The same way Thailand has only 52 deaths, the blokes here could have explosive diarrhea and still won't consider washing their hands (granted the woman are the polar opposite - washing their hands continually - scared to death of it) and with mass exodus from the cities when hospitality went belly up the other month there is no way it isn't everywhere in SE asia non-city towns and villages. Whereas Singapore is fucked and they have western approaches to hygiene, a bit odd that wouldn't you say. Ineffective testing, or ineffective tests, head in sand, photoshots for the big boys, hospital directors worried about their livelyhood etc..
All cynism aside I do think SE Asia has fared better than Europe, but the reasons won't be worthy of someone getting an award (although no doubt their will be award like ceremonies for years to come) - the temperature theory is rebounding now etc..
> Whereas Singapore is fucked and they have western approaches to hygiene, a bit odd that wouldn't you say.
Singapore was doing fine until their blind spot for itinerant cheap laborers meant this group was never properly tested. Now they've realised that these people are in fact people.
Nicaragua supposedly only has 13 cases of Covid and they never implemented ANY precautions. Their president was also missing for more than 30 days, just showed up a couple of days ago finally.
> Vietnam has become one of the first few countries in the world to emerge successfully from the first wave of the Covid-19 outbreak
It's even more impressive: they emerged successfully not just from the first wave (direct from China, with which they share a long land border), but the second wave as well (travelers from Europe, US, Iran etc). Quite a few countries, notably Singapore, rode the first wave well but stumbled on the second.
But unlike China, Vietnamese have largely unfettered access to the Internet and post extensively on social media. If there were corpses piling up in the corridors of hospitals, we'd hear about it.
Of course, like the old Soviet joke says, just because there's freedom of speech doesn't mean there's freedom after speech, and you definitely can get in trouble for saying the wrong thing online. But again, unlike China, I haven't heard of Covid bloggers in Vietnam suddenly disappearing.
China has 100m active VPN users and magnitude more expats on the ground and foreign press present. Also millions of Chinese diaspora abroad getting news in the mainland. At least among my social circles, no one knows anyone whose been infected in China either among family or coworkers. There's more information flowing out of China in a relative sense. Vietnam also has Article 117 to arrest journalists for an anti-state reporting. They jail the second highest amount of reporters in Asia after China, 3X more per capita. That said covid19 isn't secret politburo proceedings, China and Vietnam are effectively transparent when it comes to massively public events.
Vietnam isn't an information blackhole like China, people have access to international social media, information circulates well to the outside, if you had something big going on, you would have traces somewhere.
There's not much reason to believe that either countries numbers are wildly off base. There have been international teams in both countries and their reports mostly agree.
There really seems to be a delusion setting in among Western commentators that China or Vietnam, just because they don't have a free press, must be unable to contain a virus more effectively or that there is at least some merit to some aspects of their social organisation.
It looks like it's not China but the US in particular which drifts more and more into conspiracy territory even among its leadership.
Sorry if it came across wrong. point wasn't that a lack of free press is necessary to control the virus. Obviously I'd much rather favour a free press (although I think that tackling false information that threatens health is legitimate), but that one should not disregard China's or Vietnam's achievement just because they're operating under different models.
New Zealand I think stands out as one of the countries with the best responses in the West, and Jacinda Ardern seems to have responded calmly. I take issue more with the UK and US were a deterioating domestic situation seems to have gone hand in hand with increasingly nationalist rhetoric.
> On April 15, Vietnam's "fake news" laws went into effect, which was introduced to address the spread of misinformation about Covid-19 over social media in the country.
> A fine of VND10-20 million (S$605-S$1,210) was to be imposed on people who make use of social media to share "false, untruthful, distorted or slanderous information"
> Security officials or Communist Party spies can be found on every street and crossing in every neighborhood and in every village
maybe they just didn't have super spreading situations? what if it was luck?
