Håkan Henriksson comments

In just a few weeks, local governments all across Japan will start having yearly physical checkups for all their employees. Just here where I live, you'd reach literally thousands of people in one go. You'd even have trained personnel on-site to give the vaccines since we always get blood drawn on these occasions. Logistical problems? Cannot really see how there could be any. No, it wouldn't be priority groups first, necessarily. But you'd increase that percentage of vaccinated people in the population as easy as that.

Keyword being AFTER the flu. Not DURING.

Even if the world was to begin to see an end to this pandemic by the coming summer (and let's hope that it does), isn't it kind of much to ask other countries that were struck far worse than Japan, and may be dealing with a grim aftermath from having thousands of deaths, to be in a festive mood and come to Japan for the sake of their economy and games? If your neighbour was in mourning after the loss of family member, would you go over and knock on their door inviting them to a party?

@Chikatilo and others

It's good that people are engaged and share what information they have. The object here is to bring the R-naught of this virus below 1. And to do that, we all have to pitch in. The virus affects us as a society, and we're going have to respond to it as a sociey. And yes, sometimes we have to do things that we might not agree with or we for some reason feel is uncomfortable. But just unloading opinion on fora quoting research without naming that research or naming any sources is, well, not very helpful.

Here is a little bit of science on masks for those who are able to listen attentively for 27 minutes. It's full of sources, some of them going all the way back to 1938. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DANEqOPcDwc

Of course a touchy subject, but here goes.

Covering up the fact the far too many Japanese have a rather dense attitude when it comes to questions of "us" and "them" with the good old "not having much direct experience with foreigners" just doesn't cut it with me. It's more in the vicinity of not caring enough. I'm Swedish. I live in Japan. When I grew up in the 70s and 80s we didn't have a single foreigner come to any of our schools. Still no-one in my class was ever said to be "half" of anything. (And while I myself don't get questions about being "half" I might soon make a card explaining that I'm not American.)

What surprises me more is how many times I've heard that phrase being used in Japanese schools without the teacher interfering. If you're a biology or science teacher, how do you explain the concept of "half"? If you're a social science teacher? If you're not speaking up at that point, you're really not doing your job in my opinion.

I thought this one was interesting as a comparison to how things have been progressing here in Japan (or, in some ways, haven't progressed). It's about how things went in Lombardy and why. Absolutely heartbreaking lessons. It's a bit long but informative. https://apnews.com/de2794327607a3a67ed551f0b6b71404

For goodness sake, can we stop with the constant hysteria? This isn't Ebola.

Even though we say it so many times a day, it just doesn't seem to sink in. Or is it that we forget? We say: "The new corona virus". New. There are many viruses out there. Causing smallpox, polio, HIV/AIDS, measles, rabies, ebola, the common flu, so on. Thing is, while we actually know about them, we don't know all that much about this one yet. You say it isn't ebola. Then I take it, you know how this virus works? You know why and how it causes a cytokine storm in some patients? You know what it was that led doctors to start trying hydroxycholoquine, a malaria medicine used for protecting red bloodcells? You know whether the damage caused to lungs and kidneys is permanent or not, even after you recover? I sure don't. But i do know, I don't want to be standing next to you on the subway if that's your take on it.

Akie: "Unfortunately, Japan is behind China in using QR code, but still ahead of the west."

Unfortunately, both Japan and the West are way behind the North. I usually don't write long comments or complain online. But this... I mean, you can do so much better than this.

Being a pandemic, whether the Olympics can be held or not is not dependent on the situation in Japan alone.