The WHO has been repeating the ridiculous lines that travel restrictions don't work and that China is doing a wonderful job containing the virus.

Italy applied travel bans long time ago, apparently didn't work?

Italy banned direct flights from China, but not indirect flights.

You can be bad at authoritarianism. Vietnam is authoritarian and has contained the virus very well. They were also the first country to stamp out SARS.

> Vietnam is authoritarian and has contained the virus very well.

The jury is still very much out on that. Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia - give it 12-18 months before we make any categorical declarations about these countries.

The fact you are blindly grouping all these countries together tells me you don’t know much about Southeast Asia. I’ll let you continue with your assumptions.

You are referring to the inclusion of Thailand? Major tourist destination for China, but only 35 confirmed cases. Just changed testing protocol to drop travel to China as prerequisite two days ago.

We shall see, I suppose. That's all I was saying - it's very early days to say which country has handled this well or not.

Vietnam has closed its border to China and banned all flights weeks ago.

Vietnam has already started force quarantining passengers from South Korea.

Vietnam operates a ‘brutal’ militarized ring quarantine which is extremely effective. The SK residents will not be going to a militarized area but all VN exposed to them will. SK residents go to a hospital that has been sprayed and decontaminated.

Compare this with the US and I’d argue I’d feel safer in Vietnam than here.