Transcript of the above video:

As has been pretty much in the news recently all they really talk about is of the COVID situation and a recent article from the Bangkok Post bangkokpost.com, the article is titled: CDC Scuppers Q3 Tourism Hopes. Quoting directly: The latest travel warning from the US centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) against travel to Thailand has exacerbated the tourism outlook for the third quarter with all hopes now resting on high season." So basically what happened here is US CDC sort of upgraded, downgraded, however you want to look at it, Thailand's ranking and basically says Thailand is a high risk country. Actually, I will quote directly here: "On August 9th, Thailand was added to the highest level 4 list of countries-- "very high" -- which urges fully vaccinated US citizens to avoid travel to Thailand due to the risk of exposure to the virus and its variants."

Okay. That is just very odd to me. Now understanding there is a lot going on with respect to variants and things and I do understand that and they do have concerns about mutations so this is not a definitive video where I am claiming I know exactly what needs to be done but I just found it rather interesting. To look at the numbers from coronavirus.jhu.edu, that is Johns Hopkins University. Thailand: total cases - 863,189, total deaths - 7,126 which makes Thailand have a case fatality rate of 0.8% and deaths per 100,000 of 10.23. Just as a comparison, the United States has total case numbers - 36,597,564, total deaths - 621,016 which gives it a percentage of death or case fatality rate of 1.7% and total death per 100,000 of 189.20. 

Now Thailand and the US demographically obviously are very dissimilar. Deaths per 100,000 provides some measurement whereby you can troll for certain factors but I went ahead and took down the numbers for the United Kingdom which in my opinion demographically more resembles Thailand in the sense of population and land mass size. I in the United Kingdom the total cases 6,241,447; total deaths - 131,116 which led to a case fatality rate of 2.1%. Total deaths per 100,000 - 196.18. So I have to be honest when you compare, it seems odd to me, it seems strange and again this is not a video where I am definitively saying "oh Thailand is in a better position" but it seems strange to me to upgrade Thailand to a high-risk country or upgrade Thailand's status as higher risk when deaths per 100,000 are less than a 10th of what they are in the United States and the United Kingdom and case fatality rates are at least half. In the case of United Kingdom it is about two and a half times higher there and total cases 863,189 against 36,597,564 and 6,241,447 respectively, the United States and the United Kingdom, respectively

Again, I understand there are other factors to weigh rather than just comparing numbers entirely but it just seems rather strange and I think most people that get into Thailand especially having gone through quarantine and everything, especially those who have been vaccinated I would think would probably find Thailand to be quite pleasant to be in and I would think based on the numbers, not particularly higher risk compared to the United States.