
Patient 91: How Vietnam saved a British pilot and kept a clean Covid-19 sheet - onetimemanytime
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-53196009
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Nginx487
I'm an expat in the HCMC. I remember significant amount of skepticism by the
beginning of the outbreak around COVID-19 related news, as both expats and
locals suspected state censorship involved, like it happened in China about a
month before. However, by the 2nd week of quarantine, even skeptics had to
admit that outbreak has been handled with the same efficiency as in Taiwan or
New Zealand. By that moment borders are still closed, and it's hard to back to
my home country, however, being able to walk without a mask and a constant
fear to get infected really worth a lot. My sincere gratitude to Vietnamese
health officials and medical workers who made it possible.

Of course, significant part of the success belongs to people who were
following social distancing rules, wearing masks (which is almost a part of
Asian culture), businesses that were closed on an early stage of outbreak -
measures that other countries were very hesitant to do. And that successful
handling of the pandemic has already brought significant benefits to the
state, as international investors and manufacturers consider moving to Vietnam
from China, something they were looking forward to, as China's biggest
competitor in the region.

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lucasjans
I'm also an expat here and I can second this. Trust in the government is at an
all time high. Domestic travel is up 25% over last year. While many retail
businesses suffered during the lockdown, life has mostly returned to normal.
Albeit, with closed borders.

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lazylizard
If its any consolation closed borders doesn't bother them as much as the thais
who are far more dependent on tourism. Or the singaporeans , who do far more
travelling..

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pjc50
It's very noticeable how "middle development" countries (east Asia, eastern
Europe) seem to have coped very well with the virus, while several of the
"advanced" economies haven't, and the US is worst hit entirely. None of the
"advanced" political leaders want to learn from this.

It seems to be arriving in South America now.

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TMWNN
>the US is worst hit entirely

How is it that people still claim this with a straight face? The US has the
most number of deaths on an absolute basis, but by per capita Belgium, the UK,
France, Spain, and Italy are much worse off. (The US has more people than
those countries combined.) Of the large western European countries only
Germany did significantly better on deaths on a per-capita basis.

There is a real discussion to be had regarding how Western countries in
general did versus the likes of China, Taiwan, and Vietnam, but that's not the
same thing.

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harpratap
But you are not considering the fact that the number of cases have been on a
decline in these countries, but the US is already experiencing the second wave
without ever even bringing the first wave under control.

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rsynnott
I think there’s a strong argument that that isn’t a separate wave at all. The
first wave is ending in NY and NJ, but it’s still on the upswing in many other
states. Add those together and it looks a bit like two waves, but that’s not a
helpful way to think about it.

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harpratap
Regardless of the semantics, my point is the "infections per capita" will keep
increasing for US but for these European countries it's pretty much at a
standstill for now.

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garyclarke27
Surprising how little publicity ECMO machines (Think heart lung machine
without the heart) have had. They are rare but seem to have a much higher
success rate 75% than ventilators 35% for covid ICU patients - so even though
they cost twice as much $100k, they are well worth it on a cost per life
saved.

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ceejayoz
ECMO uses immense amount of resources, both in scarce equipment and trained
staff to monitor and manage.

Great to say “this one case we won’t let die”. Useless in “we have 50k people
who need this” scenarios.

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coconut_crab
This is a photo I took at one of Vietnam's jam packed airports a few days ago:

[https://imgur.com/a/9dn5AJh](https://imgur.com/a/9dn5AJh)

Not many people will believe that a poor country like Vietnam, led by a single
party in authoritarian style, can suppress Covid-19 with zero deaths. But for
people who live here, being able to travel freely is the greatest proof that
the approach worked.

(still I find it weird that covid-19 seems to be much weaker in South East
Asia, even Laos or Cambodia aren't being hit that hard).

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pvaldes
Not weird at all, is an autochtonous organism in Asia, therefore they had
chances to being exposed in the past to similar viruses, and they have lots of
young population probably also.

Has happened before with american natives dying in mass from new european
diseases, for example

