Japow comments

@Tokyo-m / Tom

The government, as reported in various news outlet (if not here, then in others), did clearly state that prefectures outside the most severely affected can make their judgements as to when schools (amongst other things) will restart. They are still requesting travels between prefectures to be avoided as much as possible so the areas that are relatively contained avoids "imports" from other regions.

It won't be the only country that doesn't apply a one rule for all, but access the situation from areas to areas.

We'll find out if soon enough if single digit daily infections within a prefecture is low enough to restart things with whatever precautions they take. Bit of an uncharted territory here, but I will note that Japan is by far not alone in looking at restarting school even without having days of zero new infection (various countries in Europe are also looking to restart school even though at the moment the situation is still considerably more dire than in Japan).

Looking at Taiwan, the days leading to restart of schools on Feb 25th were also in the low single digits. From mid-March to end of March did see new cases increase to the double digits (though part of them were imported from people going back to Taiwan), but has once again gone back to control.

They'll have to be careful and follow the rules, but this doesn't -have- to end up with an uncontrollable second wave.

It is a shame it has come down to this, I've seen enough tourists flaunting the rules and if polite requests don't work, sooner or later they were going to have to try something else.

I wonder how many local actually felt as strongly as some of the posters on this thread though. As someone in the hospitality industry (seasonally), I know quite well the frustration of dealing with customers who flaunt the rules (e.g. smoke despite clearly stating it is a non-smoking establishment etc).

But I doubt that any business owner who do rely on tourism genuinely want the tourism to go away. Those who do are likely in the wrong industry, and while most people probably appreciate a break from work, after a month or a few months, well.. just need to ask the business owners now what they feel about a crash in tourism (anywehre - not just Kyoto or Japan).

The number of infected recorded is dependant on the number of testing. And while deaths may be mis-recorded, I would say that they are a better measure of how bad the situation is. Although of course, you also need to take various factor into account. Some factors may be relatively favourable to Japan (high number of hospital beds per capita), but other's aren't (population more densely concentrated than many places, oldest population in the world).

Japan has yet to (but likely will by the next report) to officially break 100 deaths, currently sit at around 0.7 death / million. This is considerably worse than two weeks ago, when deaths per million sat at nearly half that.

While it is fair to say the limited steps they took until now clearly wasn't containing the virus, and things are getting worse (and if the figures look like they are getting worse by the day it is because, as I am sure everyone already knows, infection rate won't just rise linearly if adequate steps aren't taken), it is still true to say that Japan is in a better state than many other countries including those that have imposed stricter lockdown.

And, as I am sure everyone knows, infection can take a while to show, meaning that regardless of the steps taken, infection rate will likely continue to rise over the next few days. It is really premature to assert that the declaration of the state of emergency (and whatever else is going to be attached that) is inadequate. Maybe it is true, and Japan will somehow see the deaths per million go from 0.7 to 45 in the US or 100s in some European country. Or, maybe this is all it will be enough to reverse the trend. Not every country that currently has things more or less under control went for the hardest lockdown possible (or even close).

Whatever prediction you make, it is only guesswork with only really three possible outcome (it get better, it get worse, and perhaps the least likely, it stays more or less the same). With so few possible outcomes many may end up right.. but it's all really just some guesswork.