71–80 of 430 posts
This is what patio11 had to say about it: "I will say this: when Japan had major natural disasters in 2011 I praised the response and wrote a long blog post about how things were much better than commonly believed. I have written no such post this year. That is not because of insufficient personal interest in the topic." https://twitter.com/patio11/status/1241103181511180288
In South Korea epidemic was started with one sick cult member spreading it to wast number of people. In Italy the person who started Lombardy cluster was first asymptomatic for weeks, was later misdiagnosed and spreading the disease in hospital. It seems that the epidemic is starting without similar super-spreaders in Japan. Case fatality deaths to recovered rate in Japan is 18%. In South Korea it's 6.6%. This might…
People are mentioning this is due to lack of testing, but if that were the case wouldn’t hospitals be overwhelmed like they have been in Italy and elsewhere? Testing or no testing if hospitals run out of ventilators for people in need, or out of masks, that would still happen if the disease was spreading like it does elsewhere
This is what patio11 had to say about it: "I will say this: when Japan had major natural disasters in 2011 I praised the response and wrote a long blog post about how things were much better than commonly believed. I have written no such post this year. That is not because of insufficient personal interest in the topic." https://twitter.com/patio11/status/1241103181511180288
I don't think patio11 is a Japan expert.
I’m here in japan and have been trying to find an answer to this for the past week. It has to be the masks.
So assuming it’s the masks, why have masks stopped the explosion we see elsewhere? We can theorize it must have kept the R rate down (Reproduction rate).
But, I do think a lot of people ARE still getting sick here. I think the government is only testing those with very severe symptoms so we aren’t seeing the true extent of the infection rate. I even think I might have had it a week ago as I had (very minor) similar symptoms. The weird thing is we don’t see a lot of severe cases here in japan. The main thing that I believe the masks are doing is stopping droplets getting spread from infected people (Meaning infected people who wear masks don’t spread the droplets as much). I think this reduces the rate of spread, but also I think reduces the amount of viral load that is getting transferred from infected people and can reduce severity of symptoms.
You reduce Infection Rate and you also reduce Infection Severity (reduce viral load) by wearing masks which combined with japan only testing severe cases leads to the results we see now in Japan.
In Japan, people wear masks so they don't spread their germs. In the US, people want to wear masks to avoid other's germs. Totally different mindset. And in the US we are being discouraged from wearing masks because they don't block the virus from going in even though they could be keeping asymptomatic people from spreading. Well I feel duly embarrassed for not thinking that way earlier. Just ordered some cotton mask…
https://www.verywellhealth.com/the-japanese-lung-cancer-smok...
- In Japan, people naturally respect social distancing. Touching someone is considered rude, everyone bows instead of shaking hands and nobody kiss.
- Almost everybody wear mask when they are sick to avoid contaminating others. They do that since way before Cornavirus and on voluntary based.
- Washing hands is common, being clean (bath culture) is part of common minimal respect.
- People listen and obey to their government.
- Last but probably very relevant: they have a completely different place of the elders in society. In Japan, the elders often live alone, sustain their life by themselves: it's a matter of proud. Even contact with their own kids is often sparse. Meaning, probably also lower risk of infection.
Japnese are like Chinese, are quite obedient, therefore can follow quite throughly of the checks in the entry and exit of the country. Plus, itself has much more modern and disciplined public health system, with more experiences dealing with similar issues. Last but not least, the Japan lands are literally isolated from continents, making the transition of virus through other medium much more easier to track.
I would advise you to never say to a Chinese or a Japanese that they are alike.
Excepted if you want to enrich your vocabulary with new insults in a foreign language. Many of them are nationalists, and not really appreciating each other.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I spent some time in Japan for work and was always amazed how many people had face masks on (even when there is no pandemic) and the prevalent of wearing gloves (driving etc). With my limited time there it seemed to be one of the most proactively sanitary cultures I’ve seen. Also it seemed to me that at business meetings generally people bow instead of shaking hands. And I wonder if this reflects the general approach…
You can’t find masks anywhere since more than a month. Few people wear them (I would say about 30%). Granted, people have less physical contact. The real reason for the low number of cases is the lack of tests. I’ve spoken today with multiple Japanese friends and other residents, all think the government is lying and hiding it to save the Olympics. We will see the truth in a month...