There was a Saint Patrick day party with around 20 people end up getting infected with Covid-19, and 2 or 3 more close calls situation, but in general the government handles the crisis well. It was surprisingly less draconian than expected as well.
We have been in Vietnam since March 8th. Prior to that we were in Thailand. The response of these two neighbouring countries is night and day.
Authoritarian governments can shine during the crisis. In the meantime, Thailand is in a messy political situation and has lost control of the situation.
When we arrived, on March 8th, there were stations at the airport doing temperature checks. Immediately quarantining anyone with a fever. They also collected extra info on all arrivals for contact tracing.
Majority (~ 80%) of locals were taking it seriously and were wearing masks voluntarily. And they were really adamant about us wearing masks. Our condo had free masks and sanitizer in the lobby.
They were also doing home visits of people who have arrived starting from March 8th. But we didn’t get a visit. I’m guessing they were working backwards and just never made it to these earlier arrivals.
Overall I’m very impressed with the way Vietnam handled the situation.
But at the same time, I can’t believe these numbers. I have no concrete evidence, but just feels too low.
There was A LOT of contact. Many businesses continued operating. I know of a software office that continued asking people to come into the office and the last week, when permission was given to work from home. Construction was in full force. Most didn’t wear any masks. Many other businesses remained operating and didn’t shutdown.
I can believe it when a single confirmed case lands almost a thousand people in quarantine. There's not just the fear of getting the virus, there's the fear of being sent off to a quarantine facility for two weeks if you are in contact with enough people that you end up on an F0's F1 list. And then if you're F2 you still must stay at home, and your neighborhood police ward will check up on you (and the neighborhood snitch on the payroll probably will keep an eye out for you too).
There are still villages under lockdown and just a month ago a heavily trafficked road was locked down with its inhabitants stuck at home just two kilometers from the center of the capital city.
If a Michigan style protest happened here everyone at the protest would be declared F1 because there's bound to be an F0 in the crowd, everyone the protesters have come into contact with with, including staff at businesses or restaurants, co workers, delivery drivers, other diners at the same restaurants, other people shopping at the same store at the same time as them will be declared F2 and have to stay at home. Then they will do three more rounds of recursive contact tracing and monitor those people in case others start showing symptoms.
I've had a dozen friends wait out quarantine at military camps and two had their quarantine period extended when their roommates started showing symptoms (but ended up not being positive). Heck if you go to a pharmacy to buy cold or flu medication the pharmacy will report you to the police so they can monitor your symptoms (after patient 247 infamously had a fever, took medication, then went to a bar to celebrate beating his fever).
It's almost a police state with the perfect set of tools to fight the virus, and the success of the government has been really effective in getting people to feel patriotic. That does provide perverse incentives going forward. We can hope they remain truthful. At the end of the day we know that the measures that have been undertaken have been some of the best in the world and that not everyone in other countries would tolerate such measures.
Also, please download the Bluezone app. This plea goes out to any other expats or immigrants in the country. We need contact tracing to be ready for the next wave.
Yes there is the F0-F5 system. If you download ncovi or the smart city Hanoi app, you can see on a map where F0 have visited, and where F0 and F1 are (F1 are in clusters because they're at quarantine camps). Originally they used to publish data on F2 but a few weeks ago they started only updating F0-F1. Additionally you can view https://ncov.moh.gov.vn to see the status of all patients, see how many F1 and F2 there are, and see how many people are being quarantined. You can also enable notifications to get a notification whenever there's an announcement (which is usually for when they are announcing nee cases or have news related to lockdowns)
Are you traveling for pleasure? What's the current situation then? Outside of the two week lock down in April have you largely been able to move around and see different parts of the country as a normal tourist? I had a trip planned soonish which is why I ask. It's been hard to get information from the news on whether that trip would still be worth making in late May or early June. I'd be curious to get your input.
I was able to move around even during the lockdown. It was just nowhere to go, except a grocery store. But I went for solo walks. I went to the beach, where there were no guards. I’ve seen locals surfing too in some more discrete areas.
