Buying vaccine here in Thailand for expats who live here (Threads Merged)

[Pumpuynarak]

Is anyone who lives here considering buying the vaccine from a private hospital ? I can't see expats figuring to high on the Thai list of those to be given/sold the jab as a matter of urgency who are aged and at risk due to pre-existing conditions.

I for one will be looking to get jabbed asap and will be enquiring at the private hospital network here in Korat , what say you ?

[Skalliwag]

32 minutes ago, Pumpuynarak said:

Is anyone who lives here considering buying the vaccine from a private hospital ? I can't see expats figuring to high on the Thai list of those to be given/sold the jab as a matter of urgency who are aged and at risk due to pre-existing conditions.

I for one will be looking to get jabbed asap and will be enquiring at the private hospital network here in Korat , what say you ?

How much is it?

[Pumpuynarak]

2 minutes ago, Skalliwag said:

How much is it?

Good question mate, knowing Thailand and its love of expats i would expect it to be at a rip off price lol.

[Skalliwag]

Just now, Pumpuynarak said:

Good question mate, knowing Thailand and its love of expats i would expect it to be at a rip off price lol.

Who cares.I’m sure it comes with a certificate of authenticity 🤣👍

[Jambo]

34 minutes ago, Pumpuynarak said:

Is anyone who lives here considering buying the vaccine from a private hospital ? I can't see expats figuring to high on the Thai list of those to be given/sold the jab as a matter of urgency who are aged and at risk due to pre-existing conditions.

I for one will be looking to get jabbed asap and will be enquiring at the private hospital network here in Korat , what say you ?

If it gets me out of having to get Covid insurance and not having to pay for 14 days quarantine in Thailand after visiting my family in the UK.........Yes.

Otherwise, I don't think I will bother.

[Toy Boy]

Reports that one hospital group has ordered many doses of vaccine for its own use on staff, and also for sale, but it's the Sinovac version. Charging 3,200 Baht for something that costs $5, sigh. Better to wait until the AstraZeneca vaccine is available. You might be able to get the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines, but I wouldn't trust the Thais to have stored them properly.

Edited January 19, 2021 by Toy Boy

[Esco]

1 hour ago, Pumpuynarak said:

Is anyone who lives here considering buying the vaccine from a private hospital ? I can't see expats figuring to high on the Thai list of those to be given/sold the jab as a matter of urgency who are aged and at risk due to pre-existing conditions.

I for one will be looking to get jabbed asap and will be enquiring at the private hospital network here in Korat , what say you ?

If I don't get it under the government scheme, which I think I should as I pay social security, and if my company doesn't provide the vaccine to us expats as a common courtesy, I'll buy it myself after the effectiveness has been properly substantiated. 

[code_slayer_bkk]

57 minutes ago, Esco said:

If I don't get it under the government scheme, which I think I should as I pay social security, and if my company doesn't provide the vaccine to us expats as a common courtesy, I'll buy it myself after the effectiveness has been properly substantiated. 

Who's stats ( statistics ) is one to believe ?  Or, if they are even believable ....

I think I will wait .. forever ....

[Pumpuynarak]

1 hour ago, Toy Boy said:

Reports that one hospital group has ordered many does of vaccine for its own use on staff, and also for sale, but it's the Sinovac version. Charging 3,200 Baht for something that costs $5, sigh. Better to wait until the AstraZeneca vaccine is available. You might be able to get the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines, but I wouldn't trust the Thais to have stored them properly.

I would'nt touch the Sinovac vaccine with a barge pole irrespective of the cost. My plan is to get the Astrazeneca as soon as it is available in Thailand and i'll just pay.

[Pumpuynarak]

3 minutes ago, code_slayer_bkk said:

Who's stats ( statistics ) is one to believe ?  Or, if they are even believable ....

I think I will wait .. forever ....

I'm prepared to believe the UK and the fact that the Oxford Uni/Astrazeneca is relatively safe if it is proven to be so over the next few months.

[Toy Boy]

This is quite an interesting explanation of the meaning of vaccine efficacy and how it differs from effectiveness.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/20/health/covid-vaccine-95-effective.html

 

[Sangsom]

9 hours ago, Pumpuynarak said:

Is anyone who lives here considering buying the vaccine from a private hospital ? I can't see expats figuring to high on the Thai list of those to be given/sold the jab as a matter of urgency who are aged and at risk due to pre-existing conditions.

I for one will be looking to get jabbed asap and will be enquiring at the private hospital network here in Korat , what say you ?

