N.M. comments

Many companies in the world have finally started realizing that a lot of employees are more efficient when they don't have to commute 2 hours every day.

I personally love it. And I can actually work longer hours (connecting a bit earlier and logging off a bit later) without much trouble or without being more tired, while being able to wake up later.

Storm in a cup of tea.

@Christopher Glen

How about this?

https://unherd.com/thepost/nobel-prize-winning-scientist-the-covid-19-epidemic-was-never-exponential/

You must be joking? You use a tabloid website known for its unreliable articles. And use a "nobel prize-winning" scientist that has no scientific background in epidemiology.

Next time we should ask a Pulitzer-winning journalist or an Oscar-winning film director maybe (or maybe my 96 years old Grandma, she must be very wise and knowledgeable at that age). What a joke!

So Tokyo is using "medical institution inspections" which are not PCR tests as a justification for less cases and artificially low positive/negative ratio.

Despite WHO and experts advice that asymptomatic people are the one spreading the disease. So just because a person has no symptoms it shouldn't be concluded as a negative case.

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

Where they pretend that more than 1000 tests have been conducted when in fact only 80 are actual tests. Reopening under those blind conditions is just irresponsible.

@Alexander

Exactly. I can hear my neighbor walking or taking shower (here every single drop).

Usually it doesn't bother me, except when they take their shower at 2 am. In my country, they are first regulations for noise in construction (so the shower noise case would never happen) and laws that forbid excessive noises after 10 pm. But Japan only have laws for factories or construction, none for neighbors.

Proper noise insulation is not expensive, so construction companies have zero excuses. And according to the article, it could actually save lives. Nobody likes being disturbed at home when relaxing after a day of work (or worse at night while sleeping). I had to move out 3 times in 4 years before I could find a place where the neighborhood was not too noisy.

@Objective

An excellent piece everyone should read: Japan's coronavirus response is flawed -- but it works

Written by someone with zero medical background. Pass.

Andy Crump is a consultant at the Medical Governance Research Institute, or MEGRI, and a visiting professor at Kitasato University, Keio University and St Luke's International University in Tokyo. He previously worked as a multimedia communications officer at the World Health Organization for 15 years. Since 2004, he has handled the English-language communications for Nobel Prize-winning biochemist Satoshi Omura.

@Objective

Excerpts: "As a result, Japan now has 31,289 dedicated COVID-19 beds, which are at at only 17.1% occupancy."

Well if you refuse people in hospital, by definition your beds remain unoccupied.

@nakanoguy01 Arguably in gyms, people sweat a lot and breathe more heavily which could be a factor.

On the other hand, people feeling sick are less likely to go to the gym and more likely to go to the theater. So both should remain closed.

But again, we are talking about Japan here. In the country where culturally people don't really question the rules and just follow them.

@Blacklabel None of your affirmations are true.

Masks: when was he wrong? He always said that mask don't protect you much (true) and that the people tha need it most are health workers (also true).

Death count model: there is no such thing.

GIlead treatment drug: it is still an unproven drug pushed by private interests.

Cruises: I don't know what he said about that.

Turned away for more than two days while having strong symptoms. This is just criminal. I hope the sumo association sues the hospitals which refused giving him treatment.

Doctors are bound by oath to "do no harm".

Worried that they are just "considering" to use them. Similar tests have been available for months. But they were not produced in Japan, so I guess they made their choice: nationalism instead of saving lives.

@Thatperson

The tests can detect the virus quickly but produce false negatives at a higher rate than the currently dominant PCR, or polymerase chain reaction, tests.

....NEXT!!!

False negatives are fine (no test is 100% perfect). The goal of these tests is not to tell you that you are not infected but to detect people which are (or have been). Even if the test was 100% accurate, testing negatively wouldn't prevent you to get it later.

False positives are more problematic but it doesn't look like those tests have a lot of cases like that.

@i@n I quote your own comment:

As of yesterday, May 10, occupancy is 2518/4800 or 52.4%.

source: stopcovid19.jp

There is no such thing on this website. There is no stats regarding occupancy. That number "4800" (now 4868) is the number of cases. It has nothing to do with beds.

i@n You should read the stopcovid19 website properly. There are no stats there regarding number of patients versus number of beds.

You are interpreting the number of people testing positive as the number of beds which is nonsensical.

I have been to a cat café once and the experience was underwhelming. The animals looked bored, drugged or both. Never again.

According to https://stopcovid19.metro.tokyo.lg.jp/en/, on May 6th 65 people were tested in Tokyo, of which 38 were found positive.

That's more than 50% which is really high and way above the 10% that the WHO recommends to target to ensure the testing coverage is sufficient.

JapanToday/Kyodo: publishing numbers without context is counter-productive as it leads people to believe it is safe when it's not.

"There was no choice but to extend" the state of emergency, Osamu Tomura, a 58-year-old bank employee, said, adding that he wants the government to set steps toward lifting the measures.

"I want (the government) to set thorough measures so that efforts by people complying (with the government request) are rewarded," he said.

You want a pat on the back for not being a douche?

