I don't know if the Vietnamese are just not subjected to the media scare-tactics or if they are simply not really taking it seriously but when I see the pics and stories from my friends in Australia and USA in regards to the supermarket situations that exist there I can't help but feel that cooler heads are prevailing over here... and we are right next door to the source of the Corona-virus.
It began at Lotte Mart, which is one of the big supermarkets here in Da Nang. Rather than the chaos that I have seen from others with massive lines to even get in the grocery stores in USA, there was barely anyone here at all.
There were so few people here I wasn't entirely sure the store was open. However, there was a lady at the bottom floor that was checking the temperature of everyone that came in. The digital results were displayed in Celsius, so it took me a minute to determine whether or not I was ok but she let me past so 36 degrees must be OK! I went upstairs and found an abundance of shopping carts all lined up in an organized fashion the same as any other day.
There was zero mayhem and the shelves were fully-stocked with everything there normally would be. I did notice just one thing that was missing, and that was the Japanese brand of mushrooms that I normally buy for my stir-fry and I don't even know if this has anything to do with the current global situation.
The fruit and veg section was completely chock a block with all the fresh produce that we would see on a normal day. There were plenty of staff and some of the areas were currently being not just restocked, but organized to make the display look better.
Of course the big story in the world is how everyone is scrambling to buy 2 years worth of toilet paper all in one go and how they have had to get authorities involved to prevent skirmishes over this product that very few of us gave much mind to in the past.
That was just one of 2 lanes filled to the brim with disposable paper products, there were also hundreds of bottles of hand sanitizer not just stocked, but again, all labels facing forward in an organized and presentable fashion.
So my question is this: Given that we are all more or less facing the same situation around the globe, why is it that there is a near complete lack of pandemonium over here? Could there be some truth to the media actually making things a lot worse in the West? I don't really know very many Vietnamese people yet but the few that I do know are carrying on with their lives in a calm and normal manner. There haven't been very many deaths or even cases here despite the fact that this country, which you could fit inside of California, has more than 90 million people in it. There are also plenty of densely populated urban areas, one of which I live in.
Why is there no chaos at the supermarket or really anywhere else for that matter? Could the accusations of hash-tag-fake-news have some truth to it? I suppose if Vietnam were to explode with Corona-virus cases in the future we could come to the conclusion that they should have panicked, but if it does not, can we not at least fathom the possibility that we are overreacting in the West?