I definitely would if I was 60+

[fforest]

Well if you ever get Covid you will only have a 99.5% chance surviving....

[Sangsom]

9 minutes ago, fforest said:

Well if you ever get Covid you will only have a 99.5% chance surviving....

Yeah...fk the 400,000+ in the US that have died from it.

[lazarus]

1 hour ago, fforest said:

Well if you ever get Covid you will only have a 99.5% chance surviving....

Except that's not true. The average death rate is higher for people infected and varies from country to country.

. . .

In-depth: The mortality risk from COVID-19

Data: https://ourworldindata.org/mortality-risk-covid#the-current-case-fatality-rate-of-covid-19

 

Edited January 19, 2021 by lazarus

[fygjam]

Can you buy it from the pharmacy next to Tim's yet?

 

[Washedup]

29 minutes ago, fygjam said:

Can you buy it from the pharmacy next to Tim's yet?

 

My go to pharmacy in town 😉

[Horizondave]

Can't remember where I saw it yesterday but saw an ad offering the jab for 6500 baht in a private hospital group.  Knowing how private hospitals cost things I would expect to see prices above 3500 baht etc.

If I was in Thailand and well aware I would not be able to to receive the free vaccine then I would pay to have the jab at the first opportunity.  I also would pay for my wife to have it as, from Tommy's report, it appears for a Thai to have it you need to be registered where you are living to have the vaccine.  I would expect my wife could avail of it back in Khon Kaen where she is listed on the house book but I would just get her jabbed at the same time/same place as me for convenience.

[Sangsom]

If anyone finds a place where you can pay to have it done I’d appreciate it the info was put on this thread 👍

[Glasseye]

14 hours ago, Pumpuynarak said:

I would'nt touch the Sinovac vaccine with a barge pole irrespective of the cost. My plan is to get the Astrazeneca as soon as it is available in Thailand and i'll just pay.

Ditto

[nampla69]

17 hours ago, Pumpuynarak said:

I for one will be looking to get jabbed asap and will be enquiring at the private hospital network here in Korat , what say you ?

Jabbed for what ??? You haven't been a naughty ..................oh Covid !!!!

Go for it young man Bangkok Hospital is the one I know best in Korat and is amazing ......... they do private stuff on every floor and as good as any in the UK.

So march in drop your trousers and get jabbed .................. or you could get it in your arm !!!!!

[Esco]

12 hours ago, Sangsom said:

Yeah...fk the 400,000+ in the US that have died from it.

With it. 

[Pumpuynarak]

11 hours ago, Horizondave said:

Can't remember where I saw it yesterday but saw an ad offering the jab for 6500 baht in a private hospital group.  Knowing how private hospitals cost things I would expect to see prices above 3500 baht etc.

If I was in Thailand and well aware I would not be able to to receive the free vaccine then I would pay to have the jab at the first opportunity.  I also would pay for my wife to have it as, from Tommy's report, it appears for a Thai to have it you need to be registered where you are living to have the vaccine.  I would expect my wife could avail of it back in Khon Kaen where she is listed on the house book but I would just get her jabbed at the same time/same place as me for convenience.

Bingo, i'm planning on doing the same for wifey and i. 

[lazarus]

6 hours ago, Glasseye said:

Ditto

I C&P'd this due to the paywall...

Good Info:  https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/18/briefing/donald-trump-pardon-phil-spector-coronavirus-deaths.html

. . .

Good morning. We explain why the vaccine news is better than you may think.

Early in the pandemic, many health experts — in the U.S. and around the world — decided that the public could not be trusted to hear the truth about masks. Instead, the experts spread a misleading message, discouraging the use of masks.

Their motivation was mostly good. It sprung from a concern that people would rush to buy high-grade medical masks, leaving too few for doctors and nurses. The experts were also unsure how much ordinary masks would help.

But the message was still a mistake.

It confused people. (If masks weren’t effective, why did doctors and nurses need them?) It delayed the widespread use of masks (even though there was good reason to believe they could help). And it damaged the credibility of public health experts.

“When people feel as though they may not be getting the full truth from the authorities, snake-oil sellers and price gougers have an easier time,” the sociologist Zeynep Tufekci wrote early last year.

Now a version of the mask story is repeating itself — this time involving the vaccines. Once again, the experts don’t seem to trust the public to hear the full truth.

This issue is important and complex enough that I’m going to make today’s newsletter a bit longer than usual. If you still have questions, don’t hesitate to email me at [email protected].