Right now everything is open. Business as usual. Except large gatherings, like concerts, clubs and so on.
The only restrictions that affects me right now is having to wear masks in public places, like a grocery store or a bank. But restaurants don’t require masks. Walking on the street can be done without masks too.
As for travelling here. I’m not sure if it’s possible logistically. Are there any inbound flights? Would you need to quarantine for 14 days? Is it self quarantine or at a government facility with lots of other people?
It's at a government facility unless you pay for a private hotel (which I believe Samsung did for its 300 staff that flew in last week).
I really don't see the borders opening up to non-citizens next month because it's expensive to quarantine all incoming travelers (and the people working at the facilities don't see their families for months). I really hope it can happen this summer, even if we have to pay for it, but first we have to determine if there's going to be a third wave or not from easing away from Directive 16's restrictions.
All quarantines are overseen by the government, they do not trust individual persons. There are exceptions for people coming from companies where they have more connections to the governemnt and can ensure that the people follow their quarantines.
The option for people self quarantining went out the door once someone violated their self quarantine in March.
Basically if your company is sending you then they will probably pay for a private hotel, but if you're traveling on your own then 99.99% you're going to end up in a quarantine camp (unless you're a rich kid coming back from overseas).
I think they did well. You have to consider the environment they are operating in. Very dense living conditions. Way more commingling of citizens. And the sheer population alone.
It started in the middle of China and the still only have 2 deaths/million vs 200/million in the US or UK. (And even if they lied and the number of deaths is ten times bigger, that is still an order of magnitude better than the US handled it.)
It's more of Authoritarian governments with competent leadership. Result would be highly polarizing.
But where correct decisions are made, Authoritarian governments would have easier time controlling populous. (and of course, these type of governments tend to be able to without/control information that is considered negative to them, too.)
I think your criticism is misplaced, since parent was discussing in the narrow context about how effective an authoritarian government in keeping its populace safe from the virus.
But the parent comment's claim also has issues too. Whereas Vietnam was able to handle this is helped by its state authority, just looking at China and Russia and Iran shows that authoritarianism alone cannot explain at all why Vietnam seems to be doing well.
I cannot say anything about how they handled it in general with lockdowns and all of that. But there is a story how they quarantined multiple dutch (and other nationalities) people in a dirty hotel guarded by the army[0]. I mean .. yeah they may do well, but I'd prefer the messy political situation that 'has lost control of the situation' over getting locked up by the Vietnamese government.
I was in Thailand at the time of the outbreak and flew back at the beginning of this month, so I agree that I'm a bit biased. But I was supposed to fly to Vietnam for a few days (and Korea) but decided to not go since unlike Thailand this story put me off and I applied for a Visa extension in Thailand instead. I don't see how Thailand lost control of the situation. Furthermore, at least in Thailand I didn't have to worry about getting locked up. All other extra step the Vietnamese government did is also something Thailand did.
Obviously we are discussing something based on our own perception and based on numbers that may or may not be true. So in the end it doesn't change anything and I don't want to say you are wrong. I'm merely trying to put things in perspective. :)
My prediction is if more cities around North America did post-mortem Covid tests of people who passed away in February, there's a good chance we'd find some deceased actually had Covid-19 similar to what California revealed earlier last week. Because of those findings, some researchers are now thinking community spread in places like the Bay Area may have started as early as January.
I say this because reading this article, they mention that Vietnam quarantined an entire district in Hanoi back in February when the entire country only had 10 cases at that point in time. They also banned travel from and to mainland China in early February. Those measures done early may have saved them from tens of thousands of infections. Vietnam has essentially relied on aggressive contact tracing coupled with strict lockdowns/quarantining.
Here in Canada, we brushed off suggestions of forced quarantines of incoming travelers or banning flights to/from Mainland China. We solely relied on travelers telling authorities if they experienced symptoms, which bit us in the tail when March came along and hundreds of new cases were popped up by the day.
