OPINION

In good faith

Re: "Support for nuns long overdue", (Editorial, Sept 18).

Thank you for your editorial. We must remember that our Loving Creatrix created us male and female in the image of a loving human. Hurrah for Buddhist nuns and their good and holy Work. We're all in this creation together.

Regal humility

Re: "Gracious wisdom", (PostBag, Sept 20).

I fully agree with Khun Felix when he wrote: "The Bangkok Post quotes my late queen's honest wisdom that 'There can be no doubt, of course, that criticism is good for people and institutions that are part of public life. No institution -- city, monarchy, whatever -- should expect to be free from the scrutiny of those who give it their loyalty and support, not to mention those who don't.'" Bluntly and unequivocally well said.

"Nor need more be said, save perhaps that Queen Elizabeth II welcomed the benefit of knowing to a percentage point the publicly varying degree of her own personal popularity and that of the institution which she graciously headed for seven decades. Could any prefer incomprehension to such highly pertinent knowledge of reality?"

I note that it was our own beloved national father who said, in his 2005 birthday address broadcast: "The King is a human being and as such should be subject to criticism. Charges against those accused of lèse-majesté should be dropped, and those held in jail for lèse-majesté should be released. The use of the lèse-majesté law ultimately damages the monarchy." (Grossman and Faulder, King Bhumibol Adulyadej: A Life's Work, Palace-approved). Thus, the authors concluded that, "Thailand's law of lese-majeste has one very prominent critic: King Bhumibol."

I suggest that our King Rama 9 and England's Queen Elizabeth II are of one mind in that respect. Yet we Thais stubbornly continue to defy our national father's clearly expressed wishes.

Masked mania

Re: "Plans drawn up for endemic Covid-19", (BP, Sept 22).

Since the Ministry of Public Health will soon announce that Covid-19 has reached endemic status they should accompany their announcement with a new public health message warning about the health hazards created by the continued use of masks.

We have known for many decades that masks do nothing to stop the transmission of respiratory viruses. We also know that masks cause increased respiratory bacterial damage to the lungs since they create an ideal warm moist environment that facilitates bacterial growth. Furthermore, modern disposable masks deposit polypropylene and terephthalates irreversibly deep into the lungs.

Surgeries performed by masked personnel correlate with more infected patients and mask-wearing correlates with problems in heart rate, hypoxia, alertness, and cognitive impairment. Numerous studies demonstrate that children who grow up in a masked school environment suffer learning disabilities and reduced IQ. It is now time that public health messaging reflected the truth.

Only facts, please

Re: "Up with ivermectin", (PostBag, Sept 16).

This is why we need fact-checking.

May I thank Mr Setter for proving my point?

He believes a link with laughable "analysis" of studies, most of which themselves were flawed to start with, and has decided that this is "fact".

That he makes no attempt to verify what is posted, and that he hasn't even noticed that this latest round of drivel doing the WhatsApp rounds has no one's name on it, doesn't raise any red flags, such is his desperation to believe it.

He has illustrated perfectly why the Post should fact-check letters; it doesn't even need to be every letter, just those of a few posters that insist on repeating any old nonsense they find on the internet.

Snake oil sales

Re: "Fresh focus needed", (PostBag, Sept 22).

Ron Martin wants to know why the media doesn't report the death tally of people who died from causes other than Covid-19. When I note that in America over 50% of American male meat-eaters will die from heart disease or a heart attack (Source: Diet for a New America by Pulitzer Prize nominee John Robbins). I'm accused of imposing my vegan diet on people. But apparently, it's not an imposition when entire economies were shut down because of the much lower number of "Covid deaths". (Most of those deaths were due to other causes).

Although 160 million people have been thrown into poverty because of lockdowns, the vaccine industry has made tens of billions of dollars out of this madness and is loving every minute of it.

If there is one point I've been trying to make for the last 40 years it's that modern medicine is a corporate business and it has absolutely nothing to do with any concerns for human health.

