Vietnam's Year of Covid-19
From zero-Covid to crisis and 'living with the virus'
Hello, and welcome to the last Vietnam Weekly article of 2021 for paying subscribers. The final free-to-read edition goes out Friday (barring something extreme), and the newsletter will return in the first week of January. If you’re not a paying subscriber, you can sign up to access this and previous subscriber-only pieces below (US$5/month, US$50/year).
Today, I’d like to look back at 2021, which feels like even more of a lost year than 2020. Here in Vietnam, things started off well enough, as we’ll get to below, though by June it was clear we were in for something horrifically different, especially in southern provinces. Now, it’s almost as if nothing but the pandemic took place this year. But that wasn’t the case, so let’s go back in time for a bit.
A Tragic Year in Review
Like many here in Vietnam, I have almost no recollection of anything that happened before May. The generally Covid-free year we had leading up to then seems like an absolute fantasy in hindsight, and something we’ll never truly return to (or at least not for a long time).
I’ve gone through old newsletter editions, and the first one of 2021 sent me into a bizarre time loop.