\u201cBy the third quarter, hospitals and the arms of our fellow Thais will be full of the AstraZeneca vaccine produced in Thailand,\u201d said Health Minister Anutin Charnvirakul on 18 February.
\u201cWhy don\u2019t you admire the Thai healthcare system?\u201d he asked.
\u201cThailand is the only country in the region that can say we\u2019ll have 63 million vaccine doses,\u201d he claimed.
\u201cWe plan and work systemically. We don\u2019t do Google searches to find bad news, defame, or demotivated those who work,\u201d he lectured.
By early July, the \u201csystematic plan\u201d extended the timeline to 61 (not 63) million doses for complete delivery in December this year.
Then, yesterday 15 July, Deputy Health Minister Sathit Wongnongtoei said the complete delivery \u201ccould be\u201d in May 2022. However, when asked by a reporter about the delivery date originally specified in the contract, Sathit said he doesn\u2019t remember.
The government recently yielded to public pressures and released vaccine contracts, mostly redacted, with prices, quantities, and dates smeared in black ink.
From his quarantine, General Prayut Chan-o-cha motivated the kingdom in his best impression of Winston Churchill:
\u201cI ask everyone never to surrender. The government and I will give maximum help. Never surrender in this war. Fight until we achieve victory.\u201d
Never surrendering is Army Chief General Narongphan Jitkaewta. He has filed defamation charges against eight Facebook and one Twitter accounts for allegedly accusing the military of shipping soldiers to the US for the Pfizer vaccine.
Furthermore, General Prayut told all government agencies to go after \u201cfake news\u201d and \u201cnews that spread fear even if it\u2019s true,\u201d which violate the Emergency Decree.
On cue, the NBTC has threatened to pull Voice TV off the air.
Meanwhile, to commemorate this coming 18 July in which one year ago, the push for democracy began at the Democracy Monument, the Office of the Prosecutor yesterday filed sedition charges against leading activists for the protest event.
In summary, we may be retreating in the war against COVID-19, but we are in a full-on attack mode in the war against freedom of speech and assembly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cBy the third quarter, hospitals and the arms of our fellow Thais will be full of the AstraZeneca vaccine produced in Thailand,\u201d said Health Minister Anutin Charnvirakul on 18 February. \u201cWhy don\u2019t you admire the Thai healthcare system?\u201d he asked. \u201cThailand is the only country in the region that can say we\u2019ll have 63 million […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":312,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[21,112,36,12,14,13],"class_list":["post-311","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-thisurpt","tag-anutin-charvirakul","tag-healthcare-system-thailand","tag-prayut-chan-o-cha-2","tag-thailand","tag-thisrupt","tag-whatshappeninginthailand"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisrupt.co\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisrupt.co\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisrupt.co\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisrupt.co\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisrupt.co\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=311"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thisrupt.co\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":313,"href":"https:\/\/thisrupt.co\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311\/revisions\/313"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisrupt.co\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/312"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisrupt.co\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=311"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisrupt.co\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=311"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisrupt.co\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=311"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}