Vietnam's War against COVID-19

Vietnam effectively controlled the COVID-19 pandemic until April 2021, and faced great challenges afterwards, partly due to the spread of the highly transmissible Delta and Omicron strains of the coronavirus. Adopting Joel Migdal's "state-in-society" approach, this article focuses not on the impact of regime type, but on the fear-driven tension and the process of negotiation among different levels of the state apparatus and between state and society during the COVID-19 pandemic in Vietnam. The evolution of this pandemic was shaped not only by state measures but also by citizens' fear-driven situational variation in norm compliance, as well as by the historical and cultural backgrounds of a society, specifically the wide sharing of war experiences and the war metaphor in Vietnamese society, and the non-negative meaning of face masks in daily life.