Kanta comments

He supports the plan to "hold a safe Olympics" is not the same as saying he supports holding the Olympics during a pandemic in the first place.

Biden is being diplomatic.

Make no mistake. Suga and Koike will fill the stands with their fat-cat donors, relatives, Dentsu executives and others who were secretly allowed to skip to the front of the vaccination line ahead of the rest of us.

Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga arrived in Britain early Friday to attend a summit of the Group of Seven industrialized nations

Tiny, tiny man on a big stage.

Just wait for it. This "study" will find that the vaccine is somehow flawed, and so all vaccinations must be halted until more local research is conducted.

Officials said the site will be open every day from 9 a.m. until 7 p.m. until July 31 and that they hope to give two doses of the Moderna vaccine to 92,000 people.

So, let's do the math. Including today, there are 56 days between now and July 31. And the center will be open for 10 hours a day. The goal is to vaccinate 92,000 seniors during that period. That's just over 164 people per hour. Or about 3 people per minute.

While that might seem like a fairly decent rate, it's woefully short of "mass vaccination.

Vaccines are being rolled out fast to those who want them

Wrong.

Except for health-care workers (and, surreptitiously, folks with insider connections), nobody under the age of 65 who wants a vaccine has been able to get a vaccine.

The highest number of cases are always among those in their 20s and 30s. You've gotta wonder how many seniors are falling ill but have no way to get to a hospital or clinic to be tested.

Bottom line: The numbers can't be trusted.

The medals awarded in these Olympics will forever carry on them the stench of power, corruption, and death.

Can someone provide any evidence of manipulation of the numbers of cases please. Many people suggest this, however I am unable to find any source to these claims.

Let's presume for a moment that you are correct, and that the testing numbers aren't being manipulated. The positivity rate for 260 cases out of 1,571 tests is 17 percent. That is terrifying.

For some reason, new infections seem to be falling off a cliff in a lot of Japan.

For some reason (the Olympics, wink-wink), daily testing seems to be falling off a cliff.

In other words, the message the failed government is sending to the unvaccinated masses is, "Go To Shop" and "Go To Entertainment."

By the time they get around to vaccinating those 12- to 15-year-olds, they'll be in the 65+ group.

If there is still any doubt that the central government prioritizes the Olympics over the health of the people, just consider that it chose June 20 as the SOE expiration date to coincide with an IOC-imposed deadline.

If Suga and his ilk really cared about the people they serve, they would have said "We will end the SOE when it is safe to end it." Instead, they continue to kiss the feet of Lord Bach.

However, things are clearly getting better, and the official numbers show it. Re new vaccinations, these are now running at over 500k a day. We will be at 50M vaccinations by the Olympics. Active cases have been falling for the last week or so.

None of what you claim is true. Today, there were fewer than 350,000 new vaccinations. It has never exceeded 500,000 in a day.

Indeed, the daily average has been around 250,000 since the beginning of May. We'd need to be vaccinating more than a million a day from now until the start of the Olympics to reach 50 million (of which about one half would be second vaccinations), meaning far fewer than 50 million would have received their first dose.

This wave is starting to subside, and the next one will run directly into the brick wall of Japan's vaccination program. I suspect by the time of the Olympics, all will be dandy.

At the current rate of approximately 350,000 vaccinations a day, less than 10 percent of the Japqnese population will have been vaccinated by the start of the Olympics. So, yeah, right, "dandy."

Coming soon to a pandemic near you: The Bach variant

One question I have not been able to find an answer to is: what is the procedure for me when I arrive in Japan?

I am fully vaccinated and a permanent resident of Japan, do i have to quarantine ? Can I use public transport ?

At present, yes, you do have to quarantine, and no, you cannot use public transportation upon arrival nor during your quarantine period.

The medals awarded in these Olympics will forever carry the stench of power, corruption, and death.

"Some spectators"

Let's see. Dentsu executives. Deep-pocketed LDP donors. Relatives and friends of top politicians. All of whom have probably skipped the line and are vaccinated.

Who else might be on the list of very special and important people?

Its not different from the US. The same thing happened here at the peak. NY and CA had a hospital ship because there was no room at the hospital. Also they set up a tent hospital.

What Japan is going through (a raging virus, a broken medical system, and a blind goverment trying to shove the Olympics down our throats) is something that you could only understand if you actually live here.

Like so many other washed-up athletes, Read lives in a bubble and is completely out of touch with the people he once entertained. Shameful.

The new strategy is probably to keep the daily number just below 1,000 so it will look "manageable" to the rest of the world ahead of the Olympics circus for which the LDP is so lustful.

Sounds like 280 doctors need to take another look at the Hippocratic Oath.

I signed up for Rakuten when they were offering one year's free service, and it has been fantastic. I switched from $$$oftbank, which was absolutely horrible.

@Skipp @Chabbawanga

They are definitely trying to confuse us. Hiding the numbers in the smallest possible font is just another trick in their pre-Olympics playbook.

The daily test numbers for Tokyo can be found on the city's website:

https://stopcovid19.metro.tokyo.lg.jp

Search for 検査数 and near the top of the page will be the total number of tests alongside the total number of new infections.

Hopefully this will put pressure on the shameless price-gouging clinics that have been charging 20,000 yen or more for pre-flight tests. Or better yet, drive them out of business completely.

Why are these deranged Olympic fetishists even bothering to tell the public about this plan? The Japanese team consists of fewer than 1,000 athletes. All of them could be vaccinated in a single day and the public would be none the wiser.

Do they get their perverted jollies by letting us commoners know how little regard they truly have the health of the nation?

I'm confused.

Is quasi-vigilant above pseudo-vigilant but below ersatz-vigilant on the government's scale of faux-vigilant, or is it the other way around?

Enough with the 建前, dear leaders. Tell us like it is.

There were 249 new infections in Tokyo on Monday, still well below the peak of over 2,500 in January.

One of the reasons the infections seem to be low in number relative to those in other countries is because Japanese are reluctant to admit they might be sick with a disease that "polite society" regards as unpleasant or unsightly.

So, if a person is feeling the possible effects of covid, rather than go to the hospital, he or she toughs it out at home and (hopefully) recovers, without ever being tested.

Out of sight, out of mind -- and never added to the official tally.

As a result, "polite society" falsely believes that there are very few infections, and therefore believe that, as one commenter put it, "you can live an almost normal life here in Japan."

And thus, ignorance prevails.