OPINION

Booze ban no answer

Re: "Booze sale 'grace period' on the cards", (BP, April 29).

The continuing ban on alcohol sales makes no sense.

I support measures to combat the coronavirus, but the ban on alcohol sales simply doesn't help. It is killing businesses and creating poverty among laid-off workers. It is at the sharp end that this ban is most damaging.

In the hospitality industry, there is real pain being felt by laid-off workers and business owners alike. Laid-off workers have no money in their pockets and businesses already struggling before the crisis are now staring into the abyss of bankruptcy.

To business owners in this situation, the alcohol ban feels like a kick in the teeth. It isn't enough to allow restaurants to open selling only food.

Years of the overly strong baht and increasing costs mean that most proper restaurants are only viable if they can also sell alcohol.

The hospitality industry is the central pillar of tourism in Thailand, as well as serving a vital social role, in that it provides employment for many hundreds of thousands of less well-educated Thais.

Quite apart from anything else, the ban is universally unpopular and undermines the goodwill the authorities need to make the anti-Covid-19 measures effective.

No other country has instigated an alcohol ban, for good reason.

Of course insist on proper precautions to keep Covid-19 under control, but with new infection rates now firmly in single figures, I urge the government to act fast to lift the ban on alcohol sales.

On top of the virus

Thailand is doing well in the fight against Covid-19. Despite being the first country outside China to confirm a case, prompt and decisive action has so far kept the death toll down to 54.

The UK, however, by listening to those who said the vast majority of the public have little to fear from the virus reacted slowly and weakly. The death toll has just passed 20,000. Be resolute.

Downside of masks

Inhaling oxygen is our main source of life, and exhalation is one of the ways we expel toxins from our bodies.

The mask has an effect where the wearer inhales his own elevated CO2. The physiological effects may include changes in visual performance, modified exercise endurance, headaches and dyspnea.

The psychological effects include decreased reasoning and alertness, increased irritability, and short-term memory loss.

My friend lamented yesterday that he could run only two rounds of 1.3 kilometres around our lake with the mandatory mask. Normally he runs five rounds easily.

Boost your immune system breathing properly and naturally. In 1931, Otto Warburg won a Nobel Prize for determining that only oxygen-starved cells will mutate and become cancerous.

That should be proof enough to learn how to breathe properly!

Shifting the problem

Re: "Top cop removed following raid", (BP, April 29).

The Thai habit of transferring police, and other government officials, to other posts after being caught negligent in their duties and responsibilities, is analogous to the Catholic Church transferring paedophile priests from one diocese or parish to another.

It does nothing to stop the rot. It just moves the problem to another area.