Killer haze

Re: "Boost air pollution control", (Editorial, Sept 11).

I do not need to tell you that smoke or haze or PM2.5 or air pollution or whatever you want to call it is a killer. I mean, you may not know the actual numbers, but 29,000 of your countrymen died of PM2.5 inhalation last year. (This year, untimely rains have dampened the problem temporarily.) You do, however, know that this stuff is bad for you, right? So, the question is "Why isn't the government cheerleading for efforts to reduce the particulate matter count, or at least warning us about PM2.5's dangers with a huge public health campaign?

I find this unacceptable personally and as a public citizen. I mean, seriously, we are a small country, so it is not surprising that our 29,000 deaths pale in comparison to India's 1.9 million particulate deaths, many of which are from PM2.5 generated by burning crop waste. (The government of India declares PM2.5 from crop waste burning to be the third-biggest source of PM2.5 in the nation). Still, the situation in India could not be more different. In India, a massive, nationwide blitz of "PM2.5 Kills" posters and fliers, TV and radio ads, backed by the World Health Organization (WHO), have told people in no uncertain terms to be careful. (Speaking of particulates in particular, the WHO director-general, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, points out that the WHO's new Air Quality Guidelines indicate that they hit "people in low- and middle-income countries the hardest". New guidelines or not, Thailand only recently accepted international standards for allowable PM2.5 very recently. Ironically, in Thailand -- which suffers from more deaths from PM2.5 per capita than India -- no one in government says a word. Sure, haze may close Delhi every year, but here, Bangkok alone saw 4,240 premature deaths from PM2.5 in 2021, more than half from cardiovascular causes and more than 300 from lung cancer and other respiratory diseases.

Back in the 1960s, Tom Lehrer, an MIT mathematician who moonlighted as a comic singer, sang a song called Pollution, Pollution that shifted the notion of filth and pollution to developing countries. Today, unfortunately, it seems as if Thailand has taken up the song's Americo-centric warning: "Don't drink the water (gag) and don't breathe the air."

Here at home, we residents of Thailand are, of course, proud to be first whenever possible -- for example, we are immensely proud of our first-in-Asia record of motor accident deaths and our regular alternation with Ethiopia for the most auto accidents per capita in the world. (The boasts that Bangkok or Chiang Mai had the worst air in the world in 2021 still boggle my mind.) Still, however, PM2.5 kills more of us than automobile accidents, drugs, alcohol, and murder -- combined. Think about that…

Are you happy, yet? Nice to be first in the world, yes? Well, maybe not.

Is there anything to be done about PM2.5? I think so. I think that a big, loud, national public health campaign against the evils of smoke, haze, PM2.5, air pollution or whatever you want to call it could make a big difference. After all, we run regular campaigns against drunk driving, alcohol use, drugs and crime. Why not a public health campaign against the dangers of smoke? Maybe such a campaign would do nothing because the government seems to have no effective means to reduce PM2.5 levels. (India certainly does not, either.) But I mean, at least people would know, right? And citizen knowledge is a key foundation stone of any democracy. Seriously, why do we have major government grants for public health education (e.g., SSS) when we support nothing that fingers smoke, haze, PM2.5 or whatever you want to call it, a killer bigger than motor accidents, alcohol, drugs, and murder?

Covid platform

Why is the Bangkok Post still giving a platform to Covid sceptics and conspiracy theorists? These views form a really tiny percentage of the population and are just a fringe element in our society.

Yet the Bangkok Post is publishing letters every other day from the same handful of people explaining how the Covid pandemic was all a hoax, and that the vaccines don't work.

It's inexplicable why you persist in publishing this nonsense. The vast majority of us have all had our vaccines.

Thailand is now downgrading from a pandemic to endemic status. No one really talks about Covid anymore, as we have all moved on with our lives. Everyone except the Bangkok Post letters page that is.