8 ms·

Covid-19: Only 268 cases and no deaths. How did Vietnam with 97M people do it?

75 points by doppp 7y ago

grrbullshit 7y ago
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..
- taneq 7y ago
  > 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.
dis-sys 7y ago
North Korea is doing even better.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- eloff 7y ago
  If you trust them (but who would). That said, given they have so little interaction with the outside world, it wouldn't be surprising.
- techntoke 7y ago
  I hear Kim Jong Un is either alive and well, dead or in a vegetative state.
z3rgl1ng 7y ago
The first few lines explicitly state the numbers are unreliable. There should be no further discussion.
sixQuarks 7y ago
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.
- neuronexmachina 7y ago
  Oof. Are there any stats on how many tests Nicaragua has run?
  - bagacrap 7y ago
    14
9nGQluzmnq3M 7y ago
> 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.
throw_454332 7y ago
Vietnam is also a communist country with no free press. If you don’t believe China’s numbers, you shouldn’t believe Vietnam’s.
- 9nGQluzmnq3M 7y ago
  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.
  - dirtyid 7y ago
    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.
  - ilammy 7y ago
    > I haven't heard of Covid bloggers in Vietnam suddenly disappearing Might as well mean secret police working as intended ;)
- realusername 7y ago
  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.
- 7y ago
blondin 7y ago
a few things they did: > 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?
- NhanH 7y ago
  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.
- DarthGhandi 7y ago
  You can't hide overall mortality so the truth will come out eventually.
  - netsharc 7y ago
    Smells like "we've concluded this person died of normal causes and if you say it was covid-19 we will fine you heavily for spreading 'fake news'.". Even doctors in China were punished for trying to speak out, it's easy to believe the Vietnamese govt would do the same
decasteve 7y ago
Along with Taiwan, Vietnam is also another country that dealt with and learned from SARS in 2002/03.
moltar 7y ago
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.
- JCharante 7y ago
  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.
colmvp 7y ago
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.
- diogenescynic 7y ago
  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.
urlrider 7y ago
I sincerely doubt they did anything right.
jstewartmobile 7y ago
Maybe because they don't get extra money for labeling a patient as a COVID patient: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/04/24/fact-check-medicare-hospitals-paid-more-covid-19-patients-coronavirus/3000638001/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/04/24/fac...
sitkack 7y ago
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.
AzzieElbab 7y ago
Kind of pointless without knowing how many people were tested
- emiunet 7y ago
  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 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
op03 7y ago
Vietnam is not a magical place. It lies some where at the bottom of the pile in the press freedom index next to China. So god knows how many people where silenced, jailed or killed. Wait for a few years for the full story to emerge.
- jlei523 7y ago
  American living in Vietnam right now. 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.
seoguru 7y ago
Vietnam is doing more to halt COVID-19 than most countries on Earth. people that are there: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cme4vNcqFFs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cme4vNcqFFs
alvah 7y ago
"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.
charlysl 7y ago
From a westerner living in Vietnam: 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.
- tuananh 7y ago
  vietnamese here. i can also confirm all of these.
- johnwangdoe 7y ago
  also they made a viral tik tok banger, which help spread the basic hygiene and preventive message.
wizardforhire 7y ago
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.
nguyenngoctu 7y ago
Tôi rất vui khi đọc đc dòng này.
nguyenngoctu 7y ago
Chúng tôi đã đánh giá cao sự nguy hiểm của dịch bệnh ngay từ đầu vì chúng tôi là nước láng giềng.
aaron695 7y ago
Clearly it's weather. 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.
tutfbhuf 7y ago
In short: They didn't. That are only the measured numbers and they depend on how well you measure.
cheaprentalyeti 7y ago
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.

75 points by doppp 7y ago

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..

taneq 7y ago
> 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.

dis-sys 7y ago

North Korea is doing even better.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
eloff 7y ago
If you trust them (but who would). That said, given they have so little interaction with the outside world, it wouldn't be surprising.
techntoke 7y ago
I hear Kim Jong Un is either alive and well, dead or in a vegetative state.

z3rgl1ng 7y ago

The first few lines explicitly state the numbers are unreliable. There should be no further discussion.

sixQuarks 7y ago

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.

neuronexmachina 7y ago
Oof. Are there any stats on how many tests Nicaragua has run?
- bagacrap 7y ago
  14

9nGQluzmnq3M 7y ago

> 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.

throw_454332 7y ago

Vietnam is also a communist country with no free press. If you don’t believe China’s numbers, you shouldn’t believe Vietnam’s.

9nGQluzmnq3M 7y ago
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.
- dirtyid 7y ago
  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.
- ilammy 7y ago
  > I haven't heard of Covid bloggers in Vietnam suddenly disappearing Might as well mean secret police working as intended ;)
realusername 7y ago
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.
7y ago

blondin 7y ago

a few things they did: > 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?

NhanH 7y ago
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.
DarthGhandi 7y ago
You can't hide overall mortality so the truth will come out eventually.
- netsharc 7y ago
  Smells like "we've concluded this person died of normal causes and if you say it was covid-19 we will fine you heavily for spreading 'fake news'.". Even doctors in China were punished for trying to speak out, it's easy to believe the Vietnamese govt would do the same

decasteve 7y ago

Along with Taiwan, Vietnam is also another country that dealt with and learned from SARS in 2002/03.

moltar 7y ago

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.

JCharante 7y ago
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.

colmvp 7y ago

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.

diogenescynic 7y ago
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.

urlrider 7y ago

I sincerely doubt they did anything right.

jstewartmobile 7y ago

Maybe because they don't get extra money for labeling a patient as a COVID patient: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/04/24/fact-check-medicare-hospitals-paid-more-covid-19-patients-coronavirus/3000638001/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/04/24/fac...

sitkack 7y ago

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.

AzzieElbab 7y ago

Kind of pointless without knowing how many people were tested

emiunet 7y ago
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 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

op03 7y ago

Vietnam is not a magical place. It lies some where at the bottom of the pile in the press freedom index next to China. So god knows how many people where silenced, jailed or killed. Wait for a few years for the full story to emerge.

jlei523 7y ago
American living in Vietnam right now. 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.

seoguru 7y ago

Vietnam is doing more to halt COVID-19 than most countries on Earth. people that are there: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cme4vNcqFFs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cme4vNcqFFs

alvah 7y ago

"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.

charlysl 7y ago

From a westerner living in Vietnam: 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.

tuananh 7y ago
vietnamese here. i can also confirm all of these.
johnwangdoe 7y ago
also they made a viral tik tok banger, which help spread the basic hygiene and preventive message.

wizardforhire 7y ago

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.

nguyenngoctu 7y ago

Tôi rất vui khi đọc đc dòng này.

nguyenngoctu 7y ago

Chúng tôi đã đánh giá cao sự nguy hiểm của dịch bệnh ngay từ đầu vì chúng tôi là nước láng giềng.

aaron695 7y ago

Clearly it's weather. 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.

tutfbhuf 7y ago

In short: They didn't. That are only the measured numbers and they depend on how well you measure.

cheaprentalyeti 7y ago

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.