Mike Tang comments

I find nuisance comedy juvenile and unfunny in general, but it enrages me when people do it in Japan. It's a beautiful country with admirable social order, and no outsider should ever feel they have the right to harass others and disturb the peace. I hope this man and others like him are prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law to set some examples.

During the trial phase, small groups of foreigners would visit sightseeing spots based on fixed itineraries in order for the government to see whether it can grasp their movements and how to respond if a COVID-19 case is detected, according to the source.

Is this a joke? I suppose if anyone wanders off under such a scenario they'll be jailed and deported. This isn't "tourism," it's embarrassing and unnecessary fascism rooted yet again in racism and xenophobia.

Why is it so difficult for Japan to accept that this virus is now endemic? It is never going away. Zero Covid isn't going to happen, period. Wear a mask if you want and protect yourself if you're vulnerable, but otherwise, it is already well past time to get on with life as normal.

The BA.2 sub-variant seems to be more contagious than the original omicron, but it does not appear any more dangerous. It would be much more useful to lead these stories with the number of deaths than the number of infections.

The last sentence of this article should have been the headline. In Tokyo alone, around 2,300 people died each week from various causes in 2019. The news media needs to stop scaring people, and Japan needs to fully reopen its borders.

I truly don't understand why the headlines continue to focus on case numbers instead of ICU admittance and death numbers. Also, of course Omnicron is going to have a higher aggregate death total -- it is far more transmissible. What matters is the percentage of deaths relative to the number of cases. This disease is endemic and zero Covid will never, ever be sustainable. Better to simply learn to live with it and get life back to normal.

I guess she really fell for that first guy. Or perhaps she just couldn't stand seeing him like that. Hopefully she will take the steps needed to get back to normal. (I hope this comment doesn't fall flat.)

This is a huge mistake for which history will not judge Japan kindly. It's become nothing more than xenophobic mockery wrapped in an ostensible and increasingly unscientific vail of protecting public health. If Japan wants to be seen as backwards they will continue this nonsense. Otherwise, the government needs to follow the lead of nations such as the UK: allow all fully vaccinated and boosted foreign visitors who are qualified, including tourists, to resume the pre-pandemic entry policies with no quarantine requirement or other arduous restrictions.

I really wish Biden would ask for Japan to open its borders to all fully-vaccinated American visitors, but of course that won't happen.

It doesn't matter what preventative measures are taken. Omicron is going to spread. Soon, hundreds of thousands of people will be infected just like in America. The good news? The symptoms of this variant are relatively mild, and those who have been vaccinated are very unlikely to be hospitalized. Even better, this variant will likely provide strong and lasting immunity to the Chinese coronavirus for most of the nation.

Question for those commenting: does everyone in Japan pretty much expect that tourism to will be forbidden for the entire 2022 summer season, regardless of what happens from here with respect to the pandemic? Very interested to know the consensus on this subject.

Travel bans by ANY country that only extend to non-citizens do not make sense, period. Either ban all non-essential travel for everyone, or keep it business as usual. A virus does not care about nationality. Also, Omnicron is (evidently) so contagious and spreads so quickly that the number of people coming in probably doesn't make much difference in the long run.

Herd immunity is the only way out of this. The Japanese government is delaying the inevitable. Allow foreign tourists and businesspeople in now, demand that they are all fully vaccinated, and eliminate all quarantines. It's time.

It appears from all available data that Omnicron could be the best hope for ending this pandemic. A relatively low death rate (in percentage terms), especially among the vaccinated, with very high transmissibility equals true hope for mass immunity. Japan can't dodge this bullet by shuttering its borders to gaijin in perpetuity. In fact, the country may be much worse off in the long run in many ways by employing this isolation strategy.

The numbers are far worse outside of Japan; nearly 600,000 new cases in the United States yesterday. What happens when Omnicron has washed over the rest of the world and caused widespread immunity? Will Japan stay closed to the rest of the world for all of 2022? Or forever?