Richard Gallagher comments

Comparing US healthcare to the Japanese system as lacking is surreal. Anecdotal musings about hospitals turning away pregnant women, as if relevant, reflects the often woolly understanding of expats, a typically whiny subculture that exhibits a pretense to comprehend a culture that is indeed wholly foreign. Oft self-righteous, cheap moralizing lurks beneath superficial criticism, if not a certain superiority. That hospitals are a for profit enterprise is more than evident and claiming to receive quality care overseas (wherever that may be) as opposed to Japan is less than enlightening. Do the math. That's quaint. Determining that the way to solve patient misery and ambulance driver's the inconvenience of going from hospital to hospital is to 'end their misery' is amazingly daft. That the individuals causing the spike are 20 and 30 year olds and connected to hostess clubs is quite the scientific explanation. We the taxpayers - that's rich. Understand this: certain hospitals are not equipped to deal with those infected with the virus - in house spread is the concern and very, very real. There is not a slew of ambulances circling the city in a vain search for a hospital to admit a particular patient in their care. What percentage of covid infected individuals require transport via ambulance? No one seems to mention that measure. But here is an actual fact: in March, there were 900 cases which required on average, an extra 20 minutes, in locating a hospital that would accept the covid-19 infected patient. To solve the problem (this was undertaken in April) certain hospitals with outpatient facilities were designated to accept patients, a viral test performed immediately and then sent to a specific hospital. Oh, the Olympics: Abe and the Tokyo & Japanese governments do not decide whether the 2020, now 2021 Olympics will 'take place', the IOC makes that decision. Abe may be a snake, but he doesn't have the wherewithal to cobble together a conspiracy to suppress numbers or create an illusion that would not be apparent to the IOC. Here is what a top IOC official said: No vaccine, no Olympics. The only two countries that dealt with the contagion in a measured and successful manner are Vietnam and Cuba. Ponder that.

Animals are known to be intelligent, compassionate, caring, and loyal. Out there at the Amte Ark at Hemelkasa in the Gadchiroli district in the Indian State of Maharashtra - cats, dogs, monkeys, goats, sheep, pythons, chickens, ducks, squirrels, crows, parrots, owls - they all share the same living space and live in harmony. They eat and drink together. A dog carrying a disabled young monkey on his back and going round, offers much food for thought. Says the founder of the animal community: "Animals are harmless and when treated properly and given the space they require, can be far more loyal than even some human beings".

Right. Prey and predator. A python living in harmony. With what?

From today's reporting:

"Also on Monday, police said that Yamada consulted with them about an unspecified matter in January. “Due to privacy, we will not divulge the content [of the consultation],” police said in a statement.

However, police added that they would also not “release the name of the man,” implying that the consultation by Yamada involved a male acquaintance of hers.

Whether the two events are related is under investigation, police said. Unknown exactly what the circumstances were regarding any interaction with the police."

That she reported being stalked online via social networking sites is apparent - the details of such are unknown. What advice was given is impossible to judge. Many posts are conjecture and reveal a distaste for the police because of inconvenient encounters and suggest incompetence or dereliction. Anecdotally, there is reference to 'knowing' someone who was being stalked, exactly how that fits the scenario is uncertain and even if it was similar aka online. That there was no means employed to prevent a crime would require more than speculation. What is unfortunate is the murder of a young woman. If it was preventable those responsible should be called to answer. The police. The social networking sites. All and any. But, the ridiculous gestures that pass as judgement based on some peculiar understanding of policing in Japan are simply querulous.

Whether the numbers are correct or not is moot. Migrant workers are exactly that - whatever the impelling reason for working in Japan, instead of one's home country. Those who work in a carpetbagging industry because they have a degree and speak English are not exactly offering an essential service or contributing greatly to the economic engine of Japan. Engaging in domestic work, assembly, laborer, agriculture, healthcare worker - doubtful most posting in English inhabit those occupations - those are necessary and exploited - you need a magic lamp to unravel that fact? Certified teachers and professors, that is a different category and to a degree an essential worker. Engineers, physicians, nurses, shop owners, restaurant & service industries, etc., those are skilled and important. The reality of the situation is caused by a pandemic. Whatever role the governments have is a duty to their citizens and naught to a pool of migrant labor, that is part & parcel of the economic system. Yeah, yeah, yeah you pay taxes and you also receive services in return. That you are not afforded, what is best described as 'magical thinking' illustrates the absurdity of expectation and denies the fact the circumstances are institutional and systemic and you live in a foreign country not your own. The governments owe their citizenry and as unfortunate as it may be, you are not, but those advantages and small entitlements gained as a foreigner are forgot. You were expecting a government bailout in a manipulated market economy, as a foreigner? That is beyond naive. You do not live in a welfare state, which is to simply identify this is not a social democracy, it is a client-state modeled in kind after one of the most brutal capitalist nations on earth, though fortunately lacking in some of its more atavistic threads.

