan is multifaceted and it is pregnant with a lot of nuance. Most notably, there is, especially on the American Conservative right, there is an implied belief that there is a hubris in certain Government Officers that they know better than the common people or something. I always had that feeling that that was how the Conservative right felt about the Government. You can feel it in this quote. But also there is also this simultaneous feeling that they are not so good and they don't exactly know what they are doing or talking about and that is why you should be terrified if they are coming. It is interesting because on a certain level I disagree with the quote. There is an author and writer named Chris Hedges who once talked about this quote. He said 'yeah, it is terrifying unless you are a poor person in Camden who needs assistance then maybe the Government can help you', and I was thinking about this when thinking about making this video and that is where I came to this more nuanced hypothesis regarding the Government first of all and that nuanced hypothesis is the Government often can help with specific tasks. Where I get terrified is when the Government says 'we are here to help with some grand scheme, just some grand vague problem' if you will, like ‘we are going to tackle COVID'.  Well how are you going to do that? If the Government comes out and says we are going to do this, we are going to institute this quarantine, okay that is a set goal you can see it. When they say we are going to tackle COVID that gets a little scary because "mission creep" and what does that mean? As we have seen, Draconian restrictions, not only economic but social as a result of this for lack of a better term, 'war on COVID'. In the American context, we saw a lot of this creepiness in the war on terror where the Government just decided to be at war on fear itself. I mean that is a pretty vague concept to be at war with and it led to a lot of "Mission Creep" and getting away from really specific goal-oriented tasks.

Back to the original point though. This feedback loop between the people and the Government, in my opinion especially recently, especially with COVID, it has been exacerbated a lot by the media just either sensationalism or I am not going to go out on any limb to say they are lying about this or that but it is just, maybe there is a desire because obviously COVID is the only real thing to talk about right now. Certainly nobody is doing anything. Yeah we had this recent explosion here in Thailand; that was terrible. That made front page news; that was first time COVID wasn't on; I shouldn't laugh, that is not right but it was the first time that COVID was not on the front page that I noticed of the Bangkok Post print edition in 6 weeks I am pretty sure. In any event, that was an interlude and then we have been dealing with just this COVID constantly, all the time in the narrative. The point I am trying to make is I don't think anybody is acting in bad faith but the media is out there to get eyeballs; and to get lights; to get noticed; to create fanfare; to some degree to sensationalize and that is their business to one degree or another. That has been exacerbated a lot in the online era because the old models of journalism, especially the business models of journalism have fallen apart and new models have somewhat taken their place. However if nothing else is taken away from this video in my mind just be careful how we are consuming all this media, and let's everybody just take a breath and try to figure out how to get through this without just exacerbating ranker and yes there is certainly accountability that needs to be had especially on the part of the Government, I am not saying that. There have been major issues and I am not going to go into all of them in this video but most notably folks I know regarding the vaccine are very upset regarding the rollout of that. Other issues on top of that, a lot of pressure out there but now is not really in my opinion the time to be pointing fingers. There is a great film that I rather like called Rising Sun, it is based on a book by Michael Crichton of the same name, Rising Sun. In it Sean Connery plays a man who is basically an American expat in Japan for a long period of time. He moves back to the US and he works as a police liaison officer with the Japanese community in Los Angeles. There is a great line where he is talking to another police officer and he says: "The Japanese have a saying: Fix the problem not the blame. Find what is F*ed up and fix it! That way nobody gets blamed." When I have been looking at this situation, I kept thinking of that quote the last few weeks and again it is the reason for making this video. Let's just stop blaming each other and try to just figure this out and move on. That said, again I think some circumspection in the media that we consume regarding this and many other topics, is definitely a good thing to have. 

