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China Medicine

Vietnam: How a Country So Close To China Managed To Control COVID-19 (inews.co.uk) 122

Posted by BeauHD from the compare-and-contrast dept.
New submitter AleRunner writes: Considering Vietnam's proximity to China, where coronavirus was first reported, it might be expected that the Southeast Asian country would be affected by Covid-19 in a similar manner," reports inews.co.uk. "China has more than 84,000 cases of coronavirus and more than 4,600 deaths, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center. Painting a strikingly different picture, Vietnam, which sits below its southern border, has just over 300 cases among its 97 million citizens and not a single death, according to reports."

The article points to a key willingness to "sacrifice short-term economic benefits for the health of the people" which is now paying back in that they plan to "partially resume international flights from June 1." The article then goes on to boost the value of Vietnam's "authoritarian leadership" and "socialist ethos," not mentioning the success of democratic and politically diverse countries like New Zealand, Slovenia, Taiwan and the Czech Republic. Still an interesting thought-provoking read. The report notes that Vietnam suspended flights to and from Wuhan after the first cases were detected. About a week later, the country closed its 870-mile border with China except for essential trade and travel.

"Vietnam quickly ramped up its testing and contact tracing capacity after the virus was initially detected in China, and has been expanding it since," the report adds. "Everyone entering from China was subject to testing and contact tracing." Interestingly, a nationwide lockdown was never implemented. Instead, it relied on testing labs, mass, centralized quarantine programs, and social distancing measures to contain the virus.
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Vietnam: How a Country So Close To China Managed To Control COVID-19 More

Vietnam: How a Country So Close To China Managed To Control COVID-19

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  • Didi mao!
  • Lots of autonomous machines guns on the borders.

    • Lots of autonomous machines guns on the borders.

      Vietnam's borders are relatively open. Several tribes, including the Hmong and Miao, straddle the border between Vietnam, China, and Laos, with family members living on both sides. Some people cross the border to go to work each day.

  • Virus response went further... (Score:5, Informative)

    by icejai ( 214906 ) on Saturday May 16, 2020 @12:43PM (#60067512)

    ... than what's described in the article.

    Every passenger arriving by plane was given a swab test and taken to a government quarantine facility for 14 days. These facilities would be hospitals, or recommandeered university dorms, etc. Nobody was allowed to self-quarantine at home. These people would be fed and monitored for 14 days before they could leave. This gives some more context as to why incoming flights were banned so soon and so quickly.

    If a resident in Vietnam tested positive for the virus, the government imposed a quarantine zone that centered on the person's home and extended out to a three-block radius. Residents would be monitored, but nobody was allowed in or out during the quarantine period. Goods were allowed to pass though, I think. Police were deployed to these zones to enforce the quarantine 24/7.

    • Re:Virus response went further... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Saturday May 16, 2020 @03:38PM (#60067982)

      Indeed, my parents got caught in this. On the last day of their holiday a guest staying at their hotel tested positive. The police and pandemic unit came and took everyone, staff and guests alike from the hotel and quarantined them for 14 days. After their second test 14 days later they were released.

      Unfortunately in that time Australia had declared mandatory quarantine for arrivals so they were forced to quarantine at home for another 14 days.

    • What's particularly interesting in this case is that a country with a not-overly functional medical system got exactly the same advice from exactly the same organisations at exactly the same time the US did and ended up with zero deaths, while the US is heading for 100,000 dead and still going strong. That's what a difference leadership makes.

      • a country with a not-overly functional medical system
        How do you come to that idea?
        Most asian countries hav perfectly well working medical systems especially high developed countries like Thailand and Vietnam.

        Your "bombing back into the Stone Age" failed.

  • Most of which don't respect human dignity.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by mmdurrant ( 638055 )
      I'm trying to imagine a social group where such simplistic, naive, and frankly ignorant thinking would be accepted and I don't care to.

      My friends would gently explain "No, that's not the way the world is" and if I insisted after that, they'd do something like I'm doing now. When folks won't listen to facts, sometimes they do listen to a rant about how fucking stupid they are.

    • I'm sure your dignity is just as preserved being told to sit in your basement as it is when you sit in your basement voluntarily.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dryeo ( 100693 )

      Must be thinking of America with its 2 million prisoners and no fault police.

  • In other words (Score:5, Insightful)

    by quonset ( 4839537 ) on Saturday May 16, 2020 @01:34PM (#60067658)

    Vietnam did everything it was supposed to do to prevent, to the greatest extent possible, the spread of the infection in their country whereas the U.S. did the literal opposite. It did not stop flights from China or Europe (no, not a single flight from China was ever stopped), it didn't test people, it didn't ramp up testing of people or contact tracing, it ignored the warnings of medical experts on the potential spread of the virus in this country, ignored the warnings of medical experts on the lack of PPE, didn't do any social distancing until things were out of control, and most flagrantly, completely dismissed the 69 page book prepared by the previous administration which outlined in detail the steps to take if a pandemic should occur in the country because it was from Obama.