Anti-vaxxers, present bogus arguments based on discredited information. The arguments present false information and reflect an ignorance of science and inability to process basic information about viruses. The half-wit scion of the Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an environmental lawyer turned prolific peddler of dangerous anti-vaccine misinformation and his organizations promote conspiracy theories about vaccine safety, including the roundly debunked claim that safe, life-saving immunizations are linked to autism. More recently, Kennedy has become a prominent opponent of laws aimed at increasing vaccination rates among school children. Kennedy is not a scientist and various arguments he advances are fraudulent, that's a polite way of saying: outright lies.

Kennedy made his name in the anti-vaccine movement in 2005, when he published a story alleging a massive conspiracy regarding thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative that had been removed from all childhood vaccines except for some variations of the flu vaccine in 2001. In his piece, Kennedy completely ignored an Institute of Medicine immunization safety review on thimerosal published the previous year; he’s also ignored the nine studies funded or conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that have taken place since 200

Top ranking IOC official: "No vaccine, no Olympics."

Japan is a client-state of the U.S. What Trump 'thinks' is unknown to any posting on this thread. As for John Bolton, he is selling books and constructing a false image of himself. He is a sociopathic liar and madman. Instead the corporate media have made John Bolton a “man of principle,” according to the Washington Post, and a fearless infighter for the “sovereignty of the United States.” Writing in the Post, Kathleen Parker notes that Bolton isn’t motivated by the money he will earn from his book (in the neighborhood of $2 million), but that he is far more interested in “saving his legacy". Examine that legacy:

Bolton, used student deferments and service in the Maryland National Guard to avoid serving in Vietnam and is a classic Chicken Hawk. He supported the Vietnam War and continues to support the war in Iraq. Bolton endorsed preemptive military strikes in North Korea and Iran in recent years, and lobbied for regime change in Cuba, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Syria, Venezuela, and Yemen. When George W. Bush declared an “axis of evil” in 2002 consisting of Iran, Iraq, and North Korea, Bolton added an equally bizarre axis of Cuba, Libya, and Syria.

When Bolton occupied official positions at the Department of State and the United Nations, he regularly ignored assessments of the intelligence community in order to make false arguments regarding weapons of mass destruction in the hands of Cuba and Syria in order to promote the use of force. When serving as President Bush’s Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and Disarmament, Bolton ran his own intelligence program, issuing white papers on WMD that lacked support within the intelligence community. He used his own reports to testify to congressional committees in 2002 in effort to justify the use of military force against Iraq.

Bolton presented misinformation to the Congress on a Cuban biological weapons program. When the Central Intelligence Agency challenged the accuracy of Bolton’s information in 2003, he was forced to cancel a similar briefing on Syria. In a briefing to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 2005, the former chief of intelligence at the Department of State, Carl Ford, referred to Bolton as a “serial abuser” in his efforts to pressure intelligence analysts. Ford testified that he had “never seen anybody quite like Secretary Bolton…in terms of the way he abuses his power and authority with little people.”

The hearings in 2005 included a statement from a whistleblower, a former contractor at the Agency for International Development, who accused Bolton of using inflammatory language and even throwing objects at her. The whistleblower told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee staff that Bolton made derogatory remarks about her sexual orientation and weight among other improprieties. The critical testimony against Bolton meant that the Republican-led Foreign Relations Committee couldn’t confirm his appointment as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. President Bush made Bolton a recess appointment, which he later regretted.

