Japan reports 57,264 new coronavirus cases

Does it matter?

Cannot wait until May 8 or 9 won’t have to wear a mask and be bothered no more about the numbers.

Cannot wait until May 8 or 9 won’t have to wear a mask and be bothered no more about the numbers.

No, you won't HAVE to wear a mask, but you'll still be the only one not wearing one on most trains in Tokyo and elsewhere for a while. As for the "numbers", you would think they'll stop reporting them, but new Covid variants will continue to emerge and so the media will continue to report "new variant cases" and probably some media outlets will continue reporting the numbers because some "concerned citizens" will want to know how much the virus spread after Golden Week.

Well said @ Kumagaijin.

Some people seem to believe masks - and infections - are just going to magically disappear on a set date. Not gonna happen.

I mean, in Europe at least they haven't reported infection numbers in the media for like a year. One would hope that once COVID finally gets reclassified here they'll drop it here as well.

Agreed that masks won't magically disappear overnight, but I'm certain more people will feel emboldened to leave theirs off. Also, once the official government guidelines change gyms should no longer have any reason to enforce mask wearing.

Japanese will literally wear masks forever. Incapable of change as long as a single oyaji is “worried”,

many of us here in Japan would still wear mask from time to time depending on the situation. Mask wearing is not mandated here. I have never won it while out in the open and jogging. I would not wear it while working at my desk in the office. So that’s basically the norm for many in Japan. There are cautious folks of course, many of them… but that’s their choice. No one is going to kill them if they take off their masks. So if someone here is waiting for May to drop their masks, it’s just nonsense.

I will continue to be cautious well past the spring change because I know first hand how terrible this illness can be.

Does it matter

That 246 people died? Yes it does. The insensitivity of some comments on this topic never ceases to amaze me.

> Cannot wait until May 8 or 9 won’t have to wear a mask and be bothered no more about the numbers.

i decided to remove mine recently because I did not want to keep it forever. I felt a bit strange the first 15 minutes a bit like going out naked. But then fine. Nobody told me anything or even stared at me. Just remove it if you think it is meaningless to wear it. This is your choice.

If the flu were handled the same way as COVID -- that is, putting up the up-to-the-day case counts and "death counts" on the TV "scoreboard" every night -- we would probably see very comparable numbers.

That would have been just as true several years ago as now.

It's the flu, people. Get over it.

And I'm not waiting till May 8 for the government to tell me I don't have to mask up.

I routinely go maskless in supermarkets, department stores, convenience stores ... I even walked into a clinic to get blood drawn for a routine test (not COVID) without my mask on.

Nobody said anything. Nobody even really stared.

So, do it. Start going without the masks. You'd be surprised how, well, "un-negatively" people react.

In fact, I've had Japanese people -- quite a few of them -- tell me that deep down inside, they want to go maskless like me.

So why don't they?

"Because I'm Japanese," is the typical reply.

That speaks volumes.