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As the title of this video suggests, we are basically posing the question: "can't we just call it what it is and move on with it?" When we say it we are talking about here I'm going to quote directly from a recent article from ASEAN NOW, aseannow.com, the article is titled: MOPH (that is Ministry of Public Health) intends to manage COVID -19's transition into endemic this year. Quoting directly: "Dr. Kiatiphum, (and Dr. Kiatiphum as I recall from another video is the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Public Health) quoting further: "Dr. Kiatiphum said Public Health authorities will be managing this wave of infections in a way that enables COVID to transition into an endemic as more people gain immunity." Quoting further: "Department of Medical Science's Director General, Supakit Sirilak said at present COVID is not causing severe symptoms but transmissions are occurring more rapidly." This comports with data you are seeing all over the world. I want to quote this again: "COVID is not causing severe symptoms but transmissions are occurring rapidly." Yeah, it is more transmissible; less deadly; less symptomatic. It is just on the whole for lack of a better term and I am a layman, but it can only be described as it is getting weaker. Then also and we quoted this in another video but I think it I think it puts a fine point on it. This is from the Bangkok Post, bangkokpost.com, the article is titled: Ministry to make COVID endemic this year. I like the title, like the Ministry can make this happen which seems odd to me but okay. Quoting directly: "The Ministry of Public Health intends "to make COVID-19 endemic this year" because the current wave showed mild symptoms and people cooperated with vaccination efforts. "Consequently the disease can do no harm. Besides there are effective operations for treatment and the slowdown of outbreaks. When the disease becomes endemic, business and activities can quickly be restored", said the Ministry of Public Health Permanent Secretary. 

So what I would posit is look we are going on almost two years of this thing. It has spread; it is spreading around; it is around all the time. Now it is going even further up, again with lower symptoms, lower fatalities. I think there was an article that talked about they found the one death, I don't have it in front of me but I saw it right before we made this video. They cited one death here in Thailand thus far from the latest iteration and then the question becomes the whole “with or from” which I don't want to get into all of that but that seems to be a real issue in other countries including the USA and the UK where they said well "is it with it or from it", was it somebody who otherwise had issues. Again I am not going to get into all of that here. My point is at what point can we call it what it is? To my mind it seems like it has pretty well gotten everywhere and it is going everywhere and we can move on. As we noted in other videos, if it is labeled that way, they have stated in the Ministry of Public Health has stated pretty unequivocally that "look we can basically get rid of all the restrictions and move on with our lives." Quite frankly we have had two years now where 20% of GDP stemming primarily from the tourism sector, although I would even wonder if that might be a conservative number, if there might be more knock-on impact to the overall GDP when you look at it for what it is. How much of the GDP of Thailand has just been kicked out? It is like having your guts kicked out in terms of how bad this really has been. On top of this, this isn't just one year and I am not laughing. It's more time than that. We are coming up on two full years now of dealing with these policies and as I have discussed in other videos, I fail to see where there has been any data to show that it has done much of any good. However, we do know what it has done which is knocked out nearly 20% of GDP just in tourism terms and that is from the Bangkok Post. They talked about it went from 20% GDP down to like 1.67% that was cited; we cited that in another video on this channel. I mean that is a huge number. On top of that they are just looking at the tourism component that comes from that, they are not looking at the knock on that comes from that.

For those who are unaware, Thailand is a very unique country for a lot of different reasons but in terms of Tourism there are a lot of tourists who become expats. They may stay here; they get on a plane, they leave and they come back and decide to retire here. A lot of folks come here and decide to open up a small business. Those numbers I don't think are quantified in terms of Tourism so on top of this there is a lot of FDI which can indirectly stem from "tourism". So long story short, it has been devastating economically and if it is just a matter of labeling something, my question is at what point do we just get on with labeling it what it is and move on with our lives?