We didn't reverse our stance on restrictive measures till the virus had gotten out of a control. Even now as the growth rate has flattened, we're still dealing with the fallout in long term care facilities as hundreds of elderly people have passed away due to caregivers/visitors unknowingly infecting them. That coupled with the growth of the virus in the homeless community has made it very challenging to sustainably contain the virus.
I think what frustrates me is that we knew we had weaknesses in our system, yet we decided to go with the non-proactive solution anyway. Even recently we didn't bother with random testing asymptomatic caregivers until after hundreds of people died. It's a lot harder to undo the damage than it is to be overly pre-cautious and prevent the worst case scenario from happening in the first place.
I’m 32 and got the most sick I’ve ever been in February. I had to go to the ER and they told me it was likely just the flu and bronchitis. My illness lasted over two weeks and I had many of the symptoms of Coronavirus. I got a Zithromax pack and that seemed to help more than anything. Also some anti-nausea chewables because without those I couldn’t even keep water down. It was the most scared I’ve ever been before it was just so intense and so long. I felt drained for weeks after.
It also has anti-inflammatory properties, particularly against IL-6 expression. IL-6 is notoriously elevated during the second week or so of COVID-19 symptoms.
>spread in places like the Bay Area may have started as early as January
This is known for certain in Seattle. The first case was in mid-January[1], then six weeks passed before the big outbreak started and genetic sequencing showed that the virus was directly descended from that original case six weeks earlier[2], indicating that there had been ongoing transmission throughout the community for the past six weeks.
ps be sure to read that first link, published in january. It's absolutely maddening how cavelier everyone was being, even while China was literally shutting down a city the size of new york and sealing off the entire province...
They (they Vietnamese government) had apparently hacked the computers of the Chinese CDC and the Gates foundation to obtain information about the epidemic in China in the last weeks of January. Equipped with these informations, the government of Vietnam could act swiftly and decisively beginning February to contain the spread of the virus. It was a war-like situation and reliable up-to-date information is of crucial importance. The governments of many countries had handled the pandemic not very well because they relied solely on WHO (and China). And the lack of reliable information turned out to be deadly.
>The governments of many countries had handled the pandemic not very well because they relied solely on WHO (and China).
I see this accusation thrown around a lot, but it doesn't align with timeline and import statistics.
APT32 (Vietnam) hacked China as early as Jan 6th, but didn't shutdown borders until late Jan, well after WHO confirmed H2H and after China the broadcasted seriousness of covid19 with Wuhan followed by country wide lockdowns. Apart from shutting borders with Hubei/China in late Jan - early Feb, the countries that responded well shared one common quality: they immediately rolled out effective screening, testing, tracing and isolation. Which is in line with WHO recommendations on Jan 23 and Jan 30.
The effectiveness of border closing is debatable, since imported cases statistics from these regions (SK, HK, Taiwan, Singapore) indicate very few cases were exported out of China (less than 30), most of which were out of Hubei, whereas hundreds of imported cases came from Americas and Europe. Australia, New Zealand and Canada is similar. These are all places with massive traffic flows with China that also repatriated hundreds to thousands from Wuhan with few positives cases that spread was or could have been managed without huge impacts on civic life. Vietnam is different in that it doesn't have as much resources as other countries so it must necessarily ere on the side of caution.
But broadly, the countries that didn't handled the pandemic well didn't listen to WHO and China and waited too long before acting.
I'd love to see an antibody study in Vietnam. I have a theory that with a low enough viral load, most people won't be symptomatic. If you can infect someone with a single copy of the virus, they won't notice. You cough directly in their face and the constant factor starts from that virus population and your immune system doesn't have a chance to catch up.
This is why healthy medical staff die and the prison population tests positive for antibodies but didn't show symptoms.