‘Ridiculously encouraging’

Right now, public discussion of the vaccines is full of warnings about their limitations: They’re not 100 percent effective. Even vaccinated people may be able to spread the virus. And people shouldn’t change their behavior once they get their shots.

These warnings have a basis in truth, just as it’s true that masks are imperfect. But the sum total of the warnings is misleading, as I heard from multiple doctors and epidemiologists last week.

“It’s driving me a little bit crazy,” Dr. Ashish Jha, dean of the Brown School of Public Health, told me.

“We’re underselling the vaccine,” Dr. Aaron Richterman, an infectious-disease specialist at the University of Pennsylvania, said.

“It’s going to save your life — that’s where the emphasis has to be right now,” Dr. Peter Hotez of the Baylor College of Medicine said.

The Moderna and Pfizer vaccines are “essentially 100 percent effective against serious disease,” Dr. Paul Offit, the director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, said. “It’s ridiculously encouraging.”

The details

Here’s my best attempt at summarizing what we know:

• The Moderna and Pfizer vaccines — the only two approved in the U.S. — are among the best vaccines ever created, with effectiveness rates of about 95 percent after two doses. That’s on par with the vaccines for chickenpox and measles. And a vaccine doesn’t even need to be so effective to reduce cases sharply and crush a pandemic.

• If anything, the 95 percent number understates the effectiveness, because it counts anyone who came down with a mild case of Covid-19 as a failure. But turning Covid into a typical flu — as the vaccines evidently did for most of the remaining 5 percent — is actually a success. Of the 32,000 people who received the Moderna or Pfizer vaccine in a research trial, do 

• you want to guess how many contracted a severe Covid case? One.

• Although no rigorous study has yet analyzed whether vaccinated people can spread the virus, it would be surprising if they did. “If there is an example of a vaccine in widespread clinical use that has this selective effect — prevents disease but not infection — I can’t think of one!” Dr. Paul Sax of Harvard has written in The New England Journal of Medicine. (And, no, exclamation points are not common in medical journals.) On Twitter, Dr. Monica Gandhi of the University of California, San Francisco, argued: “Please be assured that YOU ARE SAFE after vaccine from what matters — disease and spreading.”

• The risks for vaccinated people are still not zero, because almost nothing in the real world is zero risk. A tiny percentage of people may have allergic reactions. And I’ll be eager to see what the studies on post-vaccination spread eventually show. But the evidence so far suggests that the vaccines are akin to a cure.

Offit told me we should be greeting them with the same enthusiasm that greeted the polio vaccine: “It should be this rallying cry.”

 

The costs of negativity

Why are many experts conveying a more negative message?

Again, their motivations are mostly good. As academic researchers, they are instinctively cautious, prone to emphasizing any uncertainty. Many may also be nervous that vaccinated people will stop wearing masks and social distancing, which in turn could cause unvaccinated people to stop as well. If that happens, deaths would soar even higher.

But the best way to persuade people to behave safely usually involves telling them the truth. “Not being completely open because you want to achieve some sort of behavioral public health goal — people will see through that eventually,” Richterman said. The current approach also feeds anti-vaccine skepticism and conspiracy theories.

After asking Richterman and others what a better public message might sound like, I was left thinking about something like this:

We should immediately be more aggressive about mask-wearing and social distancing because of the new virus variants. We should vaccinate people as rapidly as possible — which will require approving other Covid vaccines when the data justifies it.

People who have received both of their vaccine shots, and have waited until they take effect, will be able to do things that unvaccinated people cannot — like having meals together and hugging their grandchildren. But until the pandemic is defeated, all Americans should wear masks in public, help unvaccinated people stay safe and contribute to a shared national project of saving every possible life.

 

[fygjam]

34 minutes ago, lazarus said:

I C&P'd this due to the paywall...

Good Info:  https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/18/briefing/donald-trump-pardon-phil-spector-coronavirus-deaths.html.

 

• The Moderna and Pfizer vaccines — the only two approved in the U.S. — are among the best vaccines ever created, with effectiveness rates of about 95 percent after two doses.

•  

 

 

And then he screws up by thinking effectiveness is the same as efficacy.

The Moderna and Pfizer vaccines have an efficacy of 95%. The effectiveness has not yet been established.

Vaccine efficacy and effectiveness are measures that compare the rates of disease between vaccinated and unvaccinated people. Efficacy is measured in controlled clinical trials, whereas effectiveness is measured once the vaccine is approved for use in the general population.