Abe declares nationwide state of emergency over virus spread

Today the governor of Aichi requested non-essential businesses shut down, probably other prefectures will follow in short order.

Well now that he realized a lot of the workers are commuters from surrounding prefectures. Also, many SMEs didn’t stop business trips to these urban centres.

Not to mention all the rich folks that fled the city for their second homes and the students who all escaped, too.

What a S-storm or cluster f.

Welcome to the past, Abe.

How does it feel to finally do what the rest of the world has been doing for weeks already?

Aaaaand in other news, its sunny today with a spot of clouds.

Have as nice of a day as you can everyone. Stay safe and lets not let the stress get to us.

means very little tbh

Man,does that mean the isakayas will have to close at 7PM now......bummer?

Doesn’t mean much anything, really.

Hey, Johnny come lately. Nice of you to include us in your busy schedule

I work for an eikaiwa here in Sapporo. Apparently we won't be closing. What emergency?

Little late

Too little. Too late.

Resign Abe, and your useless Cabinet.

"citizen" doesn't mean "resident" so all of us who've been working here for years and paying our rents and taxes and health insurance can go to hell, right ?

Finally, two or three months too late, a real honest to goodness state of emergency. There is no way out of it: Abe is a moron: a graduate of a stupid right-wing "university" where he heard only what he wanted to hear, which was right-wing rubbish. It no wonder he did not see what was obvious, that the 2020 Olympics had to be put off and a nation infused with the pandemic needed a national state of emergency. How many lives were lost while Abe fiddled around?

The backstory here may be discouraging folks from going on hols to the provinces in Golden Week, which is a good idea, based on Japanese people culturally do. Many prefectures have fewer than 50 cases at present.

Taken in isolation, declaring a national emergency but not increasing testing strikes me as a mixed message.

fwiw, after doubling for two weeks running, it does not look like the number of new cases will double this week. This should be good news, and would be if the government would actually test enough for us to have confidence in the number. The cost of more tests must be tiny compared to the economic hit from taking precautionary measures that may not actually be necessary.

https://toyokeizai.net/sp/visual/tko/covid19/en.html

All fiscal residents will be entitled to get the 100,000 yens.

Japanese politicians use the term citizens as they talk toward Japanese citizens, this has been forever the case, but technically, it will be for all fiscal residents

We've got nations that recorded their first case almost a full month after Japan, that have peaked and are planning an end to the self isolation. In Japan its just getting started. The government might as well call an end to the crisis for ”all” of the good their countermeasures are doing.

Predicted 400,000 deaths to come in international news, why are japanese not informed of this earlier ???.

Money cannot buy lives, wake up Japan.

Diamond Princess and Tokyo 2020

— I’m tired of seeing these words

Kohakuebisu

fwiw, after doubling for two weeks running, it does not look like the number of new cases will double this week. This should be good news, and would be if the government would actually test enough for us to have confidence in the number

It seems as if the number of infected is regulated by adjusting the number of test.

Even if a test is developed that takes just 5mins the number of test performed would stlll be this measured number.

The mhwl is bent on saving the ship (medical system) rather than the passengers (public).

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has decided to expand the state of emergency 

are we trumpicating, means douplicating the so far bigger number?

Oh, now all of a sudden? Why, what changed?

Really should not be out in your condition zichi - Direct Debits would made going anywhere busy today unnecessary - please take care of yourself.

As noted above - making the Emergency 'National' means very little as the most populated areas were already covered anyway. Dead quiet in Tokyo today - on my pushbike to work and returned via Omotesando and Shibuya. might as well have been 3am in the morning on a wet Monday night in January. Most of the companies have closed in the (large) building I work in so the message is getting through.

Like many of you above I am not overly optimistic about the coming days but still waiting for the really big jump in numbers that we haven't seen yet.

Japan's economy will inevitably come crashing down as a result of this. With its debt twice the size of its economy, it should be a reminder to all Japanese citizens that the good times are over. Luxury items and multiple vacations to Hawaii each year will become but a distant memory for all of them. The aftermath of COVID-19 will forever be a wound that never heals.

Told you it would come inevitably, and now that they've waited so long, it's going to be worse and last longer. Of course, I am 100% sure this will entail that all "stay-at-home requests" will be just that, requests, meaning it is toothless and nothing will change. It is good that they can requisition supplies, but no way Abe would risk doing so from major companies that manufacture them at exorbitant costs because that would anger Japan Inc., which his all Abe has left.

@CameronToday  05:59 pm JST

I work for an eikaiwa here in Sapporo. Apparently we won't be closing. What emergency?

make a decision mate and draw a line in the sand and stick to it. At what point do you stop going to work? One Sapporo has X amount of cases or ....

when it’s bring coughed in your face and too late. Stay safe people

Do you think Abe and his little illiterate BFF Aso decided on 100,000 based on how much they had in their pockets for ‘incidental’ expenses?

@David Shawn Kanda how very wrong you are.

A wound that will never heal?

well melodramatic!

You underestimate the Japanese and their stoic nature and determination.

Things will improve if but slowly.

It took this government 3.5 months to realize that COVID-19 is not a joke, and will take them 3.5 more months to realize it is a serious matter, and a threat to national security.

Abe speaks loud and sounds nothing, his declaration for the govt. promises was too late and the result is all of what is happening now. Why is that?

@Dan Lavender. So true! Never underestimate the resilience of Japanese people. They have been through worse.

Japan finally scraped past 100000 tested today. If they don't massively increase the amount of testing the only way we'll know of Covid19s increased spread and severity is when the medical system collapses in certain cities and prefectures.

Sure someone smarter than me knows the answer if the first case was around January 15 and the RO is 4/5 as some report how many people have already caught and currently have the virus?