----
To be clear, I am not advocating for an unethical study, but that infection rates in Vietnam are much higher than their case count would indicate.
Back when MOH of Vietnam still published number of people tested per day, I collected the data from their website and made this graph: https://i.imgur.com/hzkG3R2.png
They stopped doing that though.
So as of 4/12, number of people tested and came out negative was 121.6K
As others have mentioned, the government is incredibly diligent in tracking the virus. And why shouldn't they? They were freaked out by SARS in 2003 and as a growing 3rd world country, they simply cannot afford to have the virus spread.
Also, if one person gets the virus or one person is placed in quarantine in Vietnam, it's all over Facebook and shared. The government can't hide shit when it comes to the virus.
"They were also one of the first few countries to ban return flights to and from mainland China, having announced the suspension from Feb. 1, 2020, slightly more than a week after the country's first cases of Covid-19 were found."
How much of their reported success in containing the virus was due to this, and how much was due to the lockdown? Other countries which have fared relatively well (e.g. NZ, Australia) also closed their borders early.
There are many things that haven't been mentioned here yet.
Vietnamese schools haven't reopened since Tet, end of January.
The population distribution is skewed towards the young end.
Most cases were imported, by youngish people, and the average age of these is even younger, mostly students, or for business or for holidays. Mostly relatively rich and young, not many travelling pensioneers in this country.
Mentioned measures contained community spread from said travellers to the rest.
The very old in Vietnam are not in care houses, they are at home, cared for by their extended family, who is much more likely to give a damn.
Information from the government news agency has been rather transparent, or so it seems to me. Every case has a number, and case numbers of contacts of new cases are reported. If unknown this is also reported.
This appearance of transparency and the fact that everyone infected is receiving prompt free treatment encouraged people to report suspect cases rather than hiding.
The government carries as a badge of honor that there haven't been any fatalities yet. The few critical cases are getting extreme medical treatment, no resources are being spared, there are so few that they can afford to do this. Multiple nurses, doctors and equipment per ICU patient. It seems to me that they will do whatever it takes to prevent fatalities. One of the critical cases is an european pilot. If he died it would be impossible for the government to hide.
Facemasks are plentiful, I have shipped many to friends and relatives in my country, where they are scarce and expensive. Hand sanitizer is everywhere.
It seems that heat doesn't stop the spread after all, but if it slows it down, that might also have helped, this is a tropical country, though in the north, and in the mountains, it can get quite chilly in winter.
I feel lucky being here now, but, of course, it's too early to call, I won't know for sure until this is over.
This conversation is rather prescient as the death toll in the US due to covid will most likely surpass the total US combat deaths of the Vietnam War tomorrow.
I follow a professor in Vietnam on twitter; he was pointing out last month that hydroxychloroquine is an over-the-counter drug there and is commonly used to treat malaria. They're probably not going to wait until you're most of the way dead before administering it the way the "We Must Have A Study" bureaucrats will here. I suspect this also apples to the rest of Indochina.
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[ 6.0 ms ] story [ 136 ms ] threadAll cynism aside I do think SE Asia has fared better than Europe, but the reasons won't be worthy of someone getting an award (although no doubt their will be award like ceremonies for years to come) - the temperature theory is rebounding now etc..
Singapore was doing fine until their blind spot for itinerant cheap laborers meant this group was never properly tested. Now they've realised that these people are in fact people.
It's even more impressive: they emerged successfully not just from the first wave (direct from China, with which they share a long land border), but the second wave as well (travelers from Europe, US, Iran etc). Quite a few countries, notably Singapore, rode the first wave well but stumbled on the second.
If you don’t believe China’s numbers, you shouldn’t believe Vietnam’s.
Of course, like the old Soviet joke says, just because there's freedom of speech doesn't mean there's freedom after speech, and you definitely can get in trouble for saying the wrong thing online. But again, unlike China, I haven't heard of Covid bloggers in Vietnam suddenly disappearing.
