Posted in: Osaka declares COVID medical emergency with 878 new cases See in context
The number of positive cases is high and increasing... measures in place are not sufficient for COVID-19.
After propagating under the radar in densely populated prefectures, the tourism/travel programs have helped the propagation to extend to many remote places in Japan. 10000's of mini-clusters are now slowly starting everywhere, low numbers first, then showing the exponential nature of the propagation when the numbers become significant. This is sad.
The only working approach is a strict confinement as experienced in Australia, New-Zealand, and, ....China. Half measures, taken by governments to protect the economy , and to protect themselves, only smooth and delay the epidemic peak - they do not affected the number of casualties and long-term affected people. One exception is when the health system saturated (in such case the number of casualties increases immediately).
The number of tests, low or high, is too low to have real meaning wrt the number of contaminated people, but it still indicate that there is no intention for a test, trace and isolate program. We can't deduct the real number of cases from it as it looks as if only people with strong symptoms are tested. From this official reported cases in Osaka or Tokyo, one could multiple by a factor ~ 5 to 10 to get an estimate of the real number of infected people (~ 4000-9000 in Osaka Prefecture, ~ 3000-6000). This may be far underestimated if the possibility to get tested is restricted by procedures, distance, or ... self-shame.
Let's hope that some immunity protection already exists in the population due to previous epidemics, that, in spite of bad examples of a few lawmakers &co, most Japanese people implement precautionary measures, and, that the vaccination plan really picks-up in the weeks to come.
3 ( +5 / -2 )
Posted in: Osaka declares COVID medical emergency with 878 new cases See in context
@dan, indeed; one could even expect that they will eventually be cancelled, but only after advocating risks, new variants, and imported cases in order to justify a late decision.
5 ( +5 / -0 )
wallace I like leeks. I like ice cream. But never together precisely what I was going to say!
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