So another article from the Thai Enquirer that is thaienquirer.com, this is actually from back in January 2020. This is interesting because this is before the hysteria caught on around COVID so I like the analysis on this to some degree. The title is: The Thai media is outsourcing much of its Coronavirus coverage to Beijing and that's just the start. Quoting directly: "Thailand's media landscape is currently saturated with news about the Coronavirus. Just this week, several people have been arrested or warned about spreading misinformation about the disease. The mainstream media itself is an eclectic mixture of fear mongering and analysis." (that is well put). Quoting further: "Yet Thais to a large extent still trust legacy media institutions that have been around for decades but if one were to scrutinize further, there may be a reason to place heavy skepticism on news that is shared for everyday consumption." Quoting further: "This week channel 3 announced a partnership with Chinese state-run Xinhua News Agency to broadcast Xinhua coverage on the Coronavirus outbreak." Quoting further: "With millions of ‘likes' on the Facebook page, it is clear that coronavirus isn't China's only viral export." Quoting further: "The recent dominance of Chinese media in Thailand is the confluence of two structural dynamics. Thailand's declining news industry and China's growing soft power offensive. Journalism may be suffering globally but the Thai news industry has exhibited particularly painful symptoms. Of the two English language dailies in Thailand, the Nation discontinued its print edition in 2019 after losing millions of Baht for 5 consecutive years while the Bangkok Post is selling its buildings to stay afloat." I really urge folks to go check that out, Thai Enquirer, thaienquirer.com, the title: Thai Media is outsourcing much of its Coronavirus coverage to Beijing and that is just the start. Again I find it interesting that they mentioned Thailand's declining news industry that it is sort of declining. Well that could be factoring in to why Coronavirus is just constant because it is a known quantity; you know it is going to get noticed. If you are a publisher out there, it is a known quantity so you know you are going to get eyeballs off of it and if you have declining resources, it may be relatively easier to just stay on that subject rather than go and find new news stories, to my mind. That is just my speculation or my inference on what may be driving, again this feedback loop to some extent. The interesting thing about this is I don't want this to get into a China versus US, and the narrative on all of that because I think that as noted in that prior video, fear-mongering is going on across the media. Just as a for example, and again to go back to 2020 specifically June 2020, if you want to talk about some really strange fear-mongering, and from a pretty establishment place in the western context, this is from The Washington Post, and that is washingtonpost.com, from their website, the article is titled: Put a lid on it, folks: flushing may release coronavirus-containing 'toilet plumes'. Quoting directly: "Add this to our list of worries in these anxious times. Coronavirus containing clouds that waft into the air when a toilet is flushed. Scientists who simulated toilet water in airflow say in a new research paper that aerosol droplets forced upward by a flush appear to spread wide enough and linger long enough to be inhaled." You will forgive me if I giggle a little bit at that and if I also look back again, this is June 2020. This is a little over a year ago. As I have said, it feels like being in a level of déjà vu or that movie Groundhog Day having watched all this narrative play out in the US and now seeing it play out over here in Thailand. The reason I bring this up is again nobody out there in the media is innocent, in my opinion. It seems to me that many of the major news outlets (I shouldn't say nobody) across the spectrum, across nationalities whatever, have been engaged in, look people get scared and in June 2020 in America, people were scared and journalists get scared like anybody else. But again it becomes part of this feedback loop that doesn't make anything better. It doesn't fix the problem, it just fixes the blame. We all know what's at fault. COVID, it's out there. 