@suzurin I think you missed his point.

The reward would be to be able to go back to a normal life quickly. So he is basically asking the government to finally do what they were supposed to do since the beginning: test, trace and isolate and contain.

Otherwise, as him, I feel like all our efforts staying home will be for nothing, if as soon as the SOE is lifted the coronavirus continues to spread.

@HBJ Don't put too much hope on this "reporter". Japanese press doesn't do any investigation, ever. They are just parrots that repeat whatever the local or federal government feeds them.

I have yet to see in any publication some research or inquiry done by a reporter that is not a quote from a press release or from a "so-called" expert.

Schools are a complex situation.

One one hand, there is a risk of contagion and spread of the virus, not only among the students but also to their family when they get back home. So it is understandable that some parents would be worried.

On the other hand, kids need to socialize even more than adults (they could otherwise become introvert) and not all education/teaching can be done remotely (when available).

I am a proponent of lockdowns (to some extent) and physical distancing in general. But schools need to find the middle ground for that issue. And on a case by case basis depending on the city or prefecture. That last point is not helped by the lack of testing and tracing, leaving decisions to at best a guess.

One solution they could try would be to split the week/school into two parts. Having half the students for the first 2.5 days and the other half for the rest of the week. And cancel Saturday's activities for now. That would limit some of the risks.

From my previous comment:

"According to data disclosed by a government panel of experts, Japan has conducted 188 PCR tests per 10,000 people, while many other countries have done more than 1,000."

That is widely incorrect. Japan has tested just over 180,000 people (188 per 10,000 people would mean more than 2 millions tests, which would actually be a good thing). That is around 15 tests per 10,000 people. Which is way lower than any other country.

It looks like the article has been corrected. It know reads "188 PCR tests per 100,000 people". Feels like it was a case of converting "man" into "thousands".

That also seems more realistic regarding the second figure "many other countries have done more than 1,000". That makes it 1% of the population for a lot of countries instead of 10%, which only a few (and usually small one such as Iceland) have already achieved.

According to data disclosed by a government panel of experts, Japan has conducted 188 PCR tests per 10,000 people, while many other countries have done more than 1,000.

That is widely incorrect. Japan has tested just over 180,000 people (188 per 10,000 people would mean more than 2 millions tests, which would actually be a good thing). That is around 15 tests per 10,000 people. Which is way lower than any other country.

188 PCR tests per 10,000 people

The article is completely wrong, there have been just over 180,000 tests overall in Japan. With a population of over 120,000,000 that is about 15 tests per 10,000 people, not 188.

@RationalReader

Do you understand how contagious diseases work? Your advice would only lengthens the duration of the crisis which will do even more harm to the economy.

@Objective

Listen to Nobel prize winning scientist Prof Michael Levitt: Lockdown is a “huge mistake”

Michael Levitt is a biophysicist, he is not an epidemiologist. Just because he has a Nobel Prize doesn't mean he knows everything about anything. He has downplayed the virus outbreak pretending that "I will be very surprised if more than 10 people will die in Israel." (there are more than 200 deaths as of today).

Stop believing in people just because of their past credentials (he is retired and has a Nobel Prize in Chemistry which has nothing to do with viruses). It is very dangerous to do so. Listen to actual experts and reject the rest as noise.

@Concerned Citizen There are many more deaths, but the faxes have been lost or are invalid because of missing stamp. /s

USA is really a country of moronic man-children. They can't do any peaceful protest without carrying their big toys to compensate for they otherwise tiny organ.

They would immediately be arrested as terrorists in any normal country, as they should be.

As a foreigner, I never had to use a stamp a single time. Yet I could sign rent and utility contracts, register to a bank, do bank transactions, etc.

I also don't have a fax machine, but an email address.

So it is already possible to do without any of that archaic custom and technology. They just need to accept that ink stamping is a thing of the past.

A person can be tested positive for the Covid-19 and not have any symptoms, they are. asymptomatic, quite common in younger persons

@Michael Hooper No they can't. While it is true that a person without symptoms can infected and coudl transmit the virus, they can't be tested. Official guidelines only allow testing for people with strong symptoms over a period of at least 4 days. That's the main issue here.

@Yubaru It is not a myth. Japanese live in groups that exclude other groups. I have experienced it first hand.

Abe is only interested in making profits of this crisis.

If the drug can only be safely taken by people with mild symptoms, the same population that can't get any testing because of the strict criteria., how do they expect to administrate it to the people that might need it then?

More nonsense from Abe who lacking any originality is just using Trump's playbook. We see how it went in the US...

@Yubaru

Japan has tested roughly 130,000 people or about 1,000 tests per million people

They actually tested less people than that. Some people are tested several times. As can be seen for example of the Tokyo website (https://stopcovid19.metro.tokyo.lg.jp/en/) where "test conducted" is higher than "people tested".

Speaking of Tokyo, that same website shows how bad testing is there. The total population is above 14 millions, but since the beginning of the outbreak, only 9000 people have been tested. That way less than 1,000 people tested per millions. Which makes Japan one the country with the lowest amount of testing.