    Instead, for two months all we heard was it's no big deal, it's no worse than the flu, it's fully contained, it's only 15 people, the numbers will definitely be going down, we don't need testing, carry on as normal, this is the Democrat's newest hoax. 88,000+ (known) dead later and we're told the only reason we have so many more cases is because we're testing people. If we didn't test as much, the country wouldn't look as bad.

    • Are we completely ignoring that the Vietnamese response was outright fascist? If that was done in America, the government would have been overthrown like it was 1776. How is it that there is no recognition of the authoritarian fascist nature of Vietnam's response?

      • Re:In other words (Score:4, Interesting)

        by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Saturday May 16, 2020 @03:41PM (#60067986)

        Are we completely ignoring that the Vietnamese response was outright fascist?

        Nope. We're celebrating it. Humans have been shown to be too dumb to handle a pandemic by simply saying "please".

        How is it that there is no recognition of the authoritarian fascist nature of Vietnam's response?

        Because dead people don't give a fuck if the response was fascist or autonomous.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Corbets ( 169101 )

      Since I just read it, it seems topical to your response, and it’s currently not behind the standard FT paywall... here’s an in-depth look at America’s response.

      https://www.ft.com/content/97d... [ft.com]

    • Democrat's newest hoax

      and also Trump's racist dogwhistle. The USA "chose" do nothing because it can't, it's a collapsing empire.

    • The problem with the recommendation of the CDC and WHO is that it's made with a singular goal - minimize death rate due to the virus. Nothing else matters. If that's your goal, then the optimal solution is to shut everything down. Cease all activity, hunker down in your homes for 21 days. Anyone who is sick either fights off the virus and becomes immune to it, or dies from it. Either way the virus dies, and after 3 weeks everyone can come out into a virus-free world. If 3 weeks isn't enough, or someon

      • If you follow it properly the WHO strategy doesn't require lockdown at all. Instead, when you have a very small number of infections, you trace absolutely every person who could have been infected, quarantine them and test them until you are 100% sure they can't infect anyone else.

        The nice thing about this is that, even if the rest of the world fucks up completely, you just do the same strategy more, whenever someone infected comes into your country, you isolate them. If some community isn't willing to i

      • If that's your goal, then the optimal solution is to shut everything down. Cease all activity, hunker down in your homes for 21 days.
        That is actually not what the successful countries did.
        That is what the fail countries did, USA, Germany, France, Italy, Spain etc. p.pp.

        The successful countries like Vietnam and e.g. federal states of India did this:

        https://www.theguardian.com/wo... [theguardian.com]

        Yes, a bit lengthy to read. But that is how it works when a scientist is a minister and not a stupid lobby bureaucrat.

  • And now they'll have to reopen, since you can't stay closed forever waiting for the vaccine that might never arrive. And if they re-open, and if what we've been told about virus is true (high R0, asymptomatic carriers, long incubation period), they've just postponed the inevitable at a staggering cost to their economy.

    • And now they'll have to reopen, since you can't stay closed forever waiting for the vaccine that might never arrive.

      Read the article. Vietnam never closed. Their borders, yes. The country, no. This makes a real difference since, when they were doing contact tracing. This means that their cost to the economy will be much less than e.g. a country like Brazil which never had a government shutdown and so ended up in total national panic instead or a country like Sweden which is coping with a massive level of death, ten times that of its neighbours along with all the associated costs.

      And if they re-open, and if what we've been told about virus is true (high R0, asymptomatic carriers, long incubation period), they've just postponed the inevitable at a staggering cost to their economy.

      As we said, they are already "open" a

  • Reminder (Score:1, Insightful)

    by kenh ( 9056 )

    The report notes that Vietnam suspended flights to and from Wuhan after the first cases were detected. About a week later, the country closed its 870-mile border with China except for essential trade and travel.

    Wow, I wish we did that here in the USA - oh wait, we did [statesman.com]. And Trump caught a raft of shit for it, for example this. [statnews.com]

    • Re:Reminder (Score:5, Insightful)

      by AleRunner ( 4556245 ) on Saturday May 16, 2020 @04:53PM (#60068138)
      The difference is that in the USA you shut down travel by Chinese People whilst still allowing flights from China. In Vietnam they shut down flights from China whilst still allowing Chinese people, subject to quarantine, testing and contact tracing. These might seem like trivial differences to you but in real life this is the difference between useless discrimination and effective preventative action.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by gweihir ( 88907 )

        The difference is that in the USA you shut down travel by Chinese People whilst still allowing flights from China. In Vietnam they shut down flights from China whilst still allowing Chinese people, subject to quarantine, testing and contact tracing. These might seem like trivial differences to you but in real life this is the difference between useless discrimination and effective preventative action.

