Vietnam has the best Covid response in the world, but does it matter?
I am in the midst of it. Vietnam has some seriously low numbers especially considering they are next door to the source and normally employ a rather large number of Chinese nationals and also are a very popular vacation destination with Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans. They managed to keep their overall infection numbers extremely low and have zero Covid-19 related deaths.
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I don't have any idea how this is possible but it is a combination of reacting really early and I think the fact that they are very aware of the fact that their medical care definitely is NOT world-class. A massive breakout here would simply mean tons of deaths unless some other country came to the rescue and I don't think any country actually has the resources spare at the moment to pull something like that off.
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This is a stupid chart because of the odd and not uniform scale they decided to use. If they were to scale a bit better the large number of infections that exists in other countries compared to the less than 300 that exist here would make Vietnam barely register on the chart at all.
I don't claim to know why this has worked out for Vietnam, nor do I care to speculate / argue with anyone about it.
However, I do know that up until March 28th, the bars and restaurants were open, as were most public places. But this was just in Da Nang where i live. The more populated cities of Saigon (HCMC) and Hanoi had many more restrictions than here. The past 2 weeks we have had most places of business closed down including for take out and delivery which is upsetting to me because I don't particularly care for cooking for myself and for the most part I am not good at it.
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We were meant to be getting released from this "lockdown of sorts" tomorrow but we are yet to get the official word on this. A friend of mine that runs a restaurant told me that it looks like they are going to keep it like this for another week, which is really starting to piss me off but I have no choice but to comply.
But here is the thing that I am worried about if they do open things back up in a week from now. What then? If Vietnam has truly been successful in preventing ANY infection doesn't that simply mean that we are going to have to wait even longer before we can interact with the outside world? What now? Do we just never let anyone in or out until Bill Gates comes by with his free vaccines?
I think that there are likely considerably more infections than Vietnam is reporting simply because of the fact that they are only testing people who are admitted to the hospital with Covid-like symptoms.
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The city I am in only had 6 cases overall and all of them have recovered and were released. Think about that for a second and tell me if you believe that could possible be true. There are 1.1 million people here and it is heavily traveled by Chinese people, some of which are still here, yet we only have 6 cases in the entire city? I hate to be a nay sayer, but I don't buy it.
Of course there is also the possibility that Vietnam is one of the only countries in the world that isn't interested in pumping their numbers up for some sort of political reason as well.
Maybe the Vietnamese are just immune to it for the most part. How fantastic would that be?
I just can't imagine what the next step could be. If any of what we are hearing in the media can be considered true, i think a nation of 90 million people having not even been exposed to it is not necessarily a good thing... because it will make its way over here evertually.
I just want my bars and restaurants to reopen for craps' sake.
No ways just 6 positive cases as they had to be in contact with others. Seems it is keeping the numbers down so they can open up quickly for tourism. I think this is going to linger until vaccines are available and people will be reluctant to travel anyway. Who has the money for holidays now anyway as a month or two of no income has consequences.
yes, the tourism effect is going to be very long-standing. This is going to be very detrimental to the area that I live in. I don't know how much of the local economy is tourism-based, but I would guess a great deal of it since I haven't really noticed any other industry here.
No I do not believe that is true but I also not not believe the numbers in other countries.
They all count differently and kind of weird is people are diagnosed with it although tests are not done. Also if you stay home sick nobody knows. I know from people who are labelled with it although they never saw a doctor and suffer over years from something else.
I read the numbers of people died in one other European country (low) and all those people suffer from heart diseases, high blood pressure, are diabetic, have cancer, etc illnesses that would make them die soon anyway. There was one alcoholic with liver and pancreas problems.
I do believe in a natural immunity though.
What we know so far is there's more as one Coronavirus we have to deal with.
In Austria it started with two different types, in Hungary they said they found several kinds and all needed to be found to make the right vaccine.
Might be you only have one type, might be you are more immune, might be the virus became weaker before it mutated, might be in Italy a different variant is spread on purpose because that is what I believe. This is man-made, set out on purpose, different variants are used and the world's leaders knew about it. In October 2019 they discussed how to act during a pandemic. They had a very good reason for that.
If your restaurants were open for that long I wonder why they were suddenly closed. That doesn't make sense.
With us restaurants can keep working you just need to pick it up or they deliver it at home. This means it only saves them money.
Supermarkets, drug stores make big money and people seem to buy a lot extra online these days (I did not).
It's only a month most countries have a lockdown which I consider as a very short period.
well we are going to find out in the next couple of days what Vietnam intends to do. I notice that a lot of people are already "testing the water" as far as violating the SIP orders, and if the govt comes along and tells them to stay home another week, I think people will likely get upset and not do so.
Testing the water? You mean swimming or?
oh sorry, i sometimes forget that not everyone is going to understand my personal slang.
"testing the water" simply means push a little and see if you get in trouble, and then when you don't push as little bit more and a little bit more to see how much you can get away with.
in this instance it just means that people are wandering a bit further into areas each day that the government says they are not supposed to access during the lockdown such as loads of people are going to the beach or the streets to exercise at night even though this is one of the many restricted activities.
Thank you for explaining. I see many do so worldwide. To be honest I think it's good. I do not trust this man made virus neither world leaders who had a meeting in Oct 2019 already how to handle during a pandemic.
Happy day 💕
Unbelievable! Just 6 cases? Might have deeper roots behind this statistic. who knows. By the the way I too want lock-down to be over but today Our P.M. have anounced another lockdown till 3 rd of may considering we were in offical lock down for past 21 days.
Somewhere it beneficial for our well being only. Getting more time for ourselves.
If it turns out that all of this was in vain it will be a real embarrassment for the world and their health leaders. I like to believe that they are doing the best they can but a lot of this seems overly extreme.