There's too much social distancing in Vietnam!



I’ve previously written about Vietnam, where my wife was born and grew up – but I’ll say it again, since it’s an amazing story. Despite having a per capita income that’s less than 1/20 that of the US, being much more densely populated than the US, and being next door to China, they have only 35 active Covid-19 cases (with 293 recoveries), and (count ‘em!) zero deaths. This is better than New Zealand, who despite having only 23 active cases has had 22 deaths. As of May 15, there had been no community spread of the virus (i.e. a new case that wasn’t from someone coming from overseas). Vietnam has a population of about 100 million, which is a little less than a third that of the US.

How did Vietnam do this? This article tells the story, along with information my wife has given me (she’s in Vietnam now. She went there to help her parents with health problems, but now she’s very reluctant to return because of a) the danger of spending 17 hours in a metal tube with a bunch of other people who may be infected and not know it, and b) the brutal fact that the US has around 1,000 deaths a day nowadays. In fact, many Vietnamese citizens who live in the US want to return now and the government isn’t letting them in, even if they’re willing to quarantine):

  1. The government has done extensive testing and contact tracing since before their first case in late January (all the East Asian countries learned the importance of doing these things the hard way, especially with SARS). In fact, my wife was tested twice, in February and March, even though she really didn’t have symptoms of the virus.
  2. In March the government put in place mandatory quarantining (i.e. away from their families) for 14 days of anybody arriving from overseas. This is at government expense, although the article makes clear the accommodations aren’t exactly luxurious.
  3. The government also quarantines anybody who has been in contact with a suspected case.
  4. Schools closed as usual for the Tet lunar new year at the end of January, but never reopened until this month. Now they’ll stay open through the summer.

The government locked most of the country down in March. They were planning on opening up in May, but in at least some areas – including, unfortunately, my wife’s province – they haven’t done so. And they just announced that, at least for my wife’s province, they won’t allow reopening of most businesses until late September!

This has created tremendous hardship for people, since there is no safety net of any kind in Vietnam: no Medicare or Medicaid, little private medical insurance, no food stamps or welfare payments, no free government schools, etc. The government said they were giving $40 to every family, but so far it hasn’t shown up, at least where my wife lives.
                                                                                                                
I assume there were some new cases in the province, which is why they can’t reopen now. But I certainly think that, with the level of testing, contact tracing and quarantining that the government is doing, they could figure out a way to open my wife’s province as well. In the US, they would certainly meet the White House criteria for opening up. My guess is that maybe they don’t have enough testing capacity to test a good portion of the province’s citizens, which is really what it would take for them to feel safe about opening. And “safe” in Vietnam obviously has a much stricter meaning than in the US.


I’m once again omitting the table of projections, since the numbers have barely changed in the last few days – in fact, total projected deaths from March-June is within 400 of what it was several days ago. This is because the 7-day rate of increase in total deaths remains solidly at 7%. The numbers below are all current.

I. Total deaths
Total US deaths as of yesterday: 109,159
Increase in deaths since previous day: 1,076 (vs. 1,156 yesterday)
Percent increase in deaths since previous day: 1% (this number was 1% yesterday)
Yesterday’s 7-day rate of increase in total deaths: 7% (This number is used to project deaths in the table above – it was 7% yesterday. There is a 7-day cycle in deaths, caused by lack of reporting over the weekends from closed state offices. So this is the only reliable indicator of a trend in deaths, not the three-day percent increase I used to focus on).

II. Total reported cases
Total US reported cases: 1,902,779
Increase in reported cases since previous day: 21,297
Percent increase in reported cases since yesterday: 1%
Percent increase in reported cases since 7 days previous: 9%

III. Deaths as a percentage of closed cases so far in the US:
Total Recoveries in US as of yesterday: 688,811
Total Deaths as of yesterday: 109,159
Deaths so far as percentage of closed cases (=deaths + recoveries): 14% (vs. 14% yesterday)
Kevin Perry and Royce Howland have pointed out that the recoveries number is inherently flawed, meaning the ratio above doesn’t have much meaning as an absolute number. However, I think it has value as a relative number. For example, the fact that the ratio has fallen from 41% in late March to 14% yesterday, which is much faster than in countries like Italy and France, indicates the US is doing something right – most likely having to do with hospitals being much better equipped to handle Covid-19 patients than they were in March. For further discussion of this issue, see this post.


I would love to hear any comments or questions you have on this post. Drop me an email at tom@tomalrich.com

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