OPINION

Eye on wrong test

Re: "Pre-travel tests set for axe," (BP, March 17).

The proposal to increase tourist numbers by scrapping the requirement for a RT-PCR test within 72 hours of arriving in Thailand misses the target.

The thing that deters travellers, especially families, is the fear of a positive day one test and being locked up in an expensive room for most of their holiday. Even residents are subjected to this when otherwise they would be free to isolate at home.

Keep the pre-arrival test if you must, but scrap the day one test.

Re: "Covid-19 to be endemic from July," (BP, March 10).

It is well past time for all Covid-related political/governmental proscriptions to be firmly backed by science and scientific-based evidence.

For Dr Kiattiphum Wongrajit, permanent secretary for the Public Health Ministry, to declare that people will never be able remove their masks even when Covid is relegated to endemic status is a perfect example.

I would like for the Public Health Ministry to actually demonstrate physically how the porous surgical masks can block a virus or viral particle.

Pretty easy thing to demonstrate since all you have to do is force virus-filled air through the cloth and show all the captured viruses in the mask and monitor the air to show that no virus passed through or around. If this cannot be done, then the masking should be discontinued. Simple science, simple solution.

But anyone with a slight modicum of biology and medical knowledge knows this is impossible.

It is time to move from hysteria and fear based-responses with regards to Covid to an evidence-based response.

If not, the draconian measures that have extended a "2 week lockdown to flatten the curve" to a "2 year lockdown" will continue ad infinitum.

Re: "Govt warns against sharing Lisa Blackpink's whiskey ads," (BP, March 16).

The reported crackdown on netizens who post and share images of Blackpink superstar Lisa Manoban promoting a brand of whiskey raises several questions:

1) Where can we see the forbidden images?

2) Is this vindictiveness because Lisa declined the Thai government's invitation to join Andrea Bocelli in that New Year's Eve countdown?

3) Are Thais really so much less mature than the citizens of the rest of the world that exposure to an image of alcohol in an advertisement really has them rushing to get a bottle before jumping behind the wheel of a Ferrari for a high-speed spin down Sukhumvit, with or without cop-cleaning en route?

4) If good citizens unsuspectingly Google "Lisa" and the forbidden images pop up by transmission over digital media, who is legally liable for the severe punishment being threatened: Google, or the innocent star gazer, or the star herself, or the star-making gods?

Perhaps the Bangkok Post could contact the most righteously threatening Office of the Alcohol Control Committee and make some enquiries.

If so, it could perhaps seek answers to these and other pressing questions that Lisa's latest cavortings to global renown for Thailand to piggy back on must raise for uniquely immature Thais who might be exposed to such forbidden knowledge of good and evil.