201–210 of 430 posts
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…
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…
Japan is known to have extremely low rates of common comorbidity factors: cardiovascular conditions, obesity, etc. By very significant margins, consider dividing the prevalence of these conditions by 2 to 10 compared to the West.
Add to that a generally balanced nutrition, due to a culinary culture quite aligned with those goals (whether by chance or by design, that's another question...)
Hypothesis: added to the factors you mentioned, you end up with a population 'much less likely' to develop complications with COVID-19 (also possibly immune quicker on average after infection, thus lower R₀). So they get it but instead of 20% requiring hospitalization, maybe only 1-5% do, and that's somehow manageable and results in much lower numbers since they only test critical cases.
We'll only see in the postmortems of all these patients, but I'm willing to bet right now that most cases requiring ICU treatment had some sort of underlying condition that favored the virus progress; age being one such condition (as defined by De Grey, essentially tear and wear of the machine conceptually).
I don't know, but there's definitely something with Japan and COVID-19, and the slow progression of infections (despite the lack of strict confinement measures or systematic testing) is already fact compared to any other country I'm aware of. It's not just luck.
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- Almost everybody wear mask when they are sick to avoid contaminating others. They do that since way before Cornavirus and on voluntary based. We're told that masks do not work
This should not be downvoted. There have been plenty of articles downplaying the importance of masks.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221133551...
Masks provide two benefits. They protect other people from you when your are ill but currently asymptomatic and they protect you from "splashes" caused by people coughing and sneezing without covering their mouth.
There was an outbreak in Hokkaido a few weeks ago and that was the Japan hotspot for a while. The governor there quickly declared a state of emergency and that was brought under control - if you believe the official figures that is.
The best Japan tracker that I've seen is here [1]. From that you can see that there have been 16 deaths in 愛知 (Aiichi - prefecture capital is Nagoya) but only 141 cases as of now. Assuming deaths have an approximately average lag of 3 weeks from infection and an about 1% death rate, 16 deaths would translate to very approximately 1,600 deaths 3 weeks ago. As the general Japan is upwards, even according to official figures, there are probably several thousand cases in Aiichi today.
For new cases, in the last few days Tokyo is ahead.
Also, the government has given schools to reopen in April [2] . If that happens, cases may start rising sharply.
[2] https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2020/03/20/national/school...
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…
Absolute orientalist BS.
I work in a Japanese workplace. Lots of people here don't normally wear masks. When they do wear masks, they pull them down to cough or sneeze so that they don't walk around with a wet and dirty mask. The idea that I could be dirty and infecting people doesn't cross the minds of most people, just like how in many places around the world people are taking international trips and dodging quarantine.
Recently, almost everybody is wearing a mask. People have jokingly asked if the new mask wearers are infected, to which they quickly reply along the lines of, "No way. I just don't want to get infected by you guys."
Japan isn't some society of honor and sacrificing oneself for the good of the country or whatever like movies based on ancient stereotypes make it seem. Most people are looking out for themselves just like anyone else. The way it's done is just sometimes different.
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This should not be downvoted. There have been plenty of articles downplaying the importance of masks.
There are plenty of articles but that doesn't mean they are correct. Here is a peer reviewed study demonstrating that masks are helpful. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221133551... Masks provide two benefits. They protect other people from you when your are ill but currently asymptomatic and they protect you from "splashes" caused by people coughing and sneezing without covering their mouth.
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Unfortunately there simply aren't enough masks produced in western countries. If governments directed factories to produce face masks, like they are currently doing for ventilators, then we could have enough. And I believe most people would actually wear them if they were widely available and governments directed it. It seems like that would cost less, and might also be more effective than shutting down half the econ…
If it were more effective, don't you think at least one country on earth would have thought of that? Masks may be able to help a little, but odds are good that if you're in a bus with an infected person coughing or sneezing, you'll be infected with or without a (regular surgical-style) mask. Those masks are almost entirely designed to keep stuff in, not to keep them out of your nose/mouth/eyes. The slightly reduced i…
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…
a few random points to consider: - Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Vietnam all in much warmer climate. - hot spots in Italy and Japan are likewise in the northern region: Lombardy in Italy and Hokkaido in Japan. - wearing masks during a global pandemic isn't apparently as fashionable in Japan. - many Japanese elderly, or over 30K per year, die unnoticed in solitude. so it might take a while to catch up. But on the othe…