pentagara

The US doesn't participate in CRS, they have enforced FATCA reporting globally instead.

Singapore today is in every way as multi-cultural as Thailand from a white person's perspective, just with more rules. As a foreigner, you are categorized in three buckets (citizen, permanent resident and other - the latter can be tourist or tax paying employee with visa) plus your race. The three buckets determine, which price you pay in anything that is public service or health care (3-tierd pricing in SG vs. 2-tierd pricing in Thailand). To become a permanent resident (or citizen) in Singapore you have to strengthen the ethnic status quo and cohesion of society. On your first visa application you state your race and you're categorized accordingly. Singapore is majority ethnic Han-Chinese, followed by Malay and Indian. Whites are a single digit percentage. Accordingly, if you want to become permanent resident nowadays as an employee on Employment Pass coming from Mainland China working eg. in one of the 'Singaporean', mainland Chinese founded tech companies (or also any other respected company), you'll easily get it after completing your first round of full year taxes about 1.5 years in. These days, as a white person, you won't get it even after living and working in Singapore for 10 years on an Employment Pass. Forget about ever being able to retire in Singapore, even if you buy property at the inflated 60% stamp duty you have to pay as someone who just works there, but is not considered a permanent resident. After ending your job, you are a tourist and are required to leave. You will never become a permanent resident or citizen in today's Singapore, unless you're a billionaire trying to evade US taxes. Then they do grant you citizenship, since that is the one and only exception (i.e. bringing lots of money to Singapore, in the 100m USD range and up). Mind you, things in Singapore have changed massively in this regard since the immigration wave of about 2009. It's one of the most xenophobic countries I've ever been to so far (as a white person, admittedly). It's also a very friendly country, as long as you know your place. You'll just never be part of it. Singapore in this sense is very, very Southeast Asian.

Yeah, that surprised me as well, but the index seems to be focused on power and not geography. The US is not a South American country either, but they have overthrown governments there and installed the dictators that were most favorable to their economic interests. So I guess few would debate that the US is among the most important South American powers. Considering the extensive permanent military presence of the US in Asia, the index doesn't seem to be fully off, I suppose.

KMUTT is considered a university and not a school with school children. The rules on online classes are up to the university and most likely will be unchanged. The governor did not overrule the national government. Based on the regulation published in the royal gazette (which is what makes something a law - and that's what counts, not any news reports or interviews), the national government left the rules for restaurants and schools up to the governors to decide.

There's barely any country that offers no quarantine for fully vaxed. Israel reintoduced quarantine, the US doesn't allow any non-resident entries from many countries including all of Europe, vaccinated or not. European countries let in some non-residents that are vaccinated, but whether it's quarantine free depends on the country you go to and where you're from. Bad luck if you're in Thailand and want to go to the UK for example. In Asia, good luck entering anywhere, be it with or without quarantine or vaccination.

Disagreed. It's useful to be vaccinated, when cases are high - like right now in Thailand. Barely anyone has two AZ now (one AZ doesn't help with delta), and even less in Thailand have two Biontec/Pfizer or Moderna, unless they are hiso and such or got it abroad, since these are in very high demand also among the Thai, not just the foreigners. Since both Sinovac and Pfizer loose efficacy after roughly 6 months (Sinovac a bit quicker) if you're not infected within this time, it's not a big deal if you get boosters in 6-12 months. Boosters are likely advisable in any case (depending on the mutation situation then), plus the booster then should also take care of the travel issue. If you need to travel right now though to a country that has vaccines and is picky about them, just bite the quarantine bullet (10 days home quarantine - hey that's a walk in the park compared to Thai rules) and then take care of vaccinations there, be it booster or first time shots. As for those who say Sinovac is useles (or even Pfizer is useless with Moderna being the last remaining): You might feel that way, but the numbers prove you wrong. Chile largely used Sinovac, has a very high vaccination rate (about 70% of the full population fully vaccinated, i.e. two jabs) and has now a case load of 50 new infections per day per 1m people. Switzerland has 50% of the population fully vaccinated (only mRNA) and has a caseload now of 259 per day per 1m. The threshold found in most countries incl. Israel for vaccinations to start showing an impact on the incidence numbers is about 50% fully vaccinated. Now, Thailand has 7.5% of the population fully vaccinated (reminder: one single AZ shot shows no impact against delta, 90% of infections are now delta). Basically Thailand is still unvaccinated on a population level, and that is not because of Sinovac. Official case load is 312 per day. In contrast to Switzerland, more people in Thailand wear masks which seems to prevent numbers spiralling completely out of control like they did in India. Long story short: The issue of Thailand is not that it has used Sinovac. If it had vaccinated people with Sinovac like Chile did, numbers would be low now. The issue of Thailand is that the country decided last year that it can wait with mass-vaccinations until June 2021 (reminder: now is August 2021) and on top decided that it only needs to buy vaccines that would cover about 50% of the population. Both were miscalculations.

There's no country that I am aware of that lifted restrictions successfully (i.e. no major increase in hospitalizations or deaths) without having the vast majority of the population fully vaccinated (>>70% of adults, two jabs). This includes Iceland, UK and Israel. Thailand either has to do a major lockdown with systematic contact tracing and testing, or muddle through until >50% of the full population are double vaccinated +2 weeks. That's the threshold that's been observed with other countries. Below 50% double vaccinated, there was no major impact. unvaccinated and vaccinated, since vaccinated people that are infected with delta will spread it as well, they just won't feel they are sick themselves

Well, as in many things Covid, it's clearly exponential growth. So tomorrow it should be 8-12 weeks, I suppose... ????

So what do you call a 'natural' infection with the virus and studying its impact on a subject? Is that a non-lab rat experiment? In that case I'd rather be the lab rat, where I get a muzzled virus or a replica to train on first. It's good to have volunteers for natural infections though, from a scientific perspective.

They have probably done an antibody titer test - as the article suggests ('unit'). That's a quite good indicator based on current knowledge and could also be published. Still, it's preliminary. You're talking about something like a phase 3 trial which cannot be done in a few weeks. Waiting a few months till those results could be in might not be smart either though. Besides, also phase 3 trial data is actually not sufficient to draw good, comparable conclusions. You'd also need daily tests and gene sequencing for those who are infected to check for variants. Both were not done for phase 3 trials for most vaccines including Pfizer/Biontech and Moderna.