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How lax rules, missed warnings led to Japan's 2nd virus cruise ship hot spot

7 Comments
By Ju-min Park

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The lack of a clear timeline with dates for each events makes it very difficult to unpick this story and work out any possible causality. From which dates were crew being flown in from other countries, and where from? When was the first case on board the ship reported?

My feeling from previous reports and from the apparent timeline of this is that ship docked in Nagasaki back in January, virus free. Then someone/some people in the crew picked up the virus on land and took it back on board, and then the onboard outbreak took off. So it seems like while local residents are assuming a dirty foreign ship brought the virus in, actually its more likely the locals should be apologising to the crew for passing on the infection to them. But with hardly any testing, we will probably never know.

Whichever way it was, sounds like complacency and incompetence all round from the cruise line, the shipfitting company, and the local/national government.

3 ( +3 / -0 )

This report wasn't made by Japan Today, but rather by Reuters. The reporter themselves might not even live in Japan.

1 ( +1 / -0 )

@HBJ Don't put too much hope on this "reporter". Japanese press doesn't do any investigation, ever. They are just parrots that repeat whatever the local or federal government feeds them.

I have yet to see in any publication some research or inquiry done by a reporter that is not a quote from a press release or from a "so-called" expert.

5 ( +5 / -0 )

@Ju-min Park (Reporter) - Do you think this is happening exclusively to the crew on this cruise ship? Do you think the virus is only attaching itself and spreading among passengers and staff of cruise ships, and not in equal measures among people in towns and cities?

Come on! This cluster is clear because the occupants of the ship are essentially under lockdown and their movements are severely limited. Don't you think this exact situation is also happening in Nagasaki? People going to work in small cramped offices; public transport still ferrying people around all day; hotels still open and operating; restaurants, izakayas, karaoke, pachinko, department stores etc. were all operating as usual when these crew members were infected. Why wouldn't this ship just be a microcosm for Nagasaki in general?

Please, as a reporter, get out there with your colleagues (safely!), and do some serious digging into what's going on in this country. Find out about the actual PCR testing procedures. Find out why so few tests are being done. Find out why the minimum criteria for getting a test is so ridiculously specific when all around the world the virus symptoms are anything but specific. Find out why people are calling hokenjos to be told 'you probably don't have the virus because there's no virus in your town'. Find out why people are being admitted to hospital for 10 days with fluid on the lungs and a fever - yet not being virus tested.

There are so many serious angles and threads out there for journalists to follow right now. Reporting on these cruise ships is just too simple. Go find out and tell us what is really happening in our societies - because I'm pretty sure the reality is very different from what we are being made out to believe.

8 ( +8 / -0 )

If it wasn’t such a serious situation ten aid be laughing at the farce...

0 ( +1 / -1 )

This is a totally different story than first reported here. Initially it was reported here that there were no suspected cases of anyone being infected, for over 2 months and it was a total mystery as to how and where the infection started on THIS ship.

Now excuses are again being tossed about, and as the "real" news gets out, it shows that once again, INCLUDING MEDIA OUTLETS, they are covering up facts to keep numbers down.

If there are over 15,000 infected here, the odds are extremely high that the actual number is closer to 3 to 4 times that, and the numbers of dead, are probably much higher as well.

Abe SHOULD get guano-canned when this "emergency" is over!

13 ( +13 / -0 )

It's not like Japan has ever been known as a country (or people) who quickly learn lessons from past behavior.

11 ( +11 / -0 )

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