June 19, 2020, by Vietnam Weekly
Reading about such amazing developments, combined with the fact that Vietnam has not detected any community transmission of the coronavirus for two months, makes it all the more confounding when one comes across a prominent opinion that discredits - or completely ignores - the country's success.
There has been lots of coverage of Vietnam's strategy from international journalists at this point, so I can't say that no plaudits have been given, but some high-profile think-tank figures still haven't gotten the message.
Take this piece by Ian Bremmer, head of the Eurasia Group, for Time. Titled 'The Best Global Responses to COVID-19 Pandemic,' it hails Taiwan, Singapore, South Korea, New Zealand, Australia and Canada as the top responders, while giving 'honorable mention' to Germany, Iceland, the UAE, Greece and Argentina. There is zero mention of Vietnam, and I do not understand why.
Then there is this now-infamous 'rotten apples' tweet from Steve Hanke, an economist at Johns Hopkins, senior fellow at the Cato Institute, and member of the Reagan administration.
Labeling Vietnam as 'no data reported' sent Vietnam Twitter into a feeding frenzy, as meticulous data has been available from the Ministry of Health throughout the pandemic. I contacted Hanke by email and he was very polite, and blamed the error on a blank data space on the Worldometers website, which was his only source.
'Who cares?' some of you may be asking. That's generally a good attitude towards such ignorance, but Hanke has over 250,000 followers and works at one of the world's foremost universities. People were furious, and an open letter addressed to Johns Hopkins' leadership has been published, demanding an apology from the professor and for him to delete the tweet. After our correspondence, Hanke tweeted that he had not been aware of Vietnam's success, but has still not removed the mistaken 'rotten apples' chart. VnExpress has now covered this as well.
Given the widespread coverage that Vietnam has now received, it's hard to blame such erasure of the country's sterling coronavirus record on someone simply missing the story, but I don't know exactly what the issue is.
There has been lots of coverage of Vietnam's strategy from international journalists at this point, so I can't say that no plaudits have been given, but some high-profile think-tank figures still haven't gotten the message.
Take this piece by Ian Bremmer, head of the Eurasia Group, for Time. Titled 'The Best Global Responses to COVID-19 Pandemic,' it hails Taiwan, Singapore, South Korea, New Zealand, Australia and Canada as the top responders, while giving 'honorable mention' to Germany, Iceland, the UAE, Greece and Argentina. There is zero mention of Vietnam, and I do not understand why.
Then there is this now-infamous 'rotten apples' tweet from Steve Hanke, an economist at Johns Hopkins, senior fellow at the Cato Institute, and member of the Reagan administration.
Labeling Vietnam as 'no data reported' sent Vietnam Twitter into a feeding frenzy, as meticulous data has been available from the Ministry of Health throughout the pandemic. I contacted Hanke by email and he was very polite, and blamed the error on a blank data space on the Worldometers website, which was his only source.
'Who cares?' some of you may be asking. That's generally a good attitude towards such ignorance, but Hanke has over 250,000 followers and works at one of the world's foremost universities. People were furious, and an open letter addressed to Johns Hopkins' leadership has been published, demanding an apology from the professor and for him to delete the tweet. After our correspondence, Hanke tweeted that he had not been aware of Vietnam's success, but has still not removed the mistaken 'rotten apples' chart. VnExpress has now covered this as well.
Given the widespread coverage that Vietnam has now received, it's hard to blame such erasure of the country's sterling coronavirus record on someone simply missing the story, but I don't know exactly what the issue is.
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