@Stuart ********

the symptoms of dengue fever are normally very different to covid and a few dozen deaths from that does nothing to suggest the thai government is hiding tens of thousands of covid deaths, and hundreds of thousands of covid hospitalisations, as they would need to be doing if covid is anything like as prevalent here as it is in the west. the only similarity between covid and dengue is how seriously the thai government takes it (they follow up with every dengue fever case, survey the patient on their recent movements, and send pest control teams to areas where patterns emerge to try to eradicate the mosquitoes).

David Broadfoot exactly. a good testing system starts by testing those who come into direct contact with an infected person, then those who might have come into contact with them, and so on. after a few degrees of separation the probability of finding an infected person becomes so low that testing is almost certainly not going to find any more infected. hence, why the positivity rate is so much higher (by several orders of magnitude) in most western countries, compared to thailand and other countries in the far east.

@Stuart ********

it's impossible to eliminate all risks (many people cross thailand's land borders illegally every day for example). the key is about balancing risk and return. allowing visitors in from countries where the incidence of covid is similar to thailand (with the added condition of testing and 10 days quarantine) is so close to zero risk it may as well be zero (similar to risk of a new round of mad cow disease from imported beef), and when compared to the value to the economy it's a no brainer to allow visitors from those key asian markets to return.

@Rick ******

unless you believe hospitals across asia are just refusing to treat covid patients and the governments are hiding tens of thousands of dead bodies in secret mass graves and silencing all their friends, family, colleagues, and health workers, through some kind of men in black style memory eraser technology, then it's clear the incidence of covid over here is not comparable to over there.

@Stuart ********

yes covid acts the same but far less people are infected in east asian / south east asian countries than in europe / america, by several orders of magnitude in fact, so for example, the risk of an infected person slipping through quarantine is the same for 100 western tourists as it would be for 100,000 or 1,000,000 asian tourists, so obviously it makes sense to prioritize the latter.

@Christophe *********

the moped was invented in france and mopeds have caused tens of thousands more deaths in thailand than covid. should french citizens not be allowed to visit thailand?

@Rick ******

death count is the best way to judge the incidence of the virus. in most big western countries thousands of people are dying with covid every week. in east asia / south east asia countries it's been a few dozen in the last half year. it's like a different world.

@Paul ******

the incidence of the virus is so low in those 6 countries that the probability of an infected person producing false negative test results throughout 10 days quarantine and slipping into the thai public is basically zero

@William ******

the virus has been under control in china (and most of east asia / south east asia) for more than half a year. it's ridiculous how long this has taken considering every month without chinese tourists is another 50,000,000,000 baht lost to the thai economy.

@Steven *******************

yes. tourists from china (including hong kong and taiwan) contributed 608,085,840,000 baht to the thai economy in 2019. what's so difficult to understand?