Anthony Nishiyama comments

It is no surprise that 20-year-olds are driving COVID cases in Japan. It's the same in the U.S. - it's a mentality. What I do find concerning is that we are facing COVID fatigue with fewer and fewer young / older JP people not wearing masks outside...smoking on the streets (at least in my town in Saitama). You would need a mentality shift, but at this point, that's hard to come by. We are all tired and frustrated.

Going forward: Japan has every mutant strain known and I wish they would have just barred entry from everywhere like New Zealand / Australia and focused on an elimination strategy. The case counts were low enough to do so but it takes a sustained effort, but at this point, I think it would have been worth it.

We could have been living a semblance of normal like New Zealand by now, but stubbornness rules here.

What will make things better? Getting vaccines out is the biggest issue. Lack of supply, lack of people to give them, lack of syringes...the one thing that can for the most part solve the COVID problem and they are failing at basic policy and implementation. As of yesterday, only 15 percent of medical staff have been vaccinated so far in 3 months. They said we'll have supplied by September, but at the current rate, it will still be the elderly being vaccinated until next year in a best-case scenario.