Specialist

Do any of you know of a place in Bangkok that rents powered wheelchairs?

WELCOME BACK!!! It sounds like we are just going to miss each other. I'm flying in in late August, DEROS 8 Sep. If you will get in before I leave, first round is on me. Us founding members of the DVT/PE Survivors League - Bangkok Charter gotta stick together...

And Thanks, Coss!

This was SUPPOSED to be the Crazy Farang 65th Birthday Party, two years ago, but we all know what happened in 2020.

T minus two months AND COUNTING. Crazy Farang 67th Birthday Party is currently GO. Airline and hotel reservations are in place. Airline is confirmed and ticketed. I just put the hotel reservation in, after a quick phone call halfway around the planet to check on a room issue. Hotel said "No problem, just note it on the reservation.")

Crazy Farang 67th Birthday Party (delayed two years from 65th Birthday Party) is TENTATIVELY scheduled for late August 2022, pending the Thai government actually doing what they just announced AND assuming the hotel gets their act together.

Dallas, ca. 1995: Emerson, Lake, and Palmer.

I made it to a few of the Friday GTGs, had a great time with some great people. I miss them.

Mekong, the difference is that those vaccines actually worked. They actually conferred immunity. The COVID-19 "vaccines" do not confer immunity. If anything, they make the vaccinated person potentially MORE dangerous to everyone around him, by suppressing symptoms that would otherwise tell him to STAY HOME and NOT go out infecting everyone in sight. Yes, I'm exaggerating. Some.

Some of us decline the vaccination because we've already had the disease, are aware of the concept of "natural immunity", believe that it actually works, and see no reason to take two injections that, for us, apparently have no medical value. I had COVID-19 in March of 2020. I have not been reinfected, despite the fact that about one out of eight Americans is now confirmed to have had COVID-19. That's lots of opportunity for exposure since I had it the first time. I expect that I will eventually be compelled to get it, so that I can once again visit Bangkok and see friends I haven't seen in far too long.

Off-the-wall question. What are prices running on HDMI monitors in Bangkok? Reason I ask: I'm seriously considering, instead of hauling my Windoze notebook computer, hauling a Raspberry Pi and a portable USB hard drive, and picking up a cheap keyboard+mouse and monitor in town. The Pi and hard drive are a LOT smaller and lighter than the notebook. The keyboard and mouse, from just about anywhere in town, will be just about cheap enough to be disposable, and I suspect my regular hotel would not mind having an extra monitor for their office. I can do pretty much everything I need to do on the Pi.

That's entirely possible. The only reason we know I had COVID-19 is that, after a few days of what looked for all the world like an asthma exacerbation that was a bit more recalcitrant than usual (but nowhere near the worst I've seen, even in the last few years), I picked up an entirely-unrelated opportunistic bronchitis and coughed up a mouthful of green slime. I've been under standing orders for decades: when that happens, see the doctor and get antibiotics started, before the bronchitis gets a chance to put me in the hospital. (It has happened.) So I went in. The doctor ordered the antibiotics, agreed that this was almost certainly an asthma flare, but insisted on swabbing me for COVID-19 anyway, since I am one of the patients considered to be at sky-high risk for a bad outcome *IF* I get COVID-19. I emphasize at this point: I had NO symptoms, at any point, that clearly indicated a viral infection. No fever, no chills, no muscle aches and pains, NOTHING. The ONLY thing out of the ordinary was a funny taste in my mouth, and that could have been ANYTHING. I think we were both surprised a few days later when the test came back positive. (Interestingly enough, another COVID-19 test, taken the same day as the first, came back negative. The test depends on the swab actually catching something.) If it hadn't been for the bronchitis, we would never have known I'd had COVID-19.

Coss, a suggestion, if you can take it. Before you get the vaccine, do the antibody test and see if you have already had and recovered from COVID-19. I will admit that it is highly unlikely, given that Thailand locked down thoroughly, and has had very few confirmed cases, but it isn't impossible. I had it in the second half of March 2020. Long before the major US wave even got started. I have been tested SEVERAL times since then, because I was showing symptoms not inconsistent, and the doctors were worried about reinfection. (On the first re-test, the ER doc was SURE it was reinfection, but the test said otherwise.) There is considerable evidence out that showing that surviving COVID-19 confers much better immunity than any of the vaccines. ESPECIALLY the Sinovac, which appears to me to be just about (although not QUITE) worthless.

And why do you think it is that smallpox has not existed in the wild for a long time?

You have clearly never heard of smallpox.