It’s not 1975, and we aren’t Americans and South Vietnamese fleeing the advancing Viet Minh forces. It’s forty-five years later, in the middle of March, and we are mostly Australians (along with some New Zealanders) fleeing the contagion of the novel coronavirus.

Amid rumors that the country will soon halt international flights, I board Vietnamese Airlines Flight VN773 out of Ho Chi Minh City, formerly known as Saigon. Bound for Sydney, the plane is scheduled to take off on this balmy Sunday night with a full load of passengers. When I flew in just one week before, my plane had been almost a third-empty. Only the cabin crew wore masks. Back then, the number of reported cases worldwide was under 100,000, with most of the infected in China and only a few dozen in Vietnam. But on tonight’s flight, the faces of all the passengers are half-hidden in paper filter masks. Cases in China and elsewhere have surged, and the World Health Organization, which announced just days earlier that the COVID-19 outbreak was a pandemic, is urging governments around the world to mobilize to stop its spread.

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Igor Spajic Igor Spajic is the author of books on low-cost car restoration and vintage science fiction and a longtime contributor to Restored Cars Australia.