@Martin *******
don't believe everything the news tries to push down your throat. The protests are not what they are being presented as by the news, that by the way is owned, or controlled by Matichon LLC, that is owned by Thanathorn and his mother. They control or own all newspaper publications in Thailand. For the last year the protests have been reduced to just a few hundred diehard protesters that want to fight with the police. There are no more protests against the Monarchy. What is vastly different with these protesters than any other protest in the last 50 years, is that they are weekend protesters. They chose a Saturday, or Sunday to stage their protest at one of three different places now. The whole purpose of the protests now, and orchastrated by a very small group of people that provide the financing, is to entice the police to kill someone. I am a photojournalist. I actually go to these supposed protests, and on both sides. They are now simply a group of people that want to fight with the police, and others that want to watch this happen. I have pictures of some of these same people fighting with the police 7 years ago, but on the other side. These are not like past protests, and I've been covering them since 2003. These are weekend protesters that show up after work on a weekend day.
The vaccine situation is also being misrepresented by the same news outlet. Before this delta variant Thailand was recognized worldwide as in a tie with NZ as the best country in the world at containing this virus, and had already made plans, and went into partnership with Oxford university to develop and manufacture a vaccine in Thailand, and that happened at the fastest pace it could, by putting it under the umbrella of the Monarchy to eliminate all the red tape to get it done. Then this delta variant hit, with no one worldwide ready for it. Thailand before this variant was on track to develop, and manufacture vaccines in Thailand to vaccinate everyone based on the control they had on the virus before the delta variant. Other countries, that were not setting up to manufacture their own vaccines flooded the very few manufacturers with orders before the delta variant hit. Now, when Thailand, on schedule, started mass distribution and vaccinations on June 7th, they are on track to have everyone that can be vaccinated vaccinated by the end of the year. Before June 7th a little over 1million had been vaccinated, but now two months later 14 million have been vaccinated. Sure you'll say but that is only one shot. They haven't been fully vaccinated, forgetting, and again misinformed by the media, that the established timeframe between the first and second shot of Astrazenica is 12 weeks, meaning under international standards those vaccinated on, and after June 7th aren't due to receive their second dose until September. Now, the Chinese Sinovac vaccine only has one week delay before the second dose, so those showing as fully vaccinated have mostly received the Chinese vaccine, and for the number of doses that arrived from China, the numbers match up. You have to remember, no where in the world, with any of the vaccines, have children under 14 years of age been approved to receive any vaccine. So of the 64million+ people in Thailand less than 50 million of them are actually elligible to be vaccinated, and at the rate people are being vaccinated now, it will be done by the end of the year, if not sooner.