14 Days hotel or area quarantine
7 Days hotel or area quarantine
I will only travel if there is no requirement to quarantine
I have no plans to travel to Thailand
Dodger (July 5th, 2021)
The poll has thrown up some very clear trends.
A few hardy stalwarts are willing to brave Quarantine in exchange for a winter of sun and whichever recreational distractions may continue to operate.
For the majority of us, however, Quarantine and holidays are mutually exclusive.
The current situation presents a triple-headed dilemma - the need to Quarantine in Thailand, the ongoing covid outbreak with its associated lockdown and the need to self-isolate for up to 14 days on return to your home country from a non-green list country.
These three issues will have to be resolved before short-term tourism can return in any meaningful sense.
So, when will Thailand do away with Quarantine, emerge from the current covid wave and move onto the green list of covid-safe countries?
Any chance of meeting for a beer in Pattaya in December?
Wouldn't worry too much about this, as if the numbers and prior 20 months of experience is anything to go off of, Thailand is about to descend into chaos starting right away.
I know I've written off this year already, as it's simply not going to happen. Plus seen a news report now, that I guess due to that large outbreak in India a few months back we now have the "Delta Plus" variant, which sure enough is more transmissible and lethal, blah, blah. Plus I'm pretty sure Canada is one of the most vaccinated countries in the world now, even way ahead of the US, so I'm pretty comfortable hanging out here for now.
This only goes away once we have 85%+ of the world's population fully vaccinated with quality vaccines, irregardless of any individual country.
When they actually a get reliable vaccine(s)...vaccinate the majority of the population...and get the bars and prostitutes back into action.
Then, and only then will the things you listed get accomplished. All these Sandbox Schemes are doing is complicating the process and inducing more and more risk. No vaccine - and it's back to the Flintstone Days!
Realistically, you're looking at another 3 years, afterwhich this will become more of an endemic than a pandemic. I think that's probably a realistic scenario.
We need to get this thing to stop mutating and evolving into stronger variants, and that's not going to happen until we have 80% of the world's population vaccinated. I think most nations in Africa are sitting at around 1% right now, so we still have a ways to go. Until then, this thing will continue mutating into stronger and more transmissible strains, and will continue to wreak havoc on the world.
Even once if and when we finally get the global pandemic under control, eradication of Covid is near impossible. Instead, it's more than likely going to turn into an endemic, so you'll still have to be cautious about it as it'll be around, but just not so much anymore. It's just something we'll learn to live with, and adopt into our daily lives.
Here's a good example. Israel, a poster boy example of an excellent avvination rollout, is now having issues with variants. Cases have recently jumped by 50%.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sz4uYqVxQss
The sandbox schemes introduce very little additional risk. Most of the virus mutations already get into Thailand over the borders from Myanmar or Cambodia.
Thailand either needs to control movement at all borders, or not bother. Controlling movement everywhere is difficult if sooner or later someone will take a bribe to let people through.
With covid widespread in Thailand, keeping controls now is like shutting the door after the horse has bolted.
Also, opening a Phuket sandbox is one way of testing out what works and what doesn't in a small & self contained part of Thailand.
Dodger (July 5th, 2021)
No, if you do things properly, the restriction of movement works and works well.
For one, restriction of movement drops case numbers so as to not overload a nation's healthcare system. This is well documented and proven now, as we've seen multiple healthcare systems getting blown out of the water now, most recently India.
Second, it's proven that the vaccines work and they work well. If you can restrict movement and buy enough time to get needles into arms, you're going to save a whole lot of lives that would otherwise be lost.
You seem to be under the impression that Covid is already here, so might as well just let it wash over the population, because hey, not that many percentage of people die anyway. We just recently did that in India, and it was an absolute nightmare. Canisters of oxygen were selling on the black market for 50x their list price. Do you really think that's a good model as to what everyone should fllow?
Cases have jumped in holland too, this last week. 300.000 mostly young people were tested over the weekend, and that's where the big spike is coming from. What's important is that hospitalization is still going down and deaths too. When vaccinated people get infected but not seriously ill, I would say "mission accomplished." Hoping for more is just dreaming.
goji (July 5th, 2021), StevieWonders (July 5th, 2021)