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Problems with Japan's Covid-19 reports

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Re: Problems with Japan's Covid-19 reports

#201

Post by panny »

reustle wrote: post #198
panny wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It's interesting that Hokkaido is red for infections but the growth rate is really slow. Hokkaido is about the size of South Carolina and approximate population of 6 million people. ~2.5M of which live in Sapporo. Most of the island is more rural with many tourist destinations. It's a popular destination for Chinese tourists in winter. >Are the distant prefectures less likely to follow guidelines from Tokyo Tokyo wa…

> Could HN dwellers stop implying Japan is handling this dishonestly? They are. The incredible rate of test refusal here is keeping the numbers very low.

Really? What is the rate of test refusal Shane Reustle?

Re: Problems with Japan's Covid-19 reports

#203

Post by noobermin »

glandium wrote: post #199
guardiangod wrote: post #14

Knowing Japan, I bet some poor freshly graduated but elite sod in the health ministry was, out of the blue, told by his boss "here's a bunch of reports from different prefectures. Make a report out of them." So he goes off and try to make sense of the data, which is why you see those magic and unexplained equations in the report. The kicker is the most complex computer thing he ever did in his life was that Word pres…

I've opened Japanese documents from, AFAIR, at least the Ministry of Immigration, the Ministry of Health/Labour/Welfare and the Ministry of Justice. They all had the similar properties: manual HTML in the best case, PDF in the worst case. Tables very often with hierarchical data. Lack of overall coherence. It's so similar between Ministries that I have to wonder if it's not just the result of some Japanese government…

It sounds like they just organize information differently. It's annoying to us but it's just how they do it.

Everyone reading this needs to have a more wholesome historical education. The best example I can think of is read historical math puzzles, or geometry lessons from ancient greece. Organization of information is definitely culturally contingent, even here in the US.

Re: Problems with Japan's Covid-19 reports

#204

Post by noobermin »

standardUser wrote: post #22
btilly wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am extremely suspicious that Japan's numbers look good because they have not been testing enough. Given that honesty in testing consistently precedes the eventual slowdown in deaths by several weeks, I strongly suspect that Japan is maliciously incompetent and a lot of dead Japanese will be the result.

" I strongly suspect that Japan is maliciously incompetent and a lot of dead Japanese will be the result." When? Japan has had this coronavirus a lot longer than most places. If we expected the transmission rate to explode, we would have expected it to happen already, and we would be seeing the consequences.

I think this is the point. You can hide potentially the sick but you can't hide deaths or overcrowding of hospitals, someone will notice.

Re: Problems with Japan's Covid-19 reports

#205

Post by noobermin »

LorenPechtel wrote: post #12

I think this is a case of someone simply scanning various reports into the website--doing it the easiest way possible, not the right way.

Seriously, why all the skepticism regarding this? I understand it but it's strange to me. Hanlon's razor seems like an easier explanation, why does there need to be a nefarious plot under every bed.

Re: Problems with Japan's Covid-19 reports

#206

Post by [deleted] »

ksk wrote: post #196
dang wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's easy to make grand claims like that. Where are the links? It's not ok for anyone to start flamewars on HN, and lord knows I spend enough of my life telling people so. If you see a post that ought to have been moderated but hasn't been, the likeliest explanation is that we didn't see it. We don't come close to seeing everything that gets posted here. You can help by flagging it or emailing us at hn@ycombinator.co…

Oh, I meant it half in jest. I definitely don't want your job ;) For e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22703219 Commenter labels a legitimate company as "skeezy", uses needlessly insulting language to polarize discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22703881 Commenter uses the usual government trope to polarize discussion.

[deleted]

Re: Problems with Japan's Covid-19 reports

#207

Post by panny »

dang wrote: post #188
objektif wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh man, china would like to have a word with you about that statement.

No nationalistic flamebait on HN, please. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

It's okay to call Japanese stupid.

It's not okay to call Chinese stupid.

??

Re: Problems with Japan's Covid-19 reports

#208

Post by unishark »

btilly wrote: post #152
hilbertseries wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It looks Tokyo is starting to have an out break https://www.chicagotribune.com/coronavirus/ct-nw-tokyo-olymp...

The most interesting point in that article is that Japanese citizens and politicians are suspicious of the timing. All numbers looked good until the Olympics were called off. Then Japan started reporting climbing cases and talking about emergency. I certainly hope that the politicians in Parliament who asked questions got satisfactory answers. I doubt that they did, but there should be time to ask those same question…

> All numbers looked good until the Olympics were called off. Then Japan started reporting climbing cases and talking about emergency.

Typical causation versus correlation problem. Exponentially increasing pandemic outside Japan can also be the cause for everything: the olympics cancellation, the increasing govt concern and testing, and the sudden surge of cases within Japan from travelers.

No conspiracies needed.

Re: Problems with Japan's Covid-19 reports

#209

Post by btilly »

unishark wrote: post #208
btilly wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most interesting point in that article is that Japanese citizens and politicians are suspicious of the timing. All numbers looked good until the Olympics were called off. Then Japan started reporting climbing cases and talking about emergency. I certainly hope that the politicians in Parliament who asked questions got satisfactory answers. I doubt that they did, but there should be time to ask those same question…

> All numbers looked good until the Olympics were called off. Then Japan started reporting climbing cases and talking about emergency. Typical causation versus correlation problem. Exponentially increasing pandemic outside Japan can also be the cause for everything: the olympics cancellation, the increasing govt concern and testing, and the sudden surge of cases within Japan from travelers. No conspiracies needed.

First of all, lack of testing and government denials that there is a problem here been a hallmark of the response worldwide. It is hardly a conspiracy theory to say that it happened in Japan as well.

Secondly for a couple of weeks now I've been running across articles of the form, "Japan should have had a problem by now, why are they an exception?" Which is more likely? That they were an exception until now, or that the Olympics provided extra motivation to stonewall?

It is clearly not proof. But extra motivation to fail to try to detect their own problem combined with reason to doubt their version of reality (in the same way that happened over and over again elsewhere) makes my estimate of the conditional probability very high that their government was simply a bit more deliberately blind than elsewhere.

And, as with everywhere else, the cost will be dead citizens. Only the further you let the problem go and the older your population, the worse it is. Japan has the highest concentration of truly old in the world. And may have let it go longer than anywhere else. The result? The final body toll won't be pretty.

Re: Problems with Japan's Covid-19 reports

#210

Post by btilly »

noobermin wrote: post #204
standardUser wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" I strongly suspect that Japan is maliciously incompetent and a lot of dead Japanese will be the result." When? Japan has had this coronavirus a lot longer than most places. If we expected the transmission rate to explode, we would have expected it to happen already, and we would be seeing the consequences.

I think this is the point. You can hide potentially the sick but you can't hide deaths or overcrowding of hospitals, someone will notice.

Japan may be an exception to that general rule. Most places, sick people go to the hospitals and die there. In Japan, sick people stay home, die, and are often only discovered a long time later.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kodokushi is the Wikipedia article on it. It is hard to get statistics on it, but in 2006 close to 5% of all funerals in Japan were old people who died at home that nobody knew about for some time afterwards.

When all is said and done, Japanese will be discovering bodies for years afterwards. Not just because there is a crisis, but because that is simply how a lot of deaths happen in Japan.

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