Transcript of the above video:

I don't do many of these videos very often, these opinion videos especially these kind of more broad opinion videos, but a lot of things have been hitting me the last few weeks. Things I have been reading, comments on our channel, correspondence, that there just seems to be a general theme that I find a little bit concerning and for that matter disconcerting. 

There was a recent article from the Bangkok Post print edition, and it is Saturday April 10, 2021. This was in the Post Bag and I am going to go ahead and read this. The title of the submission was: Reckless Behavior. Quoting directly: "Regarding “contracting the disease is not a crime” (in quote April 8), Bhumjaithai Supachai politician Jaisamut defends Transport Minister Saksayam Chidchob for not revealing the complete timeline of his activities once he tested positive for COVID-19. But the Minister's behaviour is indefensible. Yes, contracting the disease is not a crime -- but once he tested positive, Mr. Saksayam's duty as a Cabinet Minister and role model -- is to come squeaky clean as to who he met and when. If the names are confidential, he can tell only the Health Authorities, but those he contacted, regardless of profession, must be tested immediately. To do otherwise is reckless and should be a crime for it puts others in mortal danger. Come clean Minister."  

I am not going to get into the issue surrounding COVID. I think people can go out there, they can research the fatality rates, everything associated with COVID and come to their own conclusions about the "mortal danger" posed by this disease. That is not really the point of this video. The point of this video is I have just noticed in recent months especially, it just seems to be hitting almost a fever pitch here recently, the notion that people just don't really have any privacy. A year ago I remember I saw some things about some Government Officials in Chicago were just willy-nilly divulging confidential patient information in the midst of all this. Again, where you have a pandemic there are extenuating circumstances. Public Health rules and laws come into play that do create a different framework for analysis regarding privacy. That said, my opinion is the presumption should be the notions of privacy that we usually have and anything outside of that should be viewed as something of an anomaly only to be used in extreme circumstances. That doesn't seem to be the case. It seems to be the case more and more the people are just accepting the notion that people have to "come clean" or provide all this information about their whereabouts and their personal medical history to the point of even having things honestly put in their body to check for this virus. Now look, I understand where you are going to try to get on an airplane; that carrier wants you to go ahead and do that and perhaps the accepting country which you may not be a citizen of wants foreigners to undergo certain protocols, but again our default position, we really need to I hope, bear in mind that longer term, we want to maintain notions of privacy and in the hectic times we are in we can have a tendency to just forget those things and these are things that were fought long and hard for, Notions of Privacy, and are things that my opinion we should hold near and dear to our heart because if you have no privacy, really what do you got? If everybody can just at any point tell you what to do or tell you that you have to divulge XYZ information or you have to undergo a medical exam whether or not you really want to, is that the kind of society we really want to be living in? 

Again, food for thought but I just have found it interesting in the last few weeks especially it seems to be really acute, a lot of calls for just actions that not just don't even take into account a notion of privacy, they are sort of bandied about as if there never was a notion of privacy and I just find that concerning. I don't know how other people feel. Again, maybe reasonable people can disagree but I just don't think we want to "throw the baby out with the bathwater" and just let all our privacy go in the midst of this situation.