Might as well mean secret police working as intended ;)
There really seems to be a delusion setting in among Western commentators that China or Vietnam, just because they don't have a free press, must be unable to contain a virus more effectively or that there is at least some merit to some aspects of their social organisation.
It looks like it's not China but the US in particular which drifts more and more into conspiracy territory even among its leadership.
New Zealand I think stands out as one of the countries with the best responses in the West, and Jacinda Ardern seems to have responded calmly. I take issue more with the UK and US were a deterioating domestic situation seems to have gone hand in hand with increasingly nationalist rhetoric.
> On April 15, Vietnam's "fake news" laws went into effect, which was introduced to address the spread of misinformation about Covid-19 over social media in the country.
> A fine of VND10-20 million (S$605-S$1,210) was to be imposed on people who make use of social media to share "false, untruthful, distorted or slanderous information"
> Security officials or Communist Party spies can be found on every street and crossing in every neighborhood and in every village
maybe they just didn't have super spreading situations? what if it was luck?
Even doctors in China were punished for trying to speak out, it's easy to believe the Vietnamese govt would do the same
Authoritarian governments can shine during the crisis. In the meantime, Thailand is in a messy political situation and has lost control of the situation.
When we arrived, on March 8th, there were stations at the airport doing temperature checks. Immediately quarantining anyone with a fever. They also collected extra info on all arrivals for contact tracing.
Majority (~ 80%) of locals were taking it seriously and were wearing masks voluntarily. And they were really adamant about us wearing masks. Our condo had free masks and sanitizer in the lobby.
They were also doing home visits of people who have arrived starting from March 8th. But we didn’t get a visit. I’m guessing they were working backwards and just never made it to these earlier arrivals.
Overall I’m very impressed with the way Vietnam handled the situation.
But at the same time, I can’t believe these numbers. I have no concrete evidence, but just feels too low.
There was A LOT of contact. Many businesses continued operating. I know of a software office that continued asking people to come into the office and the last week, when permission was given to work from home. Construction was in full force. Most didn’t wear any masks. Many other businesses remained operating and didn’t shutdown.
There are still villages under lockdown and just a month ago a heavily trafficked road was locked down with its inhabitants stuck at home just two kilometers from the center of the capital city.
If a Michigan style protest happened here everyone at the protest would be declared F1 because there's bound to be an F0 in the crowd, everyone the protesters have come into contact with with, including staff at businesses or restaurants, co workers, delivery drivers, other diners at the same restaurants, other people shopping at the same store at the same time as them will be declared F2 and have to stay at home. Then they will do three more rounds of recursive contact tracing and monitor those people in case others start showing symptoms.
I've had a dozen friends wait out quarantine at military camps and two had their quarantine period extended when their roommates started showing symptoms (but ended up not being positive). Heck if you go to a pharmacy to buy cold or flu medication the pharmacy will report you to the police so they can monitor your symptoms (after patient 247 infamously had a fever, took medication, then went to a bar to celebrate beating his fever).
It's almost a police state with the perfect set of tools to fight the virus, and the success of the government has been really effective in getting people to feel patriotic. That does provide perverse incentives going forward. We can hope they remain truthful. At the end of the day we know that the measures that have been undertaken have been some of the best in the world and that not everyone in other countries would tolerate such measures.
Also, please download the Bluezone app. This plea goes out to any other expats or immigrants in the country. We need contact tracing to be ready for the next wave.
I was able to move around even during the lockdown. It was just nowhere to go, except a grocery store. But I went for solo walks. I went to the beach, where there were no guards. I’ve seen locals surfing too in some more discrete areas.
Right now everything is open. Business as usual. Except large gatherings, like concerts, clubs and so on.
The only restrictions that affects me right now is having to wear masks in public places, like a grocery store or a bank. But restaurants don’t require masks. Walking on the street can be done without masks too.