The United Nations, after all, was an ironic assignment for Bolton, who has been a strong critic of the UN and most international organizations throughout his career because they infringed on the “sovereignty of the United States.” In 1994, he stated there was no such thing as the United Nations, but there is an international community that “can be led by the only real power left in the world,” the United States. Bolton stated that the “Secretariat Building in New York has 38 stories,” and that if it “lost ten stories, it wouldn’t make any difference.”

Bolton said the “happiest moment” in his political career was when the United States pulled out of the International Criminal Court. Years later, he told the Federalist Society that Bush’s withdrawal from the UN’s Rome Statute, which created the ICC, was “one of my proudest achievements.”

Bolton targeted every arms control and disarmament agreement over the past several decades, and played a major role in abrogating two of the most significant ones. As an arms control official in the Bush administration, he lobbied successfully for the abrogation of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty of 1972. As soon as he joined the Trump administration, he went after the Intermediate-Nuclear Forces Treaty, which was abrogated in 2018. He criticized the Nunn-Lugar agreement in the 1990s, which played a key role in the denuclearization of former Soviet republics, and maligned the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons as well as the Iran nuclear accord. He helped to derail the Biological Weapons Conference in Geneva in 2001.

U.S. efforts at diplomatic reconciliation have drawn Bolton’s ire. The two-state solution for the Israeli-Palestinian situation as well as Richard Nixon’s one-China policy have been particular targets. He is also a frequent critic of the European Union, and a passionate supporter of Brexit. From 2013 to 2018, he was the chairman of the Gatestone Institute, a well-known anti-Muslim organization. He was the director of the Project for the New American Century, which led the campaign for the use of force against Iraq. The fact that he was a protege of former senator Jesse Helms should come as no surprise.

Bolton’s testimony is one of deceit and disinformation over his thirty year career of opposition to U.S. international diplomacy. As an assistant attorney general in the Reagan administration, he fought against reparations to Japanese-Americans who had been held in internment camps during World War II. 

Two secretaries of state, Colin Powell and Condi Rice, have accused Bolton with holding back key information on important international issues, and Bolton did his best to sabotage Powell’s efforts to pursue negotiations with North Korea. Bolton had a hand in the disinformation campaign against Iraq in the run-up to the U.S. invasion of 2003.

The legacy of John Bolton is well established; his manuscript will not alter this legacy. Bolton, a member of the Bush administration was one of the promoters of the fraudulent invasion and catastrophic occupation of Iraq, a disaster that eventually spilled over into Syria, and now has people literally fleeing into the ocean. Unlike some architects of the Iraq war, who had the decency to disappear from public life, Bolton continued to unapologetically defend the con job he did as George W. Bush’s ambassador to the United Nations, even as he tirelessly agitated for war with Iran and North Korea and Venezuela as Trump’s national security advisor. This is a guy who spent the entirety of his boot-licking career constantly working the levers of the national security apparatus towards waging war — any war, with whatever country was at hand to target, be it Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Cuba, or Venezuela, whose government he tried to have overthrown.  

Trump, for all his madness, has been a counterweight to the bipartisan war machine. Maybe it’s only because he’s dumb and lazy and senile, but Trump is a president whose body count approaching the four-year mark is almost certainly lower than Obama’s or Clinton’s, and orders of magnitude lower than either Bushes’ or Reagan’s. That means little to an establishment that sees foreign wars as the natural order of things. If another country had a guy like Bolton, whose whole schtick was going around the world threatening heads of state with ouster or death. The press would call him a madman and an international criminal. It may be too much to ask White House correspondents and national security reporters to bring that kind of vocabulary to bear on high American officials.

Bolton has no particular expertise in anything at all, he is just an angry shyster lawyer picked up by the more insane elements of the Republican Party as their pit bull. Bolton has been vocal about his disdain for the U.N. and international law in general. In a 2018 speech at the Federalist Society, Bolton told the audience that “the largely unspoken, but always central, aim” of the International Criminal Court was “to constrain the United States,” and promised to let it “die on its own.” During his time with the Trump administration, the U.S. took the extraordinary step of denying visas to ICC investigators and announced that it was withdrawing from the U.N. Human Rights Council. In an sane society, people like Bolton wouldn’t be allowed on television to promote his self-serving book, much less put in charge of American security. Instead he would be tried by the very court he worked to destroy as a war criminal and sentenced to hang.

