I have a very bad feeling that Japan is going to be ravaged by this pandemic. https://mobile.twitter.com/motokorich/status/124383121986899... "Abe: “If an explosive spread of infection is already occurring right now, we cannot tell immediately. By time we have numbers in 2 weeks time, speed of rise in number of patients could no longer be controllable.” Yet he announced no specific measures to prevent this scenario .…
Downvoters might want to read that full Twitter thread. You may not appreciate the potential gravity of what I've italicized above, but there are comments in the thread from people who do.
As a potential counter point - pandemics are generally rare. And are hard to test at airports for until it's too late. Also you can't test for every disease, especially new ones. The best you could do is a several week quarantine on all incoming travelers I would think?
Do you think it's going to be viable moving forward to quarantine as standard operating procedure?
Tourism is incredibly popular and makes up something like 10% of the world GDP. An outcome that permanently ends international tourism is very unlikely, especially given the number of previous pandemics that haven't caused that.
> Unless they are magically different from every other country Maybe being a conscientious nation-state, with a culture that prioritises the collective, cleanliness and mask usage, is close enough to magic.
Maybe, but SK, Taiwan, and Singapore all are as well and it wasn't enough in any of those countries. Widespread testing, border closing, and, at least in the case of SK, some measure of lockdown were also required.
Not sure why this is downvoted; Japan isn't significantly different from any of the places you mentioned
> It's not about achieving 100% perfect protection, it's about some protection. But it might not even be 10% or 1% protection, especially outdoors outside of a sterile hospital environment. Is it worth wearing them for a some small amount of protection, or is the false sense of security they provide more dangerous than their benefit? Surgical masks are pretty leaky compared to N95 masks we wore during crazy bad air d…
It's not just about protection, it's also about preventing people that are sick and asymptomatic from spreading. >but the latter are so uncomfortable that they cause people to touch their face more The logic just doesn't work here, you can't touch your face if you have a mask on and N95 respirators aren't as unconformable as you claim, if anything they are often higher quality and the cheap elastic bands on surgical…
I’ve worn many N95 masks and have constantly been touching my face to adjust them while being worn, they also irritate your skin around your face where they try to make a seal (this wasn’t even a pandemic, just a 700+ bad air day). They are super uncomfortable. Surgical masks are easy to wear in comparison, but they are also basically noops.
Okay... but why specifically the United States? Shouldn't they ban entry from just about every nation right now? Did the article just fail to mention existing travel bans for other nations? The US has a very high number of confirmed cases, but it still pales in comparison to many other nations in terms of percent of population. Banning international travel is a reasonable precaution, but why specifically the US? I ca…
> but why specifically the United States? [...] but why specifically the US?
Possibly because, as it says in the second line of the article, the US now has the highest number of confirmed cases (more than 124,000 currently, from around 660,000 confirmed worldwide).
Japan is not anywhere close to the first to do this. Many countries in SE Asia have pretty much banned any foreigner from entering. If you are a foreign resident, you go into quarantine for 2 weeks.
The fact that Japan is only banning US travelers, instead of banning all foreigners, is pretty newsworthy.
>That's probably the answer. Some amount of heads-up is owed to Japanese nationals. Why not ban foreigners immediately, then ban nationals a few days later?
because some people hold dual citizenship or are married / have family in both countries in which case you'd probably not want to separate them.
It's not just about protection, it's also about preventing people that are sick and asymptomatic from spreading. >but the latter are so uncomfortable that they cause people to touch their face more The logic just doesn't work here, you can't touch your face if you have a mask on and N95 respirators aren't as unconformable as you claim, if anything they are often higher quality and the cheap elastic bands on surgical…
I’ve worn many N95 masks and have constantly been touching my face to adjust them while being worn, they also irritate your skin around your face where they try to make a seal (this wasn’t even a pandemic, just a 700+ bad air day). They are super uncomfortable. Surgical masks are easy to wear in comparison, but they are also basically noops.
Surgical masks are roughly 6 times better than nothing.
I was tested this past Thursday and came back negative yesterday. Two weeks ago I was exhibiting the classic symptoms. Last week I had five days of noticeable shortness of breath, lethargy, sinus infection and a dry cough. I wanted to get tested a week ago this past Monday but did not meet the criteria. Now I am awaiting the availability of serological tests to see if I have the antibodies. I pulled the kids out of s…
China bought us eight weeks of ramp up time? Was that before or after suppressing information about the issue for almost two months including getting WHO to claim there was no evidence of human-to-human transmission in January?
The experts in charge should not need a formal news release from China before taking action. While China may very well be at fault for an initial coverup, using that fact as an excuse for inaction is inexcusable.
You may have the right of way walking across the street, but if a car runs over you, you're still dead regardless of what your "rights" are.
I was tested this past Thursday and came back negative yesterday. Two weeks ago I was exhibiting the classic symptoms. Last week I had five days of noticeable shortness of breath, lethargy, sinus infection and a dry cough. I wanted to get tested a week ago this past Monday but did not meet the criteria. Now I am awaiting the availability of serological tests to see if I have the antibodies. I pulled the kids out of s…
China bought us eight weeks of ramp up time? Was that before or after suppressing information about the issue for almost two months including getting WHO to claim there was no evidence of human-to-human transmission in January?
China fucking up and being slow to react does not excuse everyone else doing it too. And, yes, eight weeks after China stopped lying.