As for travelling here. I’m not sure if it’s possible logistically. Are there any inbound flights? Would you need to quarantine for 14 days? Is it self quarantine or at a government facility with lots of other people?
I really don't see the borders opening up to non-citizens next month because it's expensive to quarantine all incoming travelers (and the people working at the facilities don't see their families for months). I really hope it can happen this summer, even if we have to pay for it, but first we have to determine if there's going to be a third wave or not from easing away from Directive 16's restrictions.
The option for people self quarantining went out the door once someone violated their self quarantine in March.
Basically if your company is sending you then they will probably pay for a private hotel, but if you're traveling on your own then 99.99% you're going to end up in a quarantine camp (unless you're a rich kid coming back from overseas).
Pretty bold claim as China did not fare too well and keeps lying from the beginning about everything.
Still messed up massively by letting (if you believe wet markets) or causing (if you believe lab was involved) the virus to start existing.
But where correct decisions are made, Authoritarian governments would have easier time controlling populous. (and of course, these type of governments tend to be able to without/control information that is considered negative to them, too.)
See how they shine in Hong Kong, see how the slave camps shine. How fondly the world remembers the shining of Germany and Russia.
What light was shining there? How quickly fear has turned men into worms.
But the parent comment's claim also has issues too. Whereas Vietnam was able to handle this is helped by its state authority, just looking at China and Russia and Iran shows that authoritarianism alone cannot explain at all why Vietnam seems to be doing well.
Because that doesn't make you much of a man in my eyes.
We're dealing with a pandemic. You're not brave for not worrying about it, you're careless and selfish.
Those have never seemed like masculine qualities to me.
I was in Thailand at the time of the outbreak and flew back at the beginning of this month, so I agree that I'm a bit biased. But I was supposed to fly to Vietnam for a few days (and Korea) but decided to not go since unlike Thailand this story put me off and I applied for a Visa extension in Thailand instead. I don't see how Thailand lost control of the situation. Furthermore, at least in Thailand I didn't have to worry about getting locked up. All other extra step the Vietnamese government did is also something Thailand did.
Obviously we are discussing something based on our own perception and based on numbers that may or may not be true. So in the end it doesn't change anything and I don't want to say you are wrong. I'm merely trying to put things in perspective. :)
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/09/british-couple...
I say this because reading this article, they mention that Vietnam quarantined an entire district in Hanoi back in February when the entire country only had 10 cases at that point in time. They also banned travel from and to mainland China in early February. Those measures done early may have saved them from tens of thousands of infections. Vietnam has essentially relied on aggressive contact tracing coupled with strict lockdowns/quarantining.
Here in Canada, we brushed off suggestions of forced quarantines of incoming travelers or banning flights to/from Mainland China. We solely relied on travelers telling authorities if they experienced symptoms, which bit us in the tail when March came along and hundreds of new cases were popped up by the day.
We didn't reverse our stance on restrictive measures till the virus had gotten out of a control. Even now as the growth rate has flattened, we're still dealing with the fallout in long term care facilities as hundreds of elderly people have passed away due to caregivers/visitors unknowingly infecting them. That coupled with the growth of the virus in the homeless community has made it very challenging to sustainably contain the virus.
I think what frustrates me is that we knew we had weaknesses in our system, yet we decided to go with the non-proactive solution anyway. Even recently we didn't bother with random testing asymptomatic caregivers until after hundreds of people died. It's a lot harder to undo the damage than it is to be overly pre-cautious and prevent the worst case scenario from happening in the first place.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22766077
This is known for certain in Seattle. The first case was in mid-January[1], then six weeks passed before the big outbreak started and genetic sequencing showed that the virus was directly descended from that original case six weeks earlier[2], indicating that there had been ongoing transmission throughout the community for the past six weeks.
[1] https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/health/snohomish-c...
[2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/coronavirus-may-have-s...
ps be sure to read that first link, published in january. It's absolutely maddening how cavelier everyone was being, even while China was literally shutting down a city the size of new york and sealing off the entire province...
