Vietnam has the second lowest positive per test outcome in the world. North Korea is worse (with 0 positives and 709 total tests given). Vietnam does have relatively low testing (26th worst country), but is on par with Taiwan and double Japan's. Vietnam has 2% the positive results of Germany, and 1% the positive results of the US.Cal84 said:
>There are still no cases in the South, AFAIK. I would suspect that the data is being intentionally manipulated
It's clear the virus exists in the southern half of Vietnam. But underreporting of cases or even deaths is hardly evidence of data manipulation. Particularly in less developed countries, testing is haphazard at best. Here in the US, the richest country in the world, we probably only detect half the infections. Wouldn't be at all surprising in Vietnam if they only detected 10% of the cases. And as people are just discovering here in the US, underreporting of deaths is also systemic.
I think the evidence that authoritarian regimes are nearly universally showing "better" death and infection rates compared to democracies is a sign that manipulation is possible, if not likely, or very likely. But, there are other explanations, as you point out.
Poverty, extremely poor heath systems, poor use of tests, ease of population control to stop the spread, very good health systems, very good use of tests, wealth, etc. probably all play a roll.
I still think manipulation of the data or manipulation of the data collection is most likely given the totality of evidence. I certainly do think that more liberal countries are more susceptible to pandemics, though. I would still lean towards manipulation given the stark contrast, vs a taper or curve of any kind.