That is the price of not preparing enough hospital beds capable of treating infectious disease patients and failing to quickly secure hotel rooms. We ended up having more people recover at home, which is something that should have been avoided in the first place.

Yup, Japan dropped the ball on every single aspect of this virus, in large part because of delaying any action to avoid looking bad and to keep the Olympics from being postponed/cancelled, and also because the most common reaction to dangerous situations here is to wait and pray, and shirk responsibility.

kyushubill: "Osaka's governor completely dropped the ball on his response. He waited and waited for Tokyo do something when he knew good and well he could shut down the live houses by Prefecture Emergency Order. He was advised these would be a source of clusters and he sat on hios hands."

What are you talking about. Almost every time something has been acted upon in this nation it because the Osaka Governor did it first, and Abe, who is a coward and was scared to make a move, then followed. School closures were but one example. Osaka City (not prefecture in this case) decided to close all schools due to a spike in infections reported at a few, and Abe then declared it nationwide. Osaka helped push for the Olympics to be postponed while Tokyo said it was "unthinkable". Osaka started cancelling events, the national government followed. There are some things a prefecture should not always have to do while the national government sits on its hands and refuses a national order because they are scared about how business leaders will affect the next election. A prefecture cannot make legislation to counter the Constitution, even in an emergency, but the federal government can, if they wish to, and then give the power to the prefectures.

For a country constantly in danger of huge natural disasters to have so few ICUs just beggars belief.

For the national and local governments to spend at least 4-6 weeks watching the world around it become ever more affected by this virus, and do nothing to prepare itself also beggars belief.

The whole country should be embarrassed about the government's response to this. People should be outraged - but they won't be.

The health care system isn’t designed for preventing disease, it’s about treating it.

There’s no money in prevention....

Osaka's governor completely dropped the ball on his response. He waited and waited for Tokyo do something when he knew good and well he could shut down the live houses by Prefecture Emergency Order. He was advised these would be a source of clusters and he sat on hios hands.