Vietnam has kind of tapered off as far as reporting new cases of Covid in the past few months and for the most part, aside from improperly wearing your masks in public life has returned to normal. We got some bad news from a pizza place we were at last night for dinner and that was that the officials are partially locking down our section of the city because there are a few cases about, or so it has been reported.
Months ago, our lockdowns were some of the most extreme in the world except for maybe Australia - or at least from what I read / hear from friends. We were not allowed out of our neighborhoods and at one point were not even allowed out of our buildings in order to get food. We had to have food delivered by authorized agents and the entire process was rather silly. They kept doing this right up to the point where it looked like the people were going to start rioting and then they let off.
We have lived lives of relative freedom since then but then rumors started spreading about a case or two in a certain pub nearby in our area. Last night we received word from the owner of the pizza place that as of tomorrow (which is not today) that all bars and restaurants have to be closed and only take away food is allowed.
What makes this so silly is the fact that we are allowed to leave this relatively small quadrant of Da Nang and once we leave it, which we can do so by any method that we please, these rules no longer apply.
Basically, if your business is in this tiny part of Da Nang, you can not be open for dine in service but if you just go across the street, and you are totally allowed to do so, you can do whatever you want.
Here is a couple of reasons why this ruling is completely stupid
- The lockdown of restaurants obviously doesn't stop the spread because even when EVERYTHING was locked down it still spread
- If our area is in fact riddled with Covid cases, which I do not believe in the first place, wouldn't closing all of our businesses and forcing us to go to other areas to have dinner / drinks actually speed up the transfer and move it into unaffected areas?
This is more of an annoyance than anything else because I quite like being able to walk to have dinner and drinks and not get a taxi involved in the process. Plus, this area has been hit just as hard as the rest of the city and perhaps the entire country financially speaking, so this closing of local businesses simply doesn't make any sense.
Government doesn't make sense to me generally speaking. Not just in Vietnam but almost anywhere in the world. Normally, being an expat and a guest in this country I just take it on the chin and move on but this sort of "spot lockdown" just seems completely ridiculous to me.