So moving forward. Just to provide in my opinion some clarification, this is from the Johns Hopkins University website and we will go ahead and put up their web address to these statistics but this is the COVID statistics by country, this is Johns Hopkins University. I don't know that I can find much more credible data than this. So just as a comparison, Thailand's confirmed cases at least as at the time of this video according to Johns Hopkins, 283,067; deaths are 2,226; case fatality rate, 0.8%; deaths per 100,000, (that to me is the key) deaths per 100,000, 3.2. United Kingdom, 4,920,168; total deaths, 128,486; 2.6% death; case fatality rate, (you have got to be clear on that because you may not know how many people have actually been infected but you do know the cases) case fatality rate, 2.6% with deaths per 100,000, 192.25. To me the UK is something to look at for Thailand because demographically the numbers are not too far off. There may be some differences in a lot of different things but it is about the same size in terms of population. When comparing for example the United States, 33,717,567 with 605,526 deaths; 1.8% case fatality rate at 184.48, well the US is a lot bigger. Now again, the great equalizer there is deaths per 100,000 and that makes a big difference but again I bring this up because deaths per 100,000 in Thailand are 3.2 yet you see the media and this is like this is the Black Death. I am not saying that this disease doesn't exist; I am not saying it doesn't kill people; I am not saying that it is not a terrible, it is; I'm not saying that precautions shouldn't be taken. But it seems that we have allowed hysteria in some instances to overtake reason is my only point. As I said earlier, regarding 'flatten the curve', well we are 16 months in. This notion of 'flatten the curve', we have tried that three or four times now and the curve ain't flat. It is just a fact. In a sense if lockdowns worked, a very valid question at this point 16 months in after three hard lockdowns and I would argue we are in a fourth semi-lockdown now, if it worked, why hasn't it worked. That would be my main question on that. Moving forward, just further examples of some of this stuff and the way the media in my opinion, there is almost, I don't know how to put this, almost I hesitate to say willful but it is like the media seems to be boxed in to a strange naiveté with respect to some of this. For example in a recent article again the Bangkok Post, bangkokpost.com, the article is titled: The heavy burden of reopening. Just a small except here: "In addition to a vaccine shortage, a growing concern over vaccine efficacy is fueling doubt over virus containment." It is that term 'containment'. Why are we operating from a position that containment is the default goal? That that is just a foregone conclusion that we can at this point contain this. Understood, if this was in a specific small town, and we knew it was only there, yes maybe you can contain it. But this has hit what they call community spread. It is my understanding that the notion of containment went out the window a long time ago. As we said in another video, that horse has bolted, at least it is my understanding. Meanwhile again folks keep going on about the Delta variant. That is a new thing and talking about India and again a lot of this stuff gets conflated without a lot of perspective. Just to try to provide some perspective, at least for my own mind, there is a recent article from Zero Hedge, zerohedge.com, and I have gotten a couple of comments burning me on this channel from time to time saying "oh it is terrible, you quote Zero Hedge sometimes." Zero Hedge is a pretty good resource. I find a lot of news there. Their news aggregation is quite good. There are many who have said that they tend to be cynical and pessimistic. It is not the only thing I look at but they have a lot of content on there that can be rather useful for trying to determine the way things are working, to try to do some research and understand what is going on. Again, Zero Hedge, zerohedge.com, the article is titled: "Panic Porn Dressed up as Science"- Exposing the Truth about the Delta Variant. Quoting directly: "But is the Delta variant really "far more contagious" than earlier iterations of SARS-CoV-2?" Quoting further: "In a recent piece published by The Blaze writer Dan Horwitz explains that the existing data suggests Delta isn't any deadlier or more infectious than other strains. Horwitz described the warnings from epidemiologists and public health bureaucrats like Dr. Fauci as "panic porn dressed up as science". Quoting further and this is quoting directly from Blaze: "The implication from these headlines is that somehow this variant is truly more transmissible and deadly. They escape natural immunity and possibly the vaccine and therefore paradoxically you must get vaccinated and continue doing all the things that failed to work for the other variants." Quoting further: "If people would actually look at the data, they would realize that the Delta variant is actually less deadly. These headlines are able to momentum only because of the absurd public perception that somehow India got hit worse than the rest of the world. In reality, India has 1/7^th the death rate per capita of the US. It is just that India got the major winter wave later when the Western countries were largely done with it thereby giving the illusion that India somehow suffered worse." Quoting further: "Fortunately, the UK Government has already exposed these headlines as a lie, for those willing to take notice. On June 18th, Public Health England published its 16^th report on "Sars-CoV-2 variants of concern and variants under investigation in England" this time grouping the variance by Greek letters. As you can see, the Delta variant has a 0.1% case fatality rate out of 31,132 Delta sequence infections confirmed by investigators. That is the same rate as the flu and is much lower the CFR for the ancestral strain or any