How are Covid restrictions where you live? They are pretty extreme here
There once was a time that Vietnam was the envy of the world as far as the handling of the pandemic was concerned. They managed to have a very free and open society, even though we were cut off from the rest of the world. All of us that moved here and even more that accidentally got stuck here after the borders closed thought we had amazing luck. Unfortunately it was only a matter of time that the craziness that had hit the rest of the world ended up here.
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Before now it was just a question of not being able to get into Vietnam and only very special and extremely qualified people were allowed in at all. Those that did qualify had to go through the usual quarantine. Once you got inside though, Vietnam seemed to be the only place on the planet that acknowledged the existence of Covid but didn't have any problems with it.
We were basically maskless and all events were still taking place including general admission and packed sporting events. Gyms were open, street festivals were happening, all stores were open and basically everyone was carefree. I'm not certain how it got in here with the borders being completely closed, but it did get in. The situation here is no as widespread as other countries but those of us that live here are now seeing how effective and authoritarian the government actually can be with the rather extreme lockdowns that we are currently facing.
We have seen the amount of things that we are "allowed" to do diminish week by week and the most recent restrictions have made life in general pretty damn difficult. In the last week they cut off almost all food delivery services, taxis, and even went as far as to ban exercise or even going for a walk. You still see people every now and then that are walking or exercising and as far as I know no one is being arrested or anything silly like that but the other day I just wanted to walk down to the beach road to take a photo of how empty the streets are (they are normally jam packed as this is a tourist beach town) and was stopped by someone at the corner with a whistle who beckoned me to turn around. I complied because I don't want to end up on some sort of list.
The people who live in outlying provinces are not allowed to leave them and we are not allowed to leave here without permission, a covid test, and changing to another vehicle and taking ANOTHER covid test at the roadblocks they have erected between the various provinces.
Thankfully, getting food isn't an issue yet and some restaurants are still open for takeaway. The economic impact of this has been near complete destruction of the small business sector and people aren't even allowed to leave to visit family.
Basically, you just have to stay in your house all day and you can leave but only to get food or medicine. It's not much of a life, that's for sure. How are things for you?
Sorry to hear about what is going on over there, we dont have any restrictions here in NZ at the moment - i kinda get the feeling that what is currently happening with rising cases in Australia will happen here eventually.
stay safe
the NZ success story is a good one but it is a double-edged sword from my un-scientific point of view. Ok, so you have no cases, so what do you do now? Remain closed off to the rest of the world forever? If you know the strategy trust that I am not judging you or your country, I genuinely want to know if they have a strategy moving forward.
i dont think they have a real plan going forward
Think we have been lucky due to being quite isolated from rest of world
Its coming.....
I remember reading that some sort of rugby competition with Aus was going to be cancelled due to Covid fears and this doesn't sound very reassuring to me. If professional athletes in a controlled environment can't go from one country to the other, what chances to regular tourists and travelers have?
They were going down for us but then the country went back into panic mode and we are back to having pretty tight restrictions. We can still go and do stuff but it depends a lot on how close you are to the city center. out where I live about 15 km from the city center, most places are still open in some capacity. I hear that the rest of the country is not so fortunate though.
My decision to live in a big city for the first time in my life has backfired. The outlying areas such as what it sounds like you live in have very little in the way of restrictions until recently. We have been locked down for months now. We are all getting fat too!