I want to visit....

Gyms. Great. You can buy a weight set. Or duct tape cinder blocks to a pole. Or chide those who exercise at a gym. All which is meaningless. As if informative. The article is about gyms. Konami has ranking levels & cost differentials. COSPA, it is exceedingly clean - excellent customer service and includes free weights, swimming pool, sauna, hot bath. Where I live in Kansai there is a plethora of gyms. All are well run and equipped to meet certain needs. Muscle heads can locate a gym appropriate to their needs. There are lotsa group classes, with excellent instructors and a cordial atmosphere. The gyms are designed for Japanese, as it is Japan. I used to work out at the Sports Palace, in San Francisco, where the US Olympic weightlifting team trained - it was similar to rudimentary gyms in Kansai.

It's the French. Intent re-establishing an Empire in Asia.

US Open should have been cancelled, along with the French. Not essential workers. Kudos for cancelling the Japan Open. However, the lower tier players need financial assistance, as they are not fatcats like the Big Three or others in that category.

That's a heady mishmash of commentary. 150,000 becomes 1.5 million. An anecdotal account by a parent. Brainwashing by mothers. Wizards all.

A Frenchman and an Italian living in Japan, petition the EU regarding parental rights inside Japan. An Australian, Scott McIntyre, a 'freelance' sports reporter, going through divorce mediation, entered the common area of his in-laws residence and was arrested for trespassing - he claimed to be concerned about their safety because of a previous typhoon (utter nonsense on his part, a transparent false justification) - he has appeared, quite uninvited, at the apartment complex numerous times. McIntyre was accused of physical abuse towards his daughter in divorce proceedings. McIntyre was fired from previous employ and sued over discrimination, thus the freelance profession on Twitter. After his arrest he claimed to be treated the same as Carlos Ghosn. He is apparently incapable of being subtle or taking the measure of his behavior in a social context - and indulges in hyperbole. He publicly claimed to be tortured during his incarceration. McIntyre has self-appointed himself spokesperson for abducted children. These are the individuals carrying the banner for 'abduction'.: an Italian and Frenchman in Japan and a crackpot Australian in Tokyo. The reporting on McIntyre is curious in its framing - the claims of abuse by McIntyre are brushed into a differing context by asserting the claims were not brought to bear in the trespassing case and dismissed - implying the claim of abuse itself in the divorce case had been dismissed. Clever wording. He seems quite mental.

Instead how about the word of a divorce attorney:

Divorce in Japan has contingencies regarding parental custody which are age dependent. Under the age of ten the courts generally award custody to the Mother, indeed 80% as the intimacy of the mother/child relationship is considered utmost. Between 10 and 15 the will of the child is to be respected. 15 and older the will of the child is given paramount importance.

When deciding which parent will be given custody of children, the most important factor is supposed to be the welfare of the children. Article 820 of the Civil Code says that the custodian has the right and obligation to care for and educate the child for the benefit of that child.

To bring up a child properly, a stable life environment is considered vital. Weighing up the factors that count toward a stable life environment, the judge will consider not only material and economic circumstances but also mental and physical ones.

In general, it is believed that siblings should live under the same roof with the same parent. Brothers and sisters have a strong mental connection with each other, and separating them can have a detrimental effect on their mental health. A court is likely to decide that children should live together with one parent.

 After divorce, the parent without custody must pay child support to the parent who has the children.

There is no vaccine. Numbers have flattened, due to the citizenry adhering to protocols. The virus will continue to plague the populous. Fact is, contrary to the slightly daft posting, masks, social distancing, all the plastic barriers that protect cashiers and clerks from possibly infected individuals are necessary and has reduced transmission, as has stay at home requests. No matter the inconvenience and the very peculiar opining which among other factors does not realize a virus is not a living organism, similar to bacteria. The nonsense about hiding numbers is ignorant - the reporting agencies are varied and public, there is no conspiring to censor numbers - hospitalization numbers are accurate, as is the death toll. Asymptomatic and mild cases are just that and do not require hospitalization. The 99% reduction in tourists. 80% reduction in turnstile counts at major train stations. Cancelling of big events. Closure of public venues. School closures and staggered re-openings. All are necessary. And for the moment it is the so-called new normal. As for children, they are more adaptive than adults. Nothing stinks. There is no brainwashing. And sanity requires a measured and careful response. The government has no power to enact anything resembling martial law, all for the good. Cranky gajin, best understand, this IS a portent of the future, and a very mild example of what awaits this decade. Until there is a vaccine, there is no immunity. 15% of infections require serious attention. 4% require ICU. Whatever may be the 'actual' numbers, including asymptomatic, is moot. So, what? You going to trace and track? Too late. Except for emerging clusters. Shelter in place has significantly reduced hospitalizations, everywhere. The rate of hospitalization is 90 per 100,000. 0.09%

