OPINION

It's just common sense!

Re: "Too lax on Covid curbs?" (Editorial, Jan 6).

And for good reason. China has basically been locked down for almost three years. Now, all of a sudden the country has completely opened up. So something has to give. The Chinese people have not developed enough natural immunity to Covid-19; so it's preposterous to now allow them to travel anywhere with just over a month of opening.

The Beijing government should not allow Chinese people to travel freely around the globe for at least a few months.

So, Thailand too should put up some curbs on Chinese travellers. It is not at all discriminatory to do so, as some top doctors in this country have insinuated; it's common sense! It has been reported that about half of all Chinese arrivals to the Italian city of Milan tested positive for the coronavirus. This should raise red flags for the authorities.

Given that most Chinese have received accusingly sub-standard Sinovac vaccines, a more prudent approach would be to test all incoming Chinese arrivals for Covid-19; or even better, ask for both.

Better indoor air quality

Re: "Natural immunity," (PostBag, Dec 23).

Here we get it from the USA, directly from the horse's mouth, the mask does not work, but improving the indoor air quality does!

Many US newspapers are reporting about this, here from the Tennessee Star: White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator Dr Ashish Jha acknowledged last week what many doctors and scientists have been saying since the start of the Covid pandemic: that "no study … shows that masks work that well" to stop the spread of virus infection.

You know, most experts believe that if we make some basic investments in indoor air quality, we can reduce all respiratory infections by 30–80%. So, you're never going to get the kind of benefit from mandatory year-round masking, as you would from making substantial improvements in indoor air quality. How does this fit in with the discussion in Thailand?

A global forum

Re: "Aid multilateralism," (PostBag, Dec 31).

The letter is another effort by Ioan Voicu to lament the decline of multilateralism and promote its virtues.

If multilateralism actually accomplished what Voicu advertises, namely to promote cooperation, his suggestions might have merit.

The reality is that multilateralism is an absolute failure from the perspective of advancing humanity's interests, as is clearly evidenced by the UN, the EU, the WTO, the IMF and Nato.

The absurd idealism of diffuse reciprocity when combined with almost universal corruption and the toxic ideologies of leftist socialism, which now underpin all multilateral arrangements of nation-states, have led us to a global crisis.

Rather than depend upon the non-existent goodwill and corrupt governance of unelected dictocrats, we must create a new Global Cooperative Forum. All citizens of the world should be able to participate equally via the internet.

If the 8 billion agree that war is an unacceptable solution to any problem, that shared resources and tolerance is right, which of the multilateral monsters Voicu venerates would dare to actively oppose them?

Taxi scammers are back

Re: "The rebound from the pandemic lockdown is nothing short of amazing. NICE!"

Not so nice are the taxi mafia scammers that are also back in numbers, parked outside every hotel in the tourist district, relentlessly preying on our guests. These professional scammers posing as taxi drivers, have zero interest in the business of taxi driving.

They have one goal, cheating every tourist they encounter. Refusing to use the meter, overcharging and slick attempts to deliver the passengers to a network of well known tourist scam enterprises: the scam tailor, the scam jeweller, the scam Patpong upstairs show, the scam seafood restaurant.

There are plenty of honest taxi drivers with good intentions but they get chased out of the tourist hotel territory that is "owned" by these taxi punks. Last week, I had a conversation with my Sukhumvit Soi 11 hotel manager, conveying how I was rejected by 10 taxis in a row, at the front door of the hotel.

The hotel manager shrugged: "This is Thailand. The taxis parked in front of the hotel pay authorities a daily fee to lease the rights to the soi. Every taxi parked on the soi is in on it." If they are each paying a daily fee as people are saying, that is a lucrative side business indeed for the boys in brown.