How much worse? — VietEcon

It is getting hard to find something to write about other than COVID-19. A few headlines that hit me over the day about the virus in Southeast Asia:

Cases in Vietnam have increased to 75. Spread in the country continues to be linear, not exponential, which is a good thing. The government is really controlling this, and is being even more aggressive over borders.
Other Southeast Asian countries aren’t doing as well. The WHO is calling for aggressive actions.
Malaysia has seen a massive increase - 790 cases in total, with 117 confirmed in the last 24 hours. The prime minister has banned overseas travel. (Although the border with Singapore might be partially opened).
Singapore has done a fairly good job containing COVID-19. But now it faces a different crisis: the estimated 400,000 daily commuters from Malaysia won’t be able to cross. There were long lines on the causeway before it closed, and some opt to be in Singapore. The government is figuring out ways to house them. The rest won’t be able to come over. The government says it won’t face food shortages, which is good.
Laos, which has no confirmed cases, has closed most of its borders. It seems very unlikely that the country doesn’t have any cases, but maybe they were lucky.
Cambodia has had a number of cases, and it won’t allow Western tourists, but it is going ahead with military drills with the Chinese.

There are a number of stories (here and here) about passenger airplanes being used for cargo, which is interesting.

I was also surprised by these pictures of very busy airports in Vietnam. We saw them in the US, and it seemed very unsafe to me. Same here.

But the Vietnamese are basically closing the border entirely, so these will be the last ones to come in or go out. Probably none too soon.