other variants and as we know, the CFR is always higher than the infection fatality rate, IFR, because many of the mildest and asymptomatic infections go undocumented while the confirmed cases tend to have a bias towards those who are more evidently symptomatic. In other words Delta is literally the flu with a CFR identical to it. This is exactly what every respiratory pandemic has done through history, morphed into a more transmissible and less virulent form that forces the other mutations out since you get that one." So interesting stuff here and the reason I quoted this is I found it and it is data driven. It is based on this Public Health England publication from the 16th of June titled and I quote again: Sars-CoV-2 variants of concern and variants under investigation in England. A final note in quoting this article. Senator Rand Paul has been one of the most vocal critics of the Delta variant hysteria. In a tweet sent yesterday morning, he urged the public not to let the fear-mongers win, and we are quoting the tweet. We will make sure that is up there so you can see it, from Rand Paul. “Don't let the fear-mongers win, new public England studied Delta variant shows 44 deaths out of 53,822, 0.8% an unvaccinated groups." Hmmm. 

Now the reason for noting Senator Rand Paul is, he is not just a US Senator which is obviously notable, he is also a physician. He is a Board certified physician so any time he starts talking about public policy related to COVID matters, obviously in the US context, it gives me pause. I want to hear what he has to say. I am not necessarily making this because I think this is the end all, be all on the science. I am not here to say it is the end or be all on the science. What I am bringing up is the fact that I haven't heard this in a lot of other publications especially here in Thailand that there may be something other than the "sky is falling" in terms of this Delta variant for lack of a better term, narrative that is going around at the moment. I just wanted to put that out there to bring things into a little bit of context because again it just seems like everyone is talking about things like toilet plumes or talking about containment when I mean again we are going to have to get used to this which brings me to my next article that I am quoting here which is from news.com.au and we have talked about this in another video where we were quoting from the South China Morning Post about a similar situation going on. Well it is talking about the same thing basically and again I bring this up to point out sort of the media's I hesitate to use the word spin, but they just sort of ever so slightly tint how these things are reported. We talked about this before. Singapore seems to be coming to a much more in my opinion, a much more nuanced approach to dealing with COVID rather than just ‘let's use that mallet to kill a fly’ although I wouldn't call COVID a fly but they are not just continuing doing the same thing over and over. As they say, "insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome". Singapore does seem to be somewhat changing their approach, or at least they are changing their thinking on it. We talked about this in another video but again to reiterate here, again this is news.com.au, the article is titled Singapore's surprising new plans to 'live with COVID' revealed. Then the byline is: no quarantine, no icky tests and no daily numbers. “One nation that Australians know well is taking a controversial course out of the pandemic”. I thought two words were surprising first of all “Singapore's surprising new plan” and what I find interesting is I thought that this was how we always dealt with public health issues and that frankly the response to COVID was kind of the new plan. In fact I urge anyone that can show me in history when entire nations, economies, have been utterly shut down in response to any kind of public health issue. I mean it didn't happen in the Spanish flu, and yes I know there are people out there that will cite there were towns that were quarantined and things, it has happened in that context. I have heard, it is my understanding that in Australia at one point there was a one-year quarantine for the entire continent down there at one point. Again, kind of a different scenario but as far as the whole world just shutting down whole economies this whole approach to this is rather unprecedented. The other thing that I thought was interesting is "Australians know well is taking a controversial course out of the pandemic." Well why is this controversial? We will get into it here in a minute but why is a different approach necessarily controversial? Quoting directly from the article: "But all that would eventually be done away with (and that is sort of the standard COVID response for example the way most countries are dealing with it, certain places are dealing with including Thailand) but all that would eventually be done away with under the plan put out by Ministers Kung, Yong and Wong who make up Singapore's COVID-19 multi-Ministry task force." Quoting directly from them, those 3 Ministers: "Every year many people catch the flu. The overwhelming majority recover without needing to be hospitalized and with little or no medication but a minority, especially the elderly and those with comorbidities can get very ill and some succumb. We can't eradicate it but we can turn the pandemic into something much less threatening like influenza or chicken pox and get on with our lives the trio said." What I find really fascinating about that is that is from 3 Ministers in a national Government, the Singapore Government. In that article, that article the byline says it is a controversial approach. Well first of all who is in controversy? They are the Ministers in Singapore; they are setting the policy. Again it just seems as though, I don't know and maybe it is just the way people think, you get into a rigidity of thinking and anything that differs from that orthodoxy becomes controversial.