I ask because if the number of comfirmed cases isn't different to one week ago and as Japan is only testing those sick enough to be tested doesn't this mean that the virus seriousness to health has been overstated?

Abe seems to be reacting to the doom and gloom warnings that certain media outlets are spewing indiscriminately. It seems like a knee jerk reaction from an otherwise rational and astute politician.

He should be more worried about where the economy is heading than concerning himself with a minor flu variant which his government and health system have well under control. Methinks the recession will more likely spell his downfall; not this glorified cold virus which German scientists have unmasked as being no more deadly than the seasonal flu.

As long as companies do not sell their companies to China. China is taking advantage of other countries after infecting the world and countries economy is weak. China should be punished and banned from procuring businesses outside China.

“Predicted 400,000 deaths to come in international news, why are japanese not informed of this earlier ???.

Money cannot buy lives, wake up Japan.”

The guy who managed the Diamond Princess set up this team. People are not being forced/compensated to shut their business so scare tactics are being used. COVID is serious, but also have a little faith.

Just on the subject of testing, the WHO says that one positive test for ten negatives is a good sign for a testing regime.

"We would certainly like to see countries testing at the level of ten negative tests to one positive, as a general benchmark of a system that's doing enough testing to pick up all cases,"

https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/03/30/824127807/if-most-of-your-coronavirus-tests-come-back-positive-youre-not-testing-enough

Tokyo is not testing at anything like this rate. It's one positive to two negatives. Conversely, most prefectures are actually getting one positive to ten or more negatives. It means they are at least testing in line with what the WHO says. Japan as a whole is about one to nine, 8400 positives in 82,000 tests. Subtract Tokyo and its 6000 cases in 75500 tests. I guess Tokyo's high number will somewhat reflect the large clusters they have found, but it's still concerning that it is so high. They must test more people. If they don't have the hospital beds to admit positives, tell them to stay home and self-isolate.

You can check your own prefecture with the Toyo Keizai link.

https://toyokeizai.net/sp/visual/tko/covid19/en.html

I ask because if the number of comfirmed cases isn't different to one week ago and as Japan is only testing those sick enough to be tested doesn't this mean that the virus seriousness to health has been overstated?

No, that's not how the determination of whether it has been overstated is calculated.

The thing about taking measures to prevent the spread of the virus is that the more successful they/we are, the less bad effects from the virus. Unfortunately, that has led to a bunch of people making the incorrect determination that because there were lesser bad effects, the virus wasn't a problem in the first place, and then then incorrectly determine that the virus wasn't so bad in the first place.

Unfortunately, these people aren't smart enough to see the holes in their logic, then they walk around and talk about how we've gone overboard and need to restart the economy because it was no big deal in the first place.

If we're lucky, natural selection will pick these people first. Unfortunately natural selection doesn't work that way.

@strangerland

I must not be smart enough to understand what you are trying to say.

Surely the level of threat is exactly how we determine a response?

Japan took limited action in feb and march yet hasn't seen a lot of deaths, and if the virus is more contagious than originaly thought that would indicate the cost of containment may be less benifical to society as a whole

.Yes people will sadly suffer and die but people suffer in die in both situations. The question is which will hurt more.

So again yes the level of risk is critical in determing a response.

If is ebola level seriousness, forget the economy and freedoms I am not leaving my house

If this is slightly more deadly than the flu then we should as a society keep freedoms and employment.

At the end of the day we accept a great number of deaths every year be it from the flu, car accidents etc.

In February I said here people who were positive to C19 was eating at restaurants and posting on Instagram, and I for one would quarantine myself...

Some readers replied like I was a fool, yeah I wish I was wrong.

If the mutation found in India is true it means this virus won't have a definitive vaccine and this is just the beginning.

"""but Japan is cautious about taking on new debt to finance bold spending measures as the country's fiscal health is the worst among developed nations with its debt twice the size of its economy."""

Not surprised at all, with all the Grants, and Bale Outs , and the constant massive unnecessary public construction projects, no wonder the country debt is twice of its economy.

Oh, now all of a sudden? Why, what changed?

This is probably due to people moving around to other areas that don't have the restriction, hence being able to get supplies easier, and not having to comply with social distancing guidelines. In other prefectures without the declared SOE, they could go drinking, karaoke, pachinko, whatever. This only made it easier for people to carry and spread the virus to otherwise less infected areas.

Now that the SOE is national, there is no way for people to avoid the social distancing guidelines, hence there is no reason to move around.

All fiscal residents will be entitled to get the 100,000 yens.

Source of info?

*The declaration for the seven prefectures, based on a revised law enacted last month, has given their governors the power to take bolder preventive steps and allows them to call for school and business closures, though there are no legal penalties for noncompliance.*

A declaration of emergency is not needed to call for schools and business closures, thsts covered under freedom of expression. What a weird paragraph.

I’m not finding any information that points to non-Japanese citizens getting any cash from the Japanese government. Perhaps one of you with better kanji skills than me can find something.

FYI: If you’re an American and include your Japanese spouse on your tax returns with a simple note saying you’d like that spouse treated as a resident alien for tax purposes, that spuds should receive the $1,200 the US government is handing out.

We have regularly annoucements over a set of public speakers in my area - but I can never really hear what they say clearly enough (even though I'm 200m in range of such Loudspeakers) .... that's an example of the local Government wasting money!

Whilst on lockdown - anyone got suggestions for tings to watch on the "box" ?

From memory, I'd start with the current Classic - "Contagion", then maybe the TV Series "Helix" followed by"The Last Ship"...

Who knows, I may be infected and yet be immune - an unknowing super-spreader ... are you sure that you aren't he same ?

Apart from Suicide (!?) - what can you do, to prevent the spread of this Virus ? Regardless whether or not you have the Virus ?

Thnk. Act.