OPINION

Home truths needed

It is hard to see how any Thai institution that respects the wise teachings of the Buddha could oppose a call to "search for the truth", (Editorial, May 14).

The life of the Buddha as he went from prince, to ascetic to enlightenment exemplifies the need to continually seek out the truth, even when it might be uncomfortable or contradict traditional prejudices.

The Buddha's teachings explicitly stress the importance of right understanding in all things, with none so unspeakable that the truth should be rejected in favour of ignorance. And as the Buddha's Kalama Sutta tells us, neither tradition nor authority, not even of monks, certainly not state officials, is any guarantee of truth, but that we must earnestly seek informed understanding by critically assessing, and reassessing in the light of new information, the sources available to us.

The efforts of the Progressive Movement would seem to align well with the precepts of Buddhism. Surely Thai institutions can comport themselves to similarly respect fundamental principles of Buddhist teaching?

Fifty-six people have so far died of Covid-19 in Thailand. Most are elderly and non-productive people suffering from obesity, diabetes or heart problems. That has quickly pushed almost 100% of Thai people to wear face masks as protection. Some 22,000 on average die in road accidents every year. They are mostly young and middle-aged, productive people. But only maybe half of motorbike riders wear helmets, which is not mandatory for children. Motorbikes account for 80% of deadly road accidents.

You often see riders wearing a mask but not a helmet which is ridiculous. If Thai motorbike riders accepted the law and helmets as the norm, just like the mask, over 10,000 lives could be saved annually.

But Covid-19 has actually had a positive effect on traffic safety. Thanks to draconian laws like the curfew, the ban on alcohol, travel ban and the need to stay and work at home (or having no work to drive to), 20 people die daily on the roads during lockdown versus 60 as before. That means 40 Thai lives are saved every day!

A note on the "Virus Tracker" statistics where US deaths are reported at over 80,000. But the US CDC was caught in a lie in their statistics and had to reduce the number of deaths to 45,000. And this includes deaths that happened from other causes. Many doctors and nurses have admitted they were forced to list things like motorcycle deaths, TB deaths and "old age" deaths in nursing homes as "coronavirus" deaths. This is all done by the deep state to keep the "corona panic" alive and to keep the lockdown so that more businesses will fail and the economy be ruined. The CDC mistake was caught a couple of weeks ago but the "virus tracker" still has US deaths at the old, greatly inflated number.