Amazing Thailand was the first country outside of China to have a confirmed COVID-19 case.
That was way back in February 2020, just three months after it had been “discovered” in China.
Two months later there were 2,700 cases in the country.
That’s an amazingly small number when you consider that the virus landed in the US after Thailand and by the time there were 2,700 cases in Thailand, there were over 700,000 cases in the US.
Sure, there were probably more people going to the US. But you wouldn’t expect the virus to be 2x or 3x more virulent in the US than Thailand. Let alone two hundred and fifty times more virulent.
And then an amazing thing happened. Thailand went into lockdown (not Australia or New Zealand style — you could still go anywhere you wanted between the hours of 5am to 11pm) and the virus disappeared.
While the US and other countries were seeing the cases double every 6-8 weeks, the virus all but disappeared in Thailand in just four weeks of lockdown light.
Nearly 100% of all reported cases after May were from foreigners bringing the virus into the country, and one mysterious case of a French woman getting COVID-19 just two days after coming out of quarantine.
The new on that disappeared very quickly and COVID once again disappeared from the country. Lucky she didn’t infect anyone!
Other people in Thailand since caught COVID-19, of which 100% were from foreigners (mainly Burmese).
Still, it was under control.
Then in December, some foreign workers arrived at a port with reports of fever and other symptoms. They tested positive for COVID-19.
Still, it was limited to foreigners.
Until some overzealous official decided to start testing locals. Ah crap! Didn’t he get the memo?
Thailand’s cases jumped from 247 to 800 on December 20, thanks to that idiot.
Immediately, other officials around the country started “contact tracing” and testing a bunch of people who may be at risk and viola! within two weeks the “local cluster” had spread to 56 of Thailand’s 77 provinces, with those 806 cases increasing more than 5-fold to 4504.
A five-fold increase in two weeks. Now that’s impressive! Other countries were taking 5-10 weeks to achieve that.
But don’t worry. The government has it back under control. The government has issued partial restrictions in 28 provinces, including Bangkok (restaurants are open, but have to close at 11pm because we all know that that’s when the bogyman virus starts spreading).
I’ll be very surprised indeed (not to mention disappointed) if this magical country can’t redisappear COVID-19. It worked last time. Why should this time be different?
P.
