We have several facebook groups for expats here in our southern VN island city of Vung Tau (pop 400,000 except on weekends when half of Saigon comes here to swim), and the snowflake expats complain ad nauseum about "loss of civil liberties" because our lockdowns are started by police in loudspeaker vans everywhere (the kids love that bit!), followed by police foot patrols knocking on every individual door and getting the residents to sign an acknowledgement that they can't go out except to pick up the plastic bags of food that are left outside the apartment building or house every morning by the police and registered volunteers (penalties for breaching the rules range from 20million VND - about $1,000 - to 12 years, repeat 12 years, in jail!).
The "shippers", as the delivery people are called, are in great demand but not allowed to charge more than $1 on top of the cost of the food for each delivery. If you get sick, you have to call a doctor and wait - good luck with that!
But our "Directive 16" (very strict) lockdown was recently relaxed to Directive 128 (everything in VN has a number!), so we can go out now - although no more than 2 at a time. Restaurants can sell takeaway food, but bars, karaoke, etc are well and truly closed (which doesn't sit well with most expats, either!).
As far as I can tell, the only people who are handling things really well are the locals (of course - they probably think it's much easier than being at war against people with guns), and the Aussie Vietnam Vets (ex-soldiers) who help to deliver food parcels to the poor.
The other expats are mostly English-speaking school teachers, so they're fairly young and really should never have been allowed to leave home - they're mostly backpackers who've done a two-week TESOL course, so not "real" teachers at all, but you'd think they were all uni professors the way they carry on about their "loss of entitlements" (in VN, of all places!).
Think I'd better stop now before I start saying what I 'really' think!
