Tokyo reports 2,015 coronavirus cases; nationwide tally 16,592

Covid is still a thing?

i used to be very concerned about it until I caught it in the peak. Didn’t even notice I had it.

I used to be quite concerned - some would call me a doom-sayer. That was before effective vaccines were widely available along with therapeutics.

Up only 80 from a week ago with a sustained downward trend and zero people hospitalized with severe COVID.

Even for me, it’s time to return to normalcy while taking prudent precautions in crowded indoor places.

@justasking

80 infections is a completely ordinary variable when we are looking at a daily rate in the thousands. Aside from the day-to-day ebbs and flows, the decline since February has not been a perfectly smooth logarithmic line but a series of diminishing bulges. When the effective reproductive number of the virus is 1.5 we can be concerned. Currently it sits at 0.95 which is a weakly receding value and a good thing.

@painkiller

80 more infections is a fact, the sense of scale and importance you attribute to the number is your personal emotional response and not a fact.

Unlikely China will end up at 3.6 per million in the end though. Their unconventional approach of 'zero covid' is not sustainable in a world where it is being treated as endemic. They can certainly come out of this with the lowest death count by ensuring thorough vaccinations to the overwhelming majority before the population is inevitably exposed, but they will still have to endure their pandemic at some point.

Why are we still reporting this useless stat?

Time to shut down again?

There is no new wave and it would be wholly unique to japan alone if there was.

It is the same every single week... Monday is always a big dip, Tuesday it jumps up, Wednesday is a little higher again, then the rest of the week is a steady decline until next Mondays dip. Each week being on average lower than the previous.

On and on since late winter.

It's important to look at graphs of infection reports, deaths and hospitalizations over the last half year, not to comment with a knee-jerk 'it's over, baby/we are doomed' reaction every single day as the numbers fluctuate.

@painkiller

A year ago on the graph cases were scraping the bottom with a trickle of original novel coronavirus/delta infections, then there was an omicron explosion starting late December which peaked in early February and is now back down to ~20% of that, with a moderate downhill trajectory. It's likely to go momentarily up again a few times as it continues to fall overall, following restriction relaxations and reinfections, but like every country that had coronavirus long before Japan - it'll settle at a permanent, manageable endemic-level stream with an ERN fluctuating around 1.0.

It's a fact that everyone unvaccinated who gets coronavirus dies, everyone who gets the vaccine dies too! Misleading but true misrepresented facts.

up 80 from last Wednesday.

Told ya.

For those who don't know what an ERN is which I assume is many of you since so many people are getting agitated by miniscule jumps and drops; the current ERN of 0.95 means that for every 100 people infected, 95 will pass their virus on to another individual.

Different people are affected by the virus in different ways - some get seriously ill, others have mild or asymptomatic disease. It even looks like some don’t develop a full blown infection even when exposed - there are likely genetic factors in play. One reason why this part of the world hasn’t been badly affected might simply be that - genetics. East Asian people may be simply more genetically resistant. Aside from mask wearing, Japan has done next to nothing to stop the spread - even upon opening up, Aus, NZ still had a lot of restrictions with most wearing masks etc, and they’ve still ended up doing worse than here.

Japan Has Fewest Covid-19 Deaths Per Capita in OECD, New Data Show

https://www.wsj.com/articles/japan-has-fewest-covid-19-deaths-per-capita-in-oecd-new-data-show-11655116829

Seems rather low.

Good news!

RIP to any dead.

PickleToday  05:45 pm JST

There is no new wave and it would be wholly unique to japan alone if there was.

No one said there is.

But one will be here, Fall at the latest.

PickleToday  06:17 pm JST

80 more infections is a fact, the sense of scale and importance you attribute to the number is your personal emotional response and not a fact.

Whatever your perception of a sense of scale is, that is your emotional response, right?

Fact is, the Tokyo numbers today are 4-5 times the same date as last year.

How does your logarithm line analyze that?

@painkiller

Yep. Many Western nations could learn.

Indeed, pride before the fall, they say.

A huge jump in numbers just in Tokyo. Would be interesting to know the real figures though.

A new wave is on the horizon so even a slight lower dip is not the time to let your guard down.

Mask up, eat at home, drink at home, stay out of crowded indoor locations.

Feel free to go outside unmasked--that is obvious, but limit contact with non-household members.

Japan does not have a strategy to deal with Covid, so we have to protect ourselves and others.