nandakandamanda comments

Thank you for that very informative, if horrific, post, Avenger. I had not realized that there were such disadvantages to ventilators, but they really make sense once explained.

Simply good Russia. Thank you.

Wonderful gesture! Thank you Taiwan.

Report of various scenarios in Japanese here:

https://headlines.yahoo.co.jp/hl?a=20200331-00000582-san-pol

On the news last night they added that Tokyo could totally shut down within three hours of such an eruption. The scenario showed black clouds of ash and pumice, in a worst case scenario while it was raining. Wet ash would short-circuit the electricity lines, stopping trains, and it would block roads and disrupt water supplies.

Oh, re gargling @zichi, this too is something recommended by top doctors here, but not mentioned at all in the West. I have got into the habit and gargle with some antiseptic solution mornings and evenings.

My Japanese wife never wears a face mask in public, but she is in the distinct minority and I dread to think that she may catch something very soon. I have to keep reminding her to wash her hands etc.

No harm in wearing a mask in public in Japan, and it could even be better than a naked face. Better safe than sorry. Certainly it is seen by the majority as good manners at the very least.

Besides, Austria have just mandated the wearing of facemasks when entering supermarkets, (handed out at the door) and Germany is looking to follow suit.

All this 'Oh, but you are taking them away from medical staff' is directed at people wearing proper N95 medical masks, right? The only masks we have available at home are ordinary ones we found back in in January and the ones we have made with vacuum cleaner hepa filters. There are no regular masks on sale anywhere, despite the TV shots and promise of millions upon millions of them.

“Vow, pledge, will...”

These are sparkling clean words. Please honor and respect them. We are still hoping to believe that there is some integrity somewhere.

Brilliant! Go peeps! Every little bit helps...

“Another major factor”.... bwa ha ha ha ha!!!!!

The last line of this quote says it all:

Another major factor in choosing the dates: The IOC gets 73% of its $5.7 billion income in a four-year Olympic cycle from selling broadcast rights. About half of that TV income is from American network NBC. “American TV was in agreement,” Ricci Bitti said. “Clearly they were consulted. With the current professional sports calendar, really the only time available is the summer. Otherwise there are too many things going on at the same time. “The professional calendar is no longer athlete-oriented; it’s business-oriented.”

I have heard that it is has had generally good results and that it has been approved in China. Apparently Abé wants to get it approved here in Japan as soon as possible.

On the other hand it is not almighty, so doctors like to have it as one of about four go-to options.

This is what I am hearing. I’ll be interested to hear from other JT readers.

Start here first. Why do so many workers have no place to live away from home, and why do many give up on the idea of marriage?

They are only ‘eyeing’ it.

April and May, please, and run the marathon in the rainy season in June when the cooling rain is the only factor keeping the unbearable heat at bay.

No easy solution once you have come this far down the road...

Maybe a large sign outside your house saying "GUN OWNER & PROUD OF IT" would deter more unwelcome visitors, than actually going down to the gun store and loading up with more weaponry.

Maybe the only card they have left? Just keep playing it...

If there is one thing certain about the sakura season, temperature fluctuations, sometimes severe drops and even hail and snow are part of the scenario. Glad to see Nature alive and kicking.

Of course it has been said in a blanket statement over the years that the Japanese themselves live in rabbit hutches.

And although much of what is said above is true, you will also find the extreme opposite here, i.e. people who have surprisingly deep sympathy and understanding with the animals they live alongside.

I have also noticed that most people in Japan are successful in training their dogs to be non-aggressive and 'in control'. It's as if everyone, even little kids, seem to trust in the 'good nature' of dogs. That was certainly not the case when I lived in New York, where you would steer well clear of most dogs.

Not meaning to excuse the ignorant cruelty that does take pace, probably in far larger numbers than this absurdly low 105, but just wanting to keep a balance. The Japanese are not all black when it comes to care of animals.

By the same token, these new laws are definitely a long-needed improvement.

I looked up the word overshoot a couple of weeks ago and wrote a comment for a website on it. I found three conflicting recent usages of it. I think it started with the body's immune system overshooting the virus in the lungs creating a cytokine storm, flooding and destroying the lungs, leading to organ failure and death. Large numbers of such patients require massive numbers of beds and ventilators, overloading the whole hospital system. In Japanese it seems to be indicating the latter, the societal infrastructure failure.

A very convenient buzzword, like cluster, which can add an extra air of authority without any real content.

Don't forget that the rainy season starts at the beginning of June on average.

April/May would be best, but even May can be very hot.

In the same boat here, zichi, though the panic buying and empty shop scenario seems to vary by borough in London.

His speech will be good English teaching material, valid for several reasons.

Just had an invitation to a flower viewing and 'Jingis Khan' lunch on 5th April, an offer from a group that I cannot refuse. Very politely I have replied that a prior engagement for that day means that I am sadly unable to participate. I know that my absence will be noted with a black mark, though.

Thanks for the link, itsonlyrocknroll. Is he leaning on the No.10 bar, I wonder?

PS Or look at the past 5 years on the graphs above, where you can see how high pump prices still are.

Crude reality to me means that prices at the pump have come down to about the level of September 2019, roughly 8 yen off their recent peaks.

Some fun graphs on this page, showing either past month or year for regular, high octane, diesel:

https://e-nenpi.com/gs/price_graph/1/1/0/

When the going gets tough, the tough get going? Glad to see that Boris and Jeremy are nominally at least reading from the same hymn sheet.

Lockdown is like prison, but at least you are in your own space. The knowledge that it applies to everyone will be to some degree comforting. Hang in there peeps.

The way of reporting deaths must certainly be a contributing factor.

One aspect that has not been discussed here yet is the Italian mistrust of government and authority. For a long time people laughingly ignored the warnings, until suddenly it became too serious to ignore, and by then tragedy was already striking. Even face masks, which everyone pooh-poohed, suddenly became fashionable.

A friend in the UK tells me his young daughter caught Covid-19 so the whole family were in quarantine last week. She got better, but then his one-year-old boy started a bad cough. I have been in regular contact, as he and his wife took turns keeping watch over him each night. Yesterday I heard that their little boy is getting better now. He also told me that someone at his daughter's school had apparently died, but the authorities are not releasing any more information about that.

Sounds as if they need to pour a thick concrete cap over the whole site first, and then build their highway over that.

This virus is like Russian roulette. It's the one loaded chamber that will get someone. Interesting though that the negative Ibuprofen message is said by the EU to be an example of Russian false news. So Ibuprofen is ok then?