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How Vietnam went from pandemic hero to COVID shambles (lò mổ, lò sát sinh; cảnh chiếm giết loạn xạ; (thông tục) cảnh hoàn toàn hỗn loạn; tình trạng hỗn độn; tình trạng rối ren)

Few economies have pivoted (xoay trục) from an inspiring success story (câu chuyện thành công truyền cảm hứng) to a cautionary (có tính chất cảnh cáo) tale faster than Vietnam.

Just a few months ago, the globe (toàn cầu) marveled (ngạc nhiên, kinh ngạc, lấy làm lạ) at Hanoi's incredibly (không thể tin được) low COVID-19 infection numbers (số ca nhiễm) and negligible (không đáng kể) death rate (tỷ lệ tử vong). This outlier (nằm ngoài, tách khỏi nhóm) status was a big feather in the government's hat. Perhaps the biggest winner from the U.S.-China trade war, Vietnam was already scoring a disproportionate number of manufacturing jobs fleeing China. Then, a COVID exemplar to boot.

Now Vietnam embodies how the broader Southeast Asian region grew complacent (tự mãn). Just as in Thailand, Indonesia and elsewhere, its leaders believed their own press. They assumed that early mitigation successes could be replicated if needed and that large-scale vaccination programs could wait.

Pathogens (bệnh học) do not make political considerations (toan tính chính trị), and the delta variant is rapidly exposing holes in Southeast Asia's pandemic armor. The mutation -- and others that might be on the way -- is generating a particularly rapid reassessment of Vietnam's economic health.