Take a break from coronavirus panic: Vietnam’s handwash dance challenge goes viral
HANOI: Home-made videos featuring a catchy Vietnamese song and an accompanying dance about the necessity of hand-washing during thecrisis have racked up more than 2 million views on video app TikTok.
Cribbing the tune from pop song ‘Jealous’ – or ‘Ghen’ in Vietnamese – by singers Erik and Min, thereleased an animated video with lyrics telling its citizens to ‘push back the virus Corona, Corona’.
The unlikely earworm by a usually staidgovernment drew hundreds of thousands of views on Youtube, and was also featured on’s comedic news show ‘Last Week Tonight’, with hostcalling it a ‘genuine club-banger’.
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In, the nation’s youth have taken to TikTok performing hand-washing dance moves, making sure to rub in-between their fingers and their fingernails — which health professionals have recommended.
Corona dance courtesy of the incredible doctors and nurses fighting the virus in #Iran! #CoronavirusOutbreak ht…
— Reza H. Akbari (@rezahakbari)
Spin-offs include office workers grooving at their desks and even people dressed in the Hmong ethnic minority outfits dancing in front of a waterfall. ‘The remote village also prevents and fights the epidemic,’ read the caption on a video featuring the Hmong couple.
Popularised by dancer and internet personality, who has nearly 300,000 followers on TikTok and Instagram, he and another dancer performed it with light-hearted swagger on a street with food vendors.
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It was tagged with the government-issued hashtag, and Dang’s original video has been viewed more than 1.1 million times. The song provides guidance on how to prevent an infection, such as washing hands by ‘rub, rub, rubbing evenly’ and limiting ‘visits to crowded places’.
‘We want the song to give fire and reduce tension for those… leading this fight, including experts, doctors, medical workers and millions of labourers who are on the frontline to fight this epidemic daily,’ the health ministry posted in the video’s description.
‘Vietnam is determined to win this epidemic!’ Communist-run Vietnam has a booming youth demographic, with two-thirds of its 97 million citizens under the age of 35.
It has 16 confirmed cases of the coronavirus, though it says all patients have recovered and been discharged.
The country, which shares a porous border with China, has taken great measures in the fight against the virus, including putting a small village an hour from Hanoi under quarantine after five confirmed cases emerged from there.
A Bioweapon Or Effects Of 5G? 7 Conspiracy Theories Around Coronavirus That Will Shock You
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The Biggest Humanitarian Crisis
The coronavirus outbreak has brought the world to a halt. With over 471,794 positive cases and 21,297 deaths, COVID-19 outbreak has caused global panic. Italy, Iran, US happen to be the worst hit countries in addition to China, which is the epicentre of the outbreak.
As the phrase goes, the ‘streets are talking’ and rumour mills are running overtime. Several sceptics and tin foil hat bearers have been speculating and there are plenty of coronavirus conspiracy theories doing the rounds on the Internet.
Here are some of the most spine-chilling, eerie and scary conspiracy theories surrounding COVID-19.
The Chinese Cover-Up
Ever since the news about the coronavirus was picked up by global media, speculations about the communist government of China trying to ‘cover-up’ the outbreak and hide the official figures were rife.
The fact that the Chinese Government tried to suppress the attempts of the whistleblowers (the insiders as well as eight doctors), who tried to warn the public of the pandemic, is rather alarming and didn’t help their cause.
While the rumours of the Chinese cover-up are unsubstantiated, once can only think about the popular proverb, ‘there’s no smoke, without fire’.
Coronavirus Predicted In A Novel
This theory, in all probability, is the scariest one and will send chills down your spine. Soon after the news of the outbreak broke, several users started pointing out that a passage from the 1981 book ‘The Eyes of Darkness’ by Dean Koontz eerily predicts the Coronavirus outbreak.
The photograph of the passage from the book went viral in no time and netizens couldn’t help but freak out because the resemblance was uncanny and the evidence was hard to dismiss.
To give you some background, the plot is based around a mother who attempts to find out what happened to her son after he mysteriously disappeared on a camping trip. It turns out that the boy is held in China – more specifically in Wuhan – the site of a deadly virus outbreak.
In the passage, a character named Dombey narrates an account of a virus called ‘Wuhan-400’ which was developed at the RDNA lab outside the city of Wuhan, and ‘ it was the four-hundredth viable strain of man-made microorganisms created at that research centre’.
The passage then gives intricate details about how the virus affects the human body. The chilling accuracy with which this 1981 book predicts the outbreak and the resemblance between ‘Wuhan-400’ and Coronavirus is eerie to say the least.
Is Coronavirus A Bioweapon?
The Internet was brimming with conspiracies about the coronavirus, and, perhaps, one of the most prominent ones was that the virus could be a bioweapon. According to an, a group of Chinese scientists in Canada were accused of spying and were stripped of their access to Canada’s National Microbiology Lab (NML) which is known to work on some of the most deadly pathogens.
The alleged ‘policy breach’, highlighted the bioweapon program of other countries including China. Dr Francis Boyle, the creator of Bio Weapons Act, also claims that ‘the coronavirus is an offensive biological warfare weapon with DNA-genetic engineering’.
Again, the claims about coronavirus being a biological weapon are unsubstantiated.
Origins in the seafood market?
Scientists haven’t been able to determine the origin of COVID-19 but speculations are rife that the virus originated in the seafood market. This was substantiated by reports from Chinese health authorities and the World Health Organization which said that “most” cases had links to the seafood market, which was closed on 1 January.
Sceptics on the online forums, however, have been sharing suspicions that the virus could have originated from Wuhan, Institute of Virology, which houses China’s only level- four biosafety laboratory (the highest-level classification of labs that study the deadliest viruses).
The first prominent personality to come out publicly and support the theory was the US senator Tom Cotton who appeared on Fox News to allege that the virus could indeed have originated from the lab.
Several netizens have also been alleging that this was an attempt to control the Chinese population. However, the claims are unsubstantiated.