Even in quarantine, there’s no stopping General Prayut Chan-o-cha from empty rhetorics that smell like passing gas.
To prevent the smell from seeping through your screen, we shall not quote the general from the 7 July PR stunt, but discuss the psychology of the setup.
In a video conference, national leaders prefer the background of a bookcase filled with pages to demonstrate that a well-read person is a knowledgeable person. But General Prayut is always going to General Prayut, therefore the background consisted of three things:
A portrait of himself to demonstrate self-love.
A Buddhist statue portrait facing backward to demonstrate the Thai idiom ปิดทองหลังพระ (placing gold on the back of a monk), which means to do good deeds without wanting recognition. This is from a dude who ended up in quarantine because of a selfie with someone who has COVID-19, at an event (opening of Phuket Sandbox) that should not have been held due to the pandemic. But it happened because he wanted PR.
A portrait of galloping horses that one could buy from MBK.
Meanwhile, starting tomorrow 10 July, Bangkok will be in a 14-day lockdown but without measures to combat the COVID-19 virus or to justifiably compensate the people.
While the virus mutates and spreads, a lockdown would surely lower the number of the infected. But when we open back up again, the infection will eventually spread again. As happened before.
Why?
An effective lockdown comes with aggressive action against the contagion.
Through rapid testing, hunt down the virus as if it’s a student calling for democracy. Inject mRNA jabs into citizens to combat the mutated Delta variant as if smacking activists with lese majeste charges.
But we neither have the test kits nor the vaccines, not even the mindset or know-how to obtain them quickly and effectively.
So here we are again, staring at a possible clueless and pointless lockdown.
2021-07-09