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Thailand "Officially Drops" Masks?

Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing masks, kind of a bug bear for me in the last roughly 14-18 months, however long it has been, especially in light of the fact that there has been a lot of nonsense which has kind of floated around, especially the media analysis of this whole topic.

That being said, and I am a real believer in this, credit where credit is due and there is a lot of credit that is due in my opinion to policymakers here the past few weeks in really coming around the notion that some things need to start changing and they need to start changing pretty quickly. On that note I thought about making this video after reading a recent article in the Pattaya News, that is thepattayanews.com. I urge those who are watching this video, go check out that article. A lot more in there than what I am going to quote; a lot of interesting stuff. Article is titled: Thailand Officially Dropped Mask Mandate in late night Royal Gazette order. Quoting directly: "Thailand: The Thai Government, in a late night order released around 10:00 p.m. on June 23rd, 2022, has dropped a divisive mask mandate in all public areas. The Mandate previously required one to wear a mask in all public places even outdoors or alone. The wordage of the legally binding Royal Gazette order is as follows and a summary and not a word for word translation. "The Ministry of Public Health has moved to wear a mask or cloth mask as a voluntary practice." Quoting further: "It is recommended but not mandated to wear one in crowded areas and large groups of people and in poorly ventilated spaces. People at high risk of Covid-19 like the elderly with pre-existing conditions and at risk should wear a mask properly at all times. However this is not "mandated". More information in there, but that is kind of the gist of it. I would argue that the notion of "mandate" was never legally binding to begin with as we have discussed in a number of videos prior to this one. But long story short with respect to this is yeah, it is effectively gone, I am not going to continue harping on it because "why, what would be the point of that?" I am really happy that cooler heads have prevailed; we have seen the rule of reason prevail. I have never been one of these people that is like rabidly anti mask. As stated in the quote we just read, voluntary, it is voluntary now and it always should have been in my opinion and there should be no judgments made between those who choose to utilize that type of item and those who don't. 

So as far as I am concerned, this is a very good thing. I think that this is probably going to help tourism to a large extent. There are a lot of folks from a lot of different countries that are pretty well tired of that stuff and they are kind of ready, if they are going on vacation they would like to go on vacation and not have to go somewhere where they are kind of poked and prodded and told what to do and all of that good stuff. I think overall this is all a positive development and we will certainly keep you updated on this channel hopefully with further positive developments as the situation evolves.