Why is Japan still a coronavirus outlier? • Hacker News Board

Re: Why is Japan still a coronavirus outlier?

#151

Post by rendaw » Sat, Mar 21, 2020, 8:52 PM UTC

adev_ wrote: post #78

Not so surprising. You have also the same outliers with Hong Kong and Taiwan. - 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 cult…

I don't think this is the answer.

- There's no more social distancing in Japan than in the US. Nobody goes around hugging, shaking hands with, or kissing strangers in the US. Trains are still packed.

- Most public bathrooms don't have soap and I've rarely seen people wash their hands after using the bathroom anyways.

- People don't listen to the government - most people I know are arranging or participating in flower viewing parties despite the government's requests not to.

- Lots of the elderly in the US also live alone. I doubt the numbers are significantly different enough to affect transmission either.

TBH I had a hard time finding comparable statistics (re: single housing seniors and washing hands) though, do you have sources for any of those claims?

Re: Why is Japan still a coronavirus outlier?

#152

Post by MikeAmelung » Sat, Mar 21, 2020, 8:52 PM UTC

mschuster91 wrote: post #135

tosser0001 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually Germany is another strange data point: according to Wikipedia’s sources they have 21,890 confirmed cases and “only” 77 deaths. This seems dramatically different than Italy’s experience. Italy had over 1400 deaths by that point in their confirmed infection count. Is it how they’re counting? The age group infected? Honestly, I’m just trying to find a ray of hope here.

> Italy had over 1400 deaths by that point in their confirmed infection count. Italy has the problem that exploding rents after the financial crisis forced many young people to live with their parents and grandparents which not only means that they're heading for a demographic disaster as it's hard to get kids when grandma lives with you but also that the coronavirus has it easy to spread to elderly patients which ar…

It sounds like you've hit on a reason that it might not be as bad for anyone else. Grandma and grandpa are sitting around having dinner with a bunch of asymptomatic but infected young adults. Everybody rubs their faces together when they show up and leave. It's a recipe for disaster.

Re: Why is Japan still a coronavirus outlier?

#153

Post by chrischen » Sat, Mar 21, 2020, 8:52 PM UTC

crazygringo wrote: post #97

paulddraper wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Almost everybody wear mask when they are sick to avoid contaminating others. The U.S. response is absurd. I went grocery shopping the other day, and despite clear evidence of panic (empty shelves, hurried shoppers, long lines), but not a single person wore a mask. Somehow, everyone is too scared to go to work, but not scared enough to wear a mask. We're on course for the worst depression in history because we don't…

No, we're not wearing masks because we don't HAVE any . I live in Brooklyn and I'd love to wear a mask. I'd love to have been wearing a mask every day for the past two weeks. But where exactly do you suggest I find one since they're sold out literally everywhere , and we're also getting advice not to wear them so they can be saved for healthcare professionals! You ought to reexamine your assumptions. We love masks bu…

Well technically we didn’t like masks before... if we like them we like them now that the situation is bad.

Re: Why is Japan still a coronavirus outlier?

#154

Post by pldr2244 » Sat, Mar 21, 2020, 8:52 PM UTC

Be rational and consider all options:

1. The data is accurate and captures all coronavirus cases.

2. The data is not accurate and does not capture all coronavirus cases.

I read the entirety of this thread as though HN assumes only 1 is possible. If 1 is correct, then HN’s inferences sound reasonable (habitual mask use, practiced social distancing).

But what if 2 is correct? Is there any disincentive for governments to accurately test and capture all cases? Is there any particularly outsized disincentive for Japan to do so?

I leave the above questions as an exercise for the reader.

Re: Why is Japan still a coronavirus outlier?

#155

Post by chrischen » Sat, Mar 21, 2020, 8:53 PM UTC

tagrun wrote: post #121

jiofih wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd love to have been wearing a mask every day for the past two weeks Well, that’s the reason they are sold out, and heath professionals are desperately asking for donations. You don’t need a mask unless you are sick. For protection you need a mask and glasses , but keeping your hands clean and away from your face does 95% of the job.

> You don’t need a mask unless you are sick. For protection you need a mask and glasses, but keeping your hands clean and away from your face does 95% of the job. Except you do, because carriers without symptoms are contagious and the main drivers of this pandemic. And no, coronavirus doesn't have wings, they are carried by water droplets, and any sort of barrier that can stop water droplets is better than no barrier…

If you’re truly asymptomatic then you wouldn’t be coughing.