A useless American made 'defense system' foisted upon a 'client-state'. Same as those piece-of-crap F-35 warplanes. Switzerland a better model that the failing Empire USA. Abe and his Imperial Dreams, along iwth all those other louses in government.

Keep international tourism at bay. Encourage locals to support independent, locally owned business. Shift away from industrial tourism, phase it out and deep-six it. The continual push to expand beyond any reasonable threshold is absurd. Whether recognized or not: there is a social ecology which acknowledges not just limits, but community and what constitutes & defines a good life. Which can be as simple as a big, fat middle-class and limits on the upper class. As for the less than witty comments: who cares if tourists wish to ride around in a bus in the rain.

IOC, official stated: "No vaccine. No Olympic Games." Olympic Games are incredibly corrupt. Doped-up athletes under the sway of Big Sponsors. Corporate gladiators. At a cost of 12.6 billion to Japan. The return on that investment is exactly what? Since 2004, Olympic venues have experienced inconsistent ROI. Below are a few of the more notable figures:

Rio De Janeiro, Brazil 2016: In 2016, the Rio De Janeiro Summer Olympics rendered a final price tag of US$13 billion, well over projections of around US$3 billion. The added cost is credited with prolonging an existing recessionary cycle in Brazil.[4]

Sochi, Russia 2014: The 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi cost in the neighborhood of US$50 billion. This expense shattered the initial budget of US$12 billion and generated a modest US$53 million in profit.[5]

Beijing, China 2008: In 2008, China spent more than US$40 billion on the Summer Games. China realised a US$146 million profit.[5]

Turin, Italy 2006: As a host of the 2006 Winter Games, Turin ended up sustaining a loss of US$3.2 million. The deficit represented 2% of its US$1.58 billion operating budget.[6]

Athens, Greece 2004: One of the largest financial failures of the modern Olympic era, the cost overrun of the Athens games led to a staggering debt load. With an initial budget of US$4.6 billion, the Athens Summer Olympics accrued between US$14 billion and US$15 billion in debt. The economic stress created by the 2004 games is often credited with ushering Greece into a financial crisis.[6]

As of June, 2020: Small companies with fewer than 10 employees made up about half of the bankruptcy cases.

A fine gesture. Some year, the USA should spend the entire military budget on fireworks.

I am a homeroom teacher. Upper elementary. Read the available academic and scholarly analysis of remote learning and you will find naught but criticism. It is absolutely not a substitute for actual classroom learning and the social activities that mark successful teaching. Adapting a strategy that offsets the possibility of acquiring the virus is readily available and has been implemented by various educational institutions. The importance of school is found in its social aspects which cannot be conveyed in isolation. Nor is quality teaching achieved via remote learning - the subtleties, the art and craft of teaching requires a relationship that can only be enacted in an actual classroom. Missing a large block of schooling is detrimental to the academic and social growth of elementary school students. None of this is speculative, it is confirmed by numerous studies and should be apparent to anyone who pays attention to the obvious. One fortunate aspect, is the low infection rate among children and the mildness of the virus among that age group. One cause of concern is staff and teachers spreading the virus amongst adults and requires diligence and a limiting of social contacts among that cohort. Same with parents. Take all available precautions should work. Where is that vaccine?

Most unfortunate. Show should be docked and shut down. Reality shows are nonsense that came into being just prior to the Writer's Strike, many moons ago. It is teevee on the cheap. The profit margins are higher, as it requires no paid actors or writer's and all that accompanies such. As such they have proliferated ever since and displaced scripted narratives..

The analysis presented is rather lacking and full of peculiar suppositions.