To sum up this video and I am sure that anybody watching at this point might be happy for that but the reason for this, and the reason I have made some of these videos talking about this is because this isn't happening in a vacuum. Again this feedback loop, the people and the government and trying to use restrictions and these lockdown measures and all of this kind of stuff to stop or contain COVID, which I think reasonable people can argue might not be possible, especially at this point or eradicate COVID. As the Singaporean Minister said, you can't do it, you can't eradicate it. It is just here, it is endemic, you are just going to have to learn to deal with it. But in making these harsh Draconian moves, this is not happening in a vacuum. This has an impact on people's lives and a recent article from the Bangkok Post, the bangkokpost.com, sums this up. The article is titled: Contribution of SMEs to GDP to drop. Quoting directly: "Small and medium sized enterprises, SMEs, contribution to gross domestic product is expected to drop in the second quarter because of the harsh impact of new infections which began in April. Veerapong Malai, Director General of the Office of Small to Medium Enterprises Promotion (OSMEP) said the agency has forecast the contribution of SMEs toward GDP to fall in the second quarter from 35% of GDP in the first quarter of this year. However the percentage to decrease for the second quarter is not available. The pandemic was blamed for the SMEs contribution toward GDP falling 22%”. And this again is where I take issue with the way this is reported. The pandemic was blamed. The pandemic didn't make legal policy. The pandemic didn't make government policy. The pandemic just exists. The reaction to it is what, for example the closure of businesses is the direct proximate cause of the businesses being closed and therefore those businesses being unable to contribute to GDP. The pandemic didn't do it. It is our reaction to the pandemic. Now I am not saying that the reaction is good bad or indifferent but the reaction is what caused the closures, not the virus. The virus can't close anything. It can't make a government executive decree. Quoting further: "GDP falling to 32% in the second quarter of 2020 before recovering to 34.5% in the fourth quarter of last year." So again, to just reiterate that and I have seen that a lot, "the pandemic caused". The pandemic has caused a downturn etc. It is not just Bangkok Post. It is the press out there all over the place will use that terminology. Again I think it will be better if the media would say what is really going on. “The Government's policy on X has resulted in Y”. I am not doing that to blame. I am doing that, I am not saying I am in favor of that because I am in favor of blaming anyone but part of the problem in all of this has been the kind of vague soft reporting on these things without getting into the nitty-gritty because we need to ascertain the threat in order to do a proper cost - benefit analysis.

In closing here I am going to go ahead and put this up. This is from Twitter. It is from Dear Farangs Twitter account @dearfarang on Twitter and it says "People waiting on Pattaya Beach for food handouts" #amazingthailand. I would say amazing Thailand because Thais are trying to help each other through this and that is a good thing that is something I do like to see, Thais helping other Thais out by helping those who are down on their luck as a result of the current situation that we are in. Now do I want to see those folks down on their luck like that? No. Do I think that perhaps a more nuanced reasoned response to the situation is in order and would it help a whole lot if the media would get out of the amplifying blame business and stirring up hysteria business and maybe get more into the “let's report data and information so that the people and the government can make reasoned decisions doing a cost-benefit analysis about what is best for Thailand moving forward”.