Re: Why is Japan still a coronavirus outlier?

#156

Post by standardUser » Sat, Mar 21, 2020, 8:53 PM UTC

CobrastanJorji wrote: post #22

tomerico wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Extreme testing policies wouldn’t hide exponential growth - if it is growing exponentially, you’d expect the number of people meeting the criteria to also grow exponentially.

It wouldn't hide it FOR LONG. In a month, we'll know which hypothesis was correct.

A month ago Italy was fine and now 5,000 people are dead. A month ago the virus had been in Japan for a month already... and still today fewer than 50 deaths.

Obviously time will tell with all of this. But so far, time has told us that either a) the transmission rate is extremely low in Japan for some reason or b) no one is dying from the virus in the world's oldest country, for some even harder to explain reason.

The world needs to be looking hard at Japan to see what the hell is going on there.

Re: Why is Japan still a coronavirus outlier?

#157

Post by pritovido » Sat, Mar 21, 2020, 8:55 PM UTC

I can tell you what happened in Spain.

In Spain the Government did not take it seriously, it was a relaxed attitude. The person that was in charge of giving news , Mr Simon, said he expected two or three people getting infected in the future.

As a result of this attitude, there were no controls in borders. They let people(thousands) go to football(soccer) matches in Italy, where there were already known cases with no consequences.

Then serious cases started growing exponentially every two days, 50 to 100, 100 to 200, 200 to 500, and instead of doing something, they WAITED!!

How is that? Because the people in power are socialist and communist and considered a priority number one the 8th of March(8M) women manifestation. Doing something before meant cancelling the manifestation,(along 55 smaller ones in Madrid this day) which was super important for them.

So the only thing they did was hiding the exponential data two days earlier so people would go to the manifestation.

They believed they could wait and deal with it later after the 8M. In the manifestation more than 100.000 people gathered.

It was too late, after the 8M the two women of the prime minister(socialist) and the vicepresident (comunist) were infected. The communist one was already infected at 8M, so she alone herself infected hundreds or a thousand other people.

So it is just a matter of incompetent people in charge that prioritize their own party and private interest over serving the community.

Now it is the other way around, after doing nothing for so long they have become totalitarian despots(Well, they already were, specially the communist one, is only that they have an excuse now) and they won't let people go out of their houses and walk or run alone.

In the following weeks the weather in Spain will be much better and sun alone will be able to kill viruses and save us from our politicians.

Re: Why is Japan still a coronavirus outlier?

#158

Post by ljw1001 » Sat, Mar 21, 2020, 8:56 PM UTC

_9ijd wrote: post #57

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.

There seems to be evidence (a lot) of asymptomatic people infecting others. If you only wear a mask when you feel ill, that doesn't seem like it could be the driver.

Japanese people have the oldest population in part because they live longer. Maybe it's genetic?

Re: Why is Japan still a coronavirus outlier?

#159

Post by ljw1001 » Sat, Mar 21, 2020, 8:58 PM UTC

lemoncookiechip wrote: post #116

Personally, and this is my opinion without any evidence to back it up. I believe that this is just a combination of several factors: - Japan acted sooner than most by closing schools, tightening their borders, informing their citizens and asking for their cooperation. - Japan's culture is a big factor, people respect and obey their government in general, the use of masks is common place, practicing social distancing…

>EDIT: Lastly and this is a factor that none of us even suggested, is luck. Luck is important and impossible to control.

Luck doesn't work with this kind of scenario. You'd have to be lucky hundreds of millions of times (every time there was a potential spread)

Re: Why is Japan still a coronavirus outlier?

#160

Post by ljw1001 » Sat, Mar 21, 2020, 9:00 PM UTC

tosser0001 wrote: post #115

mschuster91 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is this the beginning of the tsunami Yes. The problem with coronavirus is that young people apparently can be asymptomatic and spread the virus around massively, which means that without mass testing they will continue to spread... and then, detection of symptomatic CV patients takes time, both in that the patients go to testing and that the test gets executed. Unlike countries which have done mass testing for week…

Actually Germany is another strange data point: according to Wikipedia’s sources they have 21,890 confirmed cases and “only” 77 deaths. This seems dramatically different than Italy’s experience. Italy had over 1400 deaths by that point in their confirmed infection count. Is it how they’re counting? The age group infected? Honestly, I’m just trying to find a ray of hope here.

germany has a much more accurate infection count than italy. they haven't been overwhelmed yet.