From a statistical point of view it appears as though Vietnam is doing pretty well as far as containing the virus is concerned. They stopped letting Chinese in a long time ago and the number of countries that they put a temporary ban on has increased over time. There is no way to know if they are reporting the number of cases properly but the reaction has been swift and at least from my point of view, effective.
You may recall that when I first moved here that I was talking about how my flight was very empty and that we were not screened in any fashion upon entering the country. Well, that has changed a lot since I entered the country at the end of February. Flights aren't empty, they don't exist for the most part and the ones that are coming here are subjected to a huge amount of screening and certain nationalities are required to quarantine in some fashion or another, I am not going to speculate on what that entails.
However, many more nationalities have been banned outright and it's from the nations that you would expect because they have the highest numbers of infections. This is true for all except one case. The U.K. had their visa privileges revoked because of the actions of just a few people who tested positive and then instead of listening to officials, decided to flee the area potentially infecting a bunch of people along the way. All the places that they visited were shut down and treated in some capacity but again, I don't know exactly what that means. All I heard was a couple of bars were raided (in a calm manner) and shut down for treatment. The people currently in the bars had their information taken down and they were all tested for fevers on the spot. As far as I know those places are open again.
source
The popular Bamboo 2 bar was one of the places raided and shut down only to reopen a few days later
This is just in the city that I live in, which as far as I know hasn't had a single case of the virus. Actually, if the statistics can be trusted Vietnam has done very well keeping the virus at bay and if it is truthful I take my hat off to the admins here.
However, it isn't a rosey posey.
The tourism industry, which this area depends very heavily on, has been almost completely destroyed for this year. Many of the people who work in this industry now have no work, no money, and no savings. Therefore, there has been an uptick in the amount of petty crime that I have noticed. I now am quite watchful of my belongings when I am out as phone theft is one of the more common things that is happening now.
A new rule was declared just a few days ago that in populated areas, everyone, including foreigners are required to wear the masks. I have heard lots of people say that the mask doesn't actually prevent anything and I'm not a specialist so I have no idea. I will, however, comply. I suppose there are repercussions such as a fine for not doing so... plus I see no reason to put people on edge even if the science behind it is wrong.
I think the only really terrible thing that is starting to happen is that people are starting to play the "blame game" about who is responsible for all of this and seeing as how I am an outsider here, people in my particular demographic are likely to be pointed at as a "cause." This happens all over the world and my country certainly isn't innocent of this sort of stuff either.
There have been stories of businesses refusing service or even entry to the buildings to certain nationalities and now this has started to extend to basically anyone who is not Vietnamese. This is not widespread and certainly wouldn't apply to any place that depends on tourism but there has been some profiling going on here and the story of the U.K. people evading authorities so they could continue backpacking rather than look out for the overall public health certainly didn't help matters.
The good news is that there is nobody panic purchasing certain items at the grocery stores. The last time I was there it was business as usual. The only difference was that everyone was wearing masks.
I need to keep my fingers crossed that some sort of global solution is found in say, the next 3 months because visas in this country incorporate leaving the country - a situation that has always kind of baffled me - and this introduces another problem: how are you going to get back in?
For me, since i have Nadi to look after and all, I will simply violate immigration law and deal with the consequences later if the alternative is to abandon her... which is obviously not really an alternative at all!