        You are wasting your time. The Trump cheerleaders are not capable of understanding facts on this complexity level.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by ftobin ( 48814 )

      Wow, I wish we did that here in the USA - oh wait, we did.

      Oh, but we didn't. From your source:

      The restriction took effect Feb. 2, and it exempted U.S. citizens, green card holders, and certain other people...
      "The real question is whether that restriction worked and there is little evidence to suggest that it did."

      Global health specialists told Kaiser Health News that there is little to no evidence that Trump's restrictions restrained COVID-19, because they came too late and didn't have the follow-up necess

    • So you are saying he didn't do more because he is weak leader that caved to misguided political pressure by his enemies...

    • Wow, I wish we did that here in the USA

      So did these 90,000 people and their families. [worldometers.info]

      oh wait, we did

      Yea, sure you did.

  • It's all about tourism (Score:5, Insightful)

    by MS ( 18681 ) on Saturday May 16, 2020 @02:37PM (#60067800)

    New Zealand, Slovenia, Taiwan and the Czech Republic... those countries simply had not much tourists during winter which could bring the virus inside the country.

    Italy on the other hand has millions of tourists from all over the world. In winter the Dolomites (in Northern Italy) are a world-class tourist destination for skiers and the place where the virus was spread most. A small valley in the Dolomites, Val Gardena had 49% of the inhabitants infected, as afterwards tests on the presence of IgG and IgM show.

    • There was a direct flight from Wuhan to Milan. You can clearly see the center of infection on this map. [i.redd.it] That's why Italy was hit so hard. China closed domestic flights from Wuhan while keeping international flights open.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by MS ( 18681 )

        No and no. Italy was the first country in Europe closing all flights coming from China.

        The first persons in Europe, where Covid-19 was diagnosed in January, were in the French Apls (google for "Briton in French Alps chalet" and in Southern Germany (google for "Webasto patient 1")

        The area around Milan was so hardy affected in February, because an ill person went to a hospital in Codogno and infected all workforce there, which in turn infected the patrients. There were lots of death among elder people and the

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Mutations of the first patients with covid showed that their mutations were linked to the ones found in Germany. Not the ones in China. So no, they weren't hit with China's version of the virus which is mainly type B, but mostly ones found in SE Asia and Germany, etc. New York and generally the east coast later would largely get hit mostly with the type C mutation virus found in Europe.

        https://www.pnas.org/content/1... [pnas.org]

  • They implemented things the U.S. didn't bother to do, or did, but only in a patch-work manner at the state level.

  • Are those numbers still accurate? Shouldn't they be much higher?

  • the computer models on fatality that were used to justify need for an entire economic shut down and govt control of what we can do were wrong. Maybe 50X wrong? Nah that is death cult talk comrade, inform dear leader of this apostasy. https://www.google.com/amp/s/a... [google.com]

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by fintux ( 798480 )

      From the article you linked:

      "The study estimated that 2.49% to 4.16% of people in Santa Clara Country had been infected"

      The problem with the antibody tests for COVID-19 is that they have a high false positive rate. Most of the early ones had a false positive rate of up to 5%, the typical ones have 2 % and only one that I have heard of has 0.2%. What that means that in the study, most of the "positive" samples have very likely been false positives. Studies done in worse infected areas like NYC give a better picture.

      At the time in NYC 25% of people had antibodies, already more then 20 000 people out

  • As an aside from their virus response; I'm seeing a lot of misinformation about Vietnam in these threads. A lot of people seem to be basing their notions about the country on old chariactures left over from the war, and Hollywood's interpretation of the same.

    I went visited the south of country last year; and, when the outbreak is over, I'd recommend anyone else do the same. It's a beautiful country. Saigon and environs is fantastic fun. You'll find most of the modern conveniences of a western city there

  • Why can't our dictator be as functional?!

    (Because he is a silver-spoon IDIOT!)
  • Then Coronavirus should be a piece of cake!
  • Well, Vietnam has dealt with outbreaks in the past so its no surprise when the government immediately put into action when news of the first covid deaths in Wuhan appeared. There were travel restrictions, health checks, closing of schools and closing borders with China. The government also communicated with the public very well. Messages has be sent to people’s phone to inform and remind them about sop that they need to follow to stay safe. And I think the Vietnamese people played a huge role in this

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