The Next Visit to Thailand

[kramer9741]

Looking forward to travelling to Bangkok one day soon.

[Xclay]

Sawadee krap!
Promising news:

Thailand is set to waive its onerous quarantine for tourists who have been vaccinated!
https://www.ttgasia.com/2021/01/26/thailand-to-warmly-welcome-inoculated-travellers/

Next week would be better but the relaxed rules are supposed to start July 1. 

Excellent incentive to get your shots if you haven't yet.
Impressive NYT assessment of the vaccine's potency here:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/18/briefing/donald-trump-pardon-phil-spector-coronavirus-deaths.html

[Yiannos]

 ttgasia link does not work

[Connery43]

Any news on how they might they might request proof of vaccination?

[tm_nyc]

The vaccine passport would be in the form of an app or a card or document of some kind.  Nothing has been decided or fixed yet.

[Xclay]

In August, I volunteered for the Moderna trial, got lucky, and got the two vaccine shots not the placebo. 

But my vaccine verification "card" is slightly heavy paper with name and dates of shots printed by hand. Would take five minutes and not even require advanced software to duplicate my card and print a new name and dates.

Surely Moderna will have to come up with something better than this to be a real "vaccination passport." 

But who know? The yellow fever vaccinations records are easy to fabricate (mine is real!) and they are accepted everywhere.

[Riobard]

5 hours ago, Xclay said:

In August, I volunteered for the Moderna trial, got lucky, and got the two vaccine shots not the placebo. 

But my vaccine verification "card" is slightly heavy paper with name and dates of shots printed by hand. Would take five minutes and not even require advanced software to duplicate my card and print a new name and dates.

Surely Moderna will have to come up with something better than this to be a real "vaccination passport." 

But who know? The yellow fever vaccinations records are easy to fabricate (mine is real!) and they are accepted everywhere.

I don’t think that pharmaceutical companies will be getting into the business of immunity passports per se, but there will be eventually a systematic way of getting access to services or countries using documentation, likely biometric, in which reasonable proof of vaccination, natural immunity, etc are integrated to meet the bar that is set. At this point it would not be surprising to have restrictions, as already set by precedent, based on regional infection incidence and known problematic variants. 

As there is already chatter about heterologous inoculation it is questionable whether one vaccine one format one company will be the norm down the line. Expect privacy-related pushback as well ... not from me; I could care less what authorities know about my CoV status. I don’t expect that a paper system such as exists for YF will be workable because there are too many variables and a mosquito is (presumably) not needed to bridge coronavirus transmission. 

Being in a double-blind RCT myself, for which efficacy analysis is a long way off, I am curious about the Moderna (& Pfizer/BioNTech) unblinding protocol. I believe that you were likely notified about a ‘vaccine transition option’. I assume that it included the choice to go the distance of about 12 months total, or to have your study assignment unmasked and receive vaccine currently if so desired. Perhaps there is a subgroup that will stick it out and salvage some degree of longer-term efficacy evaluation. 

But I am also wondering if there is a ‘blinded crossover’ sub-study on offer in which those vaccinated are given placebo and vice versa, a partial cohort that is followed to the original endpoint, but that makes no assumptions about when they received vaccine (originally versus the crossover design) while enabling a comparison of immunity bio markers between two time frames. Obviously, ongoing efficacy is out the window in such a protocol following the point at which vaccination is uniform.

Last but not least, do you have your final Moderna walking papers? Are you completely opted out due to unblinding or will they do follow-up serology for immunogenicity data?

Edited February 9, 2021 by Riobard

[Xclay]

In a nutshell:
I'd already deduced I was vaccinated in September (sore arm and an independent antibody test), so the January unmasking at the clinic was nice but anticlimactic.

Then, as you stated, my only options were to drop out or to let them continue monitoring my health (two questions per week on an app and paid quarterly blood draws this year, maybe longer).

With this chance to continue to do my little part to fight the scourge, I'm staying in the long-term study that will let Moderna discover how long its vaccine sustains resistance and how much it protects against new strains.

Back to the card...
Since yesterday, I've discovered that the leading digital candidate is called Common Pass, coming to app stores soon. See link below.

Quote

United, Lufthansa, JetBlue and other airlines are already backing an app called Common Pass that allows carriers to verify your test results and vaccine status.   --- Wall Street Journal, Feb 4, 2021

[floridarob]

16 hours ago, Riobard said:

I could care less what authorities know about my CoV status.

Nice to see you're embracing "Americanisms"  

The correct phrase is "couldn't care less," but dictionaries and language experts say the Americanism "could care less" is gaining ground and even acceptable in some situations.

[Riobard]

23 minutes ago, floridarob said:

Nice to see you're embracing "Americanisms"  

The correct phrase is "couldn't care less," but dictionaries and language experts say the Americanism "could care less" is gaining ground and even acceptable in some situations.

Hahaha ... but y’all know by now Imma informal and non-academic in writing style. 

Yes, I meant semantically “couldn’t”, and I was using the counter-intuitive version. However, “could care less” can also be a bit of a burn and is not necessarily directly antithetical to “couldn’t care less”, as one is implying that one cares on one’s own terms and that it is not the recipient of care that merits or drives the degree of caring allocated. 

Edited February 10, 2021 by Riobard

[Riobard]

Thanks, @Xclay

Just so you know, the NYT and WP links have paywalls, though I read the former piece extolling vaccine virtues a while back, cannot remember how accessed.

Sometimes one can Google the title and find a ‘pirated’ full version or the print media eventually unblocks it for non-subscribers. At times if it’s not too lengthy I’ll share an article here on the Board by entering a few screenshots that capture the full text. On my smartphone I can pinch the borders in order to reduce the number of files selected from Photos. 

——

I’m certain as well that I recently received research trial vaccine rather than placebo. 
 

——

CommonPass is interesting ... apparently non-profit, has Swiss chocolate neutrality, and seems to be flexible for all modes of cross-border travel. The IATA initiative may be too specific. Yet various countries appear to be developing there own versions and there is the usual bickering about scientific merit and legal legitimacy, so the system may evolve to one of ‘right of passage’ nationalism rather than a single unified global documentation protocol. 

Edited February 10, 2021 by Riobard
Spacing

[Riobard]

*their own versions (last paragraph line 4-5 above)

[love18]

Hopefully Thailand would open to tourists soon ,so the gay venues could survive. Of course, I could really use a vacation on the beach under the sun

.