Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing Chinese idiocy and why it is impacting everyone else especially down here in Southeast Asia. I am making this video, well after I read a recent article from the Bangkok Post, bangkokpost.com, the article is titled: Proof of COVID jabs for all visitors revived.  Quoting directly: "The new measures are necessary because Thailand is a major destination for travellers from many countries including China but the measures must be non-discriminatory, Mr. Anutin said. Quote: "The principle is there will not be any discrimination against a particular country because Covid-19 is spreading in all countries and the strains are similar." My question to that is why is there a mandate at all? It's endemic. The people that want the inoculations can get them and the people that don't, take their own risk. Then meanwhile, if the strains are similar what are we talking about? Why do we need this? Quoting further: "So Covid-19 should not be an issue of discriminating against any country" end quote, he said." 

He has a fair point on a certain level except and look I haven't been real keen to talk about this to this point, but I think it's worth noting now because in my opinion I think Thailand is taking two major steps back in terms of trying to revive the tourism sector and the economy in this country because quite frankly the Chinese have just unilaterally decided to completely reopen after being totally locked down, and in my opinion what looks to me from an outside observer's perspective, they massively, detrimentally impacted their own people's herd immunity to a ton of different stuff. Yeah you can give somebody a COVID test I am presuming and they are going to come up with this, that and the other thing and they may come up positive. Again, I'm not a medical doctor, I'm not claiming to be, I'm not claiming to be at all. I am even taking off my lawyer hat on this one and I am just looking at this from a guy just trying to have some basic common sense. If you lock everybody down and they can't interact, well then people's immune system don't interact with each other. It's my understanding people's immune systems have to be constantly at war. It has to be interacting with other immune systems, viruses, things out in the world. I don't know where we got this notion that we all need to be wrapped in bubble wrap and doused with Purell to live our entire lives. We can't do that.

Meanwhile, and I have got to be honest, let's go all the way back to the beginning of this thing. How did it start? Where did it come from? Why were the warnings at the beginning suppressed which there's evidence of that, we all know this. Then meanwhile now, because the same country that took in my opinion an insane approach on dealing with this, is now reopening and is dealing with all the ramifications of reopening after basically having their entire population hermetically sealed and separated from each other and is now seeing the detrimental impact of that. Now that that is occurring, now we down here in Southeast Asia, down here in Thailand have to bear the brunt of that? Our tourism sector has to be detrimentally and adversely impacted by that? The results of other tourism countries that quite honestly dealt with this in a much more straightforward, up front and quite honestly more effective manner in the long-term, they have got to be adversely impacted from being able to travel into Thailand because of this? Then on top of it, it also has this weird Orwellian feel to it, where this is the country that has social credit scores and everything and I'm starting to wonder are you trying to export that notion to other places? Is this vaccine sort of mandate which it has also been described as Vaccine Passports, is this going to be utilized as the first step on the road to social credit scores throughout all of Southeast Asia? I'm not trying to move too far afield here but I'm really angry about this one and quite honestly I have kept, because there are nuances in the world, I am aware of that and I have kind of kept quiet with respect to China but now just because China has decided to unilaterally reopen and there's the possibility of Chinese flooding into Thailand, every country's population that wants to come to Thailand has to be impacted by that? I mean come on, it seems rather strange to me. On top of that, I just don't see the reason for the mandate in the first place. If you want to be non-discriminatory, don't make the mandate, just don't have it because I don't see the reason for it to begin with. Again I am not a medical doctor and quite honestly I am happy to stand corrected but on this one, having seen this for the past three years, and I have been paying attention to this at a very, very detailed level, having seen this for the past 3 years, I think this policy is the wrong move at the wrong time. It's not particularly what Thailand needs at the moment.

Now hopefully it is something temporary. I am going to go ahead and presume because quite honestly to this point, I do think people especially here in Thailand, policy makers have been operating in good faith and that's something that I do, not only want to believe in but I've seen it. They have been trying, they re-opened, we got things moving again, but this is not something to be, it's like the groundhog on Groundhog Day coming up out of his hole and seeing his shadow. Let's not be scared of our shadow here because that is what is happening, that is what this phenomenon is. I think that this is too much fear over something that really isn't an issue and we are creating a mandate that could have a tremendously negative impact, not only on the tourism sector here in Thailand, but the overall economy as well.