You know who isn't talking about reintroducing Covid mandates? Vietnam

It saddens me a bit when I see the news that there are some places in the world that are considering returning to the old tactics of lockdowns and mandatory mask wearing despite the fact that when the entire world was doing this to a very extreme degree it didn't actually accomplish anything. Regardless of how extreme the measures were, the virus or whatever still spread far and wide and while I don't consider myself an expert on this because honestly, I would rather not know, but it appears as though Australia, who were some of the most hardcore in the world, are now experiencing the same thing, just later.

Vietnam jumped on the extreme bandwagon although it was considerably later than the rest of the world. We at one point were not even permitted to leave our houses or condos and food had to be delivered by authorized dealers only. Of course there were a few ways around this since each little subdistrict is kind of managed by an individual that the government installed in that neighborhood. Ours was relatively cool so he would let people exercise or the kids play in the streets at night for a little while. He also wouldn't bat an eye if you went over to someone else's house. Actually, now that I think about it, he didn't really do his job at all provided that we didn't try to leave the area.

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During all of this time I really feared for the world and of course, my own decision to move here in the first place. Little did I know, most of the world was going through basically the same thing although as far as I know, my home country never restricted people from leaving their own homes.

Since I already work from home anyway, this wasn't the end of the world for me but for many others that were here that are not Vietnamese, simply leaving the country was a massive pain if it was possible at all. It incorporated getting false "transit" documents that of course an agent could provide for a fee, being escorted beyond city limits in a ambulance and then being transited to a taxi for a very long ride to one of the country's two functioning international airports.

This was far too much hassle for me so I just stayed put.

Over time the restrictions were removed one-by-one and now we don't have any restrictions at all that I am aware of. Masks are not mandatory anywhere other than hospitals and I think they are hanging on to that by a thread because the few people I know in the medical community here all know that the masks, especially the disposable surgical kind that the hospitals use, don't actually do anything.

The people have not been restricted by where they can go or how they can go there and in public spaces there will be a bunch of people with masks on, but they are not required to do this. Just last night there were two massive parties that were sponsored by the city on the beach with thousands of people in attendance. Everything is and has been back to normal for Vietnam. They don't even have any restrictions for entry including any sort of proof of vaccination or PCR test.

The people went through a lot during that near 2-years of being limited in what they could to and a lot of people lost their jobs. Now, we are slowly but surely seeing tourism thrive again and at least for me, I'm kind of sick of all these tourists cluttering up the streets of the city I live in. I try to stop being so selfish and realize this is income BADLY needed for the community, so I just have to deal with some traffic for a few more months until the summer vacations are over.

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I'm not trying to speak for the entirety of the Vietnam population but from what I can gather based on my global experience, they are a rater compliant society. If the government tells them to do something, they do it. But even a compliant population has their tipping point and right about the time that people started tearing through barricades and ignoring police lines, the government just so happened to start to lift all restrictions. The people were on the verge of taking it anyway, so I think they made the right move by pretending it was their idea all along.

Nowadays you don't even hear anything about Covid. All of the posters and warning signs have been taken down. There are no stats presented on the news at night. No one is being reprimanded for not wearing a mask although most businesses still have their staff wearing them and the "sneeze shields" that were put up a year ago are still in most shops.

Other than this remnants of horrible time, the country has basically put all of that behind us. It really is amazing how little the population will be afraid of something if the news and government just stop talking about it. Now almost no one is afraid and everyone is going about their days as they normally would.

I would say there is almost zero chance that this country will return to the lockdown state again because I think they realize that all that they did before was rather pointless in the end. All the people that were going to get it still got it even when no one was allowed to go anywhere.

When I hear about some USA cities discussing bringing back mask mandates I kind of shake my head. Did we not learn from the last time? It's sometimes amazing to me that this relatively poor country that I live in now seems to have a lot more sense than one of the richest countries in the world.

I'll tell you which one I would rather live in: The one I am in.