Japan’s Coronavirus Cases Fall Sharply Without Compulsory Measures | Hacker News Reader

Japan’s Coronavirus Cases Fall Sharply Without Compulsory Measures

wsj.com

I'm skeptical of the WSJ, not that there aren't good points here but that there's some missing context.

Reuters on hospital stress in Japan, where ICU beds per capita are fewer and more spread out geographically than in Europe: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-japan-...

WaPo on how Japan's societal norms are a double-edged sword: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/japan-coro...

Mainichi on how Japan is underperforming its targets based on location data, and the expected struggles with upcoming May holidays: https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20200427/p2a/00m/0na/00...

Mainichi on Abe expanding the scope of its foreign entry bans — a compulsory measure, just not on people already in Japan: https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20200427/p2g/00m/0na/06...

Mainichi on how the national government underestimated both demand and production of masks: https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20200427/p2a/00m/0na/00...

Mainichi on how despite the lack of compulsory domestic closures, restaurant demand is still tanking by up to 80 percent: https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20200427/p2a/00m/0na/00...

> Mainichi on how Japan is underperforming its targets based on location data, and the expected struggles with upcoming May holidays

At least the important hotspots (Tokyo, Osaka, etc) have reached their 80% targets.

I live in a prefecture that had among the lowest reduction, but that's understandable because we have no cases. It's hard to convince people to stay home in order not to catch something that's not demonstrably going around.

But more importantly, they have closed malls, people haven't been going to bars/restaurants so they have closed just due to staffing costs, etc. Hopefully the fact that there's just nothing to do here will keep people from traveling here over the Golden Week holiday.

I think the comment by the expert government advisor is probably correct: the confirmed cases are just the tip of the iceberg. However, I had some unrelated tests to do at a hospital in Shizuoka prefecture and had to stay overnight. I asked the nurses what they thought and if they had seen anything unusual in the past month. Although there are about 60 confirmed cases in the prefecture, in the hospital where I was staying Corona virus seems not to have touched it. Obviously anecdotal evidence, but the nurses claimed that everything was business as usual and there was not an increase in respitory illnesses, etc.

I really do fear golden week, though. The news has been full of coverage of people going to places like Kamakura, filling up car parks and creating traffic jams. After being fairly severely rebuked by both the government and the media, I've heard that people are mostly taking it seriously, but we'll see starting tomorrow I guess.

That's because Sizuoka isn't economically important and not much people from Tokyo or Kansai region to stop by.

Somebody jokingly said that, by stating the statistics of cases in prefectures, saying, "Appearently, the coronavirus is using the Nozomi (Sinkansen that doesn't stop at Sizuoka)"

I won't be sad if it's true ;-)

I'll back that up with data from Tokyo. My girlfriend is a nurse at a hospital in Kita-Senjuu and they also haven't got any covid patients in the hospital. She thinks it's because they have a large maternity ward so they're trying to keep covid patients away from infants, but the point still stands that if covid was truly overwhelming Japan and Tokyo then they wouldn't have a choice about it.

http://archive.is/pVeUg

Make your mind MSM. Last night a national news broadcast said Japan’s medical system is on the brink of collapse from all these COVID cases. I then see articles like this.

Which is it? Is Japan improving or about to collapse?

More importantly, do they want the masses to get back to work, now that funds got their chance to buy the dip, or no?

Severe cases lag newly identified cases, especially in cluster-tracing countries like Japan. And ICU cases are cumulative for a few weeks, so even with the lowest number of new cases, they still have to continue treat the past 2-3 weeks peak of cases.

Mainstream media has been exceptionally poor at putting news of the pandemic in context, most reporting is very disjointed and confusing.

Confirmed cases, without widespread testing, and asking a conforming society to reduce activity by 80%. Not sure there's much that can be learned here and applied elsewhere.

Focused testing:

“ Japan has also shunned widespread testing for the virus, instead focusing on targeting clusters of infection when they appear in an effort to snuff out any further spread. ”

Right though I'm not sure it proves much without broader testing to gauge spread in the community at large.

No, let’s reserve that for when the news is about the disastrous consequences of undesired decisions.

In Japan the Coronavirus takes the weekend off so we see new cases reduced by 75% on Mondays. It's too obvious that Japan is under-testing.

With Abe's masks getting recalled and hospitals refusing to take suspected Coronavirus patients there is a lot that is going wrong here.

Closing the schools very early on has had a huge positive impact, but there are still way too many people going to the office.

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