Yes, only slightly .

So I have some friends in VN and what they report makes the idea of “people wearing masks, staying home, and closing their businesses” sound laughable. Social distancing is impossible in the cities, masks are not universal (though people already wear masks while traveling by moped to keep away dust), and everyone is still working.

I’m guessing tight, early border controls must be the biggest factor, plus a willingness to track every infection and provide free care. Also the tropical climate means that people are outdoors all the time instead of rebreathing each other’s air inside.

I wonder if there’s a natural resistance to coronavirus in East Asia if the virus is endemic to that part of the world. It may have caused local epidemics there for centuries without ever jumping to the rest of the world.

Yeah the covid response by country is really do you have a functioning state that will shut down business and enforce quarantine with the state support to feed and pay people, and close borders with countries that aren’t doing that, or are you a neoliberal hell where the state, despite being very strong, will just purposefully not do those things.