I see this accusation thrown around a lot, but it doesn't align with timeline and import statistics.
APT32 (Vietnam) hacked China as early as Jan 6th, but didn't shutdown borders until late Jan, well after WHO confirmed H2H and after China the broadcasted seriousness of covid19 with Wuhan followed by country wide lockdowns. Apart from shutting borders with Hubei/China in late Jan - early Feb, the countries that responded well shared one common quality: they immediately rolled out effective screening, testing, tracing and isolation. Which is in line with WHO recommendations on Jan 23 and Jan 30.
The effectiveness of border closing is debatable, since imported cases statistics from these regions (SK, HK, Taiwan, Singapore) indicate very few cases were exported out of China (less than 30), most of which were out of Hubei, whereas hundreds of imported cases came from Americas and Europe. Australia, New Zealand and Canada is similar. These are all places with massive traffic flows with China that also repatriated hundreds to thousands from Wuhan with few positives cases that spread was or could have been managed without huge impacts on civic life. Vietnam is different in that it doesn't have as much resources as other countries so it must necessarily ere on the side of caution.
But broadly, the countries that didn't handled the pandemic well didn't listen to WHO and China and waited too long before acting.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/04/24/fac...
This is why healthy medical staff die and the prison population tests positive for antibodies but didn't show symptoms.
----
To be clear, I am not advocating for an unethical study, but that infection rates in Vietnam are much higher than their case count would indicate.
So as of 4/12, number of people tested and came out negative was 121.6K
So god knows how many people where silenced, jailed or killed. Wait for a few years for the full story to emerge.
The first part of your post is true.
The second, is in my opinion, completely false.
As others have mentioned, the government is incredibly diligent in tracking the virus. And why shouldn't they? They were freaked out by SARS in 2003 and as a growing 3rd world country, they simply cannot afford to have the virus spread.
Also, if one person gets the virus or one person is placed in quarantine in Vietnam, it's all over Facebook and shared. The government can't hide shit when it comes to the virus.
How much of their reported success in containing the virus was due to this, and how much was due to the lockdown? Other countries which have fared relatively well (e.g. NZ, Australia) also closed their borders early.
There are many things that haven't been mentioned here yet.
Vietnamese schools haven't reopened since Tet, end of January.
The population distribution is skewed towards the young end.
Most cases were imported, by youngish people, and the average age of these is even younger, mostly students, or for business or for holidays. Mostly relatively rich and young, not many travelling pensioneers in this country.
Mentioned measures contained community spread from said travellers to the rest.
The very old in Vietnam are not in care houses, they are at home, cared for by their extended family, who is much more likely to give a damn.
Information from the government news agency has been rather transparent, or so it seems to me. Every case has a number, and case numbers of contacts of new cases are reported. If unknown this is also reported.
This appearance of transparency and the fact that everyone infected is receiving prompt free treatment encouraged people to report suspect cases rather than hiding.
The government carries as a badge of honor that there haven't been any fatalities yet. The few critical cases are getting extreme medical treatment, no resources are being spared, there are so few that they can afford to do this. Multiple nurses, doctors and equipment per ICU patient. It seems to me that they will do whatever it takes to prevent fatalities. One of the critical cases is an european pilot. If he died it would be impossible for the government to hide.
Facemasks are plentiful, I have shipped many to friends and relatives in my country, where they are scarce and expensive. Hand sanitizer is everywhere.
It seems that heat doesn't stop the spread after all, but if it slows it down, that might also have helped, this is a tropical country, though in the north, and in the mountains, it can get quite chilly in winter.
I feel lucky being here now, but, of course, it's too early to call, I won't know for sure until this is over.
I'm not sure how much more evidence we need.
Yes they are lying a bit. Yes they have done great work. But these aren't enough to see what we are seeing.
And all the counties going into winter are going to be crying in a few months no one warned them, or it was somehow unexpected.