(Ok, Singapore technically is an island but it's connected to Malaysia by the world's busiest border crossing; and Thailand's grappling with a new outbreak now but it seems to be improving.)
I would take the stories of Viet Nam’s “success” with a very large grain of salt. It should be impossible for me to know so many people with odd “severe pneumonia” there given that the entire country has nominally only had a thousand cases or so.
And they are controlling it now by effectively locking down the country to the rest of the world. Even if you're a Vietnamese citizen you can't get back into the country without permission. And the gov't is denying permission in all but the most extreme circumstances.
Malaysia shut its border with Singapore in mid-March [1], and Singapore had what I'd consider a lockdown (most businesses closed, no social gatherings allowed) between 7 April to 19 June [2].
[1] https://www.todayonline.com/8days/eatanddrink/newsandopening...
[2] https://www.gov.sg/article/ending-circuit-breaker-phased-app...
For example the vaccine against Japanese Encephalitis is under investigation for a possible cross-effect on covid immunity.
It's been experimentally verified that various pre-pandemic coronavirus antibodies are reactive against SARS-CoV-2.
It's a fact that different world populations have to deal with different endemic disease profiles.
Consequently, different populations have different pre-infection susceptibility to SARS-CoV-2. [0]
[0] https://www.ijidonline.com/article/S1201-9712(20)32310-9/ful...
And of course, the same can be said for Mexico (because the main driver of the spread in the US is people not taking simple steps to prevent it).
Travel to Canada has been restricted for much of the year (I live in Michigan; there's a warning 4 hours from the border that travel is restricted). But that's because Canada isn't letting their fool neighbors in.
Ironically it's the other way around, too. Our borders are shut to tourists, but they keep showing up in Canmore and Banff anyway. And now Alberta has a serious problem with Covid spread, and a friend of my sister's just died a couple days ago from it. They have 1/3 the population of Ontario, yet close to the same numbers of daily cases and hospitalizations, which suggests triple the velocity.
There are compounding reasons as well, but everyone I know that lives there is complaining about all the Americans constantly showing up.
Vietnam has essentially one train line across the county that only splits up in the very north into two train lines into China. Vietnam has 2,600km of train lines, Germany for comparison has more than 41,000km, for a comparable area size. Vietnam has about 12M train passenger rides a year (pre-Corona of course), Germany has more than 2000M (does not include intra-city light rail rides). Thailand, with an area about 1.5x of either Vietnam or Germany, has 4,400km of train lines and 38M passenger rides.
Vietnam has about 250,000km of roads (50% paved), Germany has 600,000km (mostly paved). Vietnam has about 3M motorized vehicles (31 per 1000 population, but there is probably a significant number of unaccounted motor scooters), Germany has 56M motorized vehicles (701 per 1000), Thailand has 40M motorized vehicles (half being motor scooters/bikes, probably a significant number of unaccounted motor scooters) (571 per 1000).
You said "just like the US or EU", but I disagree given these numbers. The mobility, especially medium and long distance mobility, seem quite different.
Public life - as dictated by climate conditions and of course economic constraints - differs as well. Average temperature in Vietnam is 24°C, Thailand 26°C and Germany 9°C (and Spain/Greece/Italy aka the South of Europe it's 13°C). A lot more public life, incl paid and unpaid work, happens outside in Vietnam and Thailand, compared to Europe. When it was summer in Europe, we had a lot fewer cases and deaths than when it was cold and is now cold again. Colder weather and indoor living/working seems to heavily correlate with Corona, at least in Europe.
This doesn't mean we cannot learn from nations such as Vietnam and Thailand, but it's also not as straight forward as trying to outright mimic what they did and do in response to the pandemic.
Not to mention that after the first couple of months, Covid cases are now nicely distributed amongst younger populations as well. Fatalities are still concentrated in older people, but cases are still widespread across demographics.
The facts are staring everyone in the face: when countries started weakening their lockdown procedures, cases started going back up. And nobody's been willing to go back in full lockdown, for various reasons. And so cases are going up a bunch.
Meanwhile Vietnam had some cases in fall/winter, and _immediately_ locked stuff down, shut down universities, and quarantined people who had even a bit of contact with people in positive cases. The stuff was taken seriously, and numbers stayed low because of it.
Maybe the US and Europe "can't do it" because of a lack of political will etc. But it's not physically impossible.
But this obviously doesn’t change the bottom line: Their response was sufficient, while ours was not. This isn’t their Chernobyl like a lot of overconfident analysts proclaimed. I’d say it comes close to being our Chernobyl. Asian societies by and large did really well, and the pathetic response of the “First World” revealed a disturbing level of calcification and incompetence.
I guess perfect covid policy is contagious!