The pose that anecdotal observations function as some manner of fact, completely lacking in reference to actual data or statistics is simply absurd.

Half-assed quoting of actual facts is illustrated by the 'obesity' factor tossed out with no actual reference.

Comorbidity is associated with SARSCoV-2 aka Covid-19 fatalities: the three key factors are: hypertension, diabetes and obesity. There are numerous scientific studies and academic papers based on actual data that are available on-line that reflect those basic facts, along with an age differential pegged to demographics. There are also papers that provide a sophisticated analysis tracking the spread of the virus citing cultural, economic and social factors which are not purely mathematical conjecture and provide a reproduction number that is more accurate than the 2.6.

To determine folks in Japan are not taking the virus seriously is an absurd statement and the musings of a doctor friend is meaningless. Do deny the population of Japan critical awareness is foolish and has no basis. It is amusing to assert that Japanese, "believe everything they hear on the news," then to cite the news as if fact, is an exercise in unintended irony. It is elementally gossip.

The sumo wrestler who died from complications wedded to coronavirus, suffered multiple organ failure. Suetake, was admitted to a hospital on April 8th, tested for the virus and it was negative. April 10th he was tested again and it was positive. He died April 19th in an intensive care unit.  He fought out of the Takadagawa stable, where six other people tested positive for Covid-19. Two of those were subsequently treated and released from hospital.

Kiyotaka Suetake, suffered from diabetes, a comorbidity that is a high risk factor for severity of the disease. Mortality is threefold higher in people with diabetes, add to that obesity  which is linked to related complications such as secondary bacterial pneumonia. Obesity is a two-fold risk factor, combined with diabetes you have a high risk patient with a low rate of survival. If an incubator is required the chance of survival is 10%. Diabetes patients have impaired immune-response to infection both in relation to cytokine profile and to changes in immune-responses including T-cell and macrophage activation.  Poor glycaemic control impairs several aspects of the immune response to viral infection and also to the potential bacterial secondary infection in the lungs.  Patients with diabetes are high-risk and a complicated group of patients to treat for Covid-19. Suetake didn't die from a three hour ambulance ride or from being denied admittance to a hospital. He was a high risk patient with two comorbidities and SARSCoV-2, the mortality rate is exceedingly high and unfortunately, predicated an adverse outcome.

As for cultures in The West, removing shoes prior to entering the house, it is not an ingrained custom. Individual practice does not reflect a social protocol. The remark about it not being a law is simply silly.

India has surpassed China in the number of cases. China and India have similar populations, in excess of one billion. India, the number of facilities for testing are grossly inadequate and individuals from the lower socio-economic strata are not afforded an adequate level of healthcare, let alone access to testing. The health care system does not have the capacity to deal with a large number of cases. India has only 3.63 public ICU beds per 100,000 population and the per capita availability of ICU beds varies tremendously both between and within states.  India is among the least prepared countries to deal with the pandemic.  The Indian subcontinent is one of the poorest places on earth. Almost 70% of the population live in abject poverty, on less than two dollars or 200 yen a day.  40% of the Indian households live in one room house and conditions are so cramped that, on an average, five persons share a room in the same house and functions as a disease vector.  There is no valid comparison to Japan.

The FAA, is headed by Stephen Dickson. An industry spewed pick. Executive with Delta. Delta has committed to re-establishing flights to China in June, same with United.

From an industry journal: Delta Air Lines and United Airlines are planning to restart passenger flights to mainland China in June, four months after all routes were suspended following the outbreak of COVID-19.

Delta intends to offer daily service to Shanghai Pudong from both its Detroit and Seattle-Tacoma.

OAG Schedules Analyser data shows flights from Detroit will begin on June 1st using Airbus A350-900 aircraft, with Seattle resuming the same day on board A330-900neo. The network additions mean the SkyTeam alliance member will operate 7,350 two-way weekly seats between the US and China. 

 OAG schedules data shows that United is also planning to restart U.S.-China flights. From June 4th the Star Alliance member intends to fly daily to PVG from San Francisco (SFO) and New York Newark (EWR) using Boeing 787-9 and 777-300ER aircraft respectively. Daily service between SFO and PEK on board 787-9 will also begin on the same day.

Abe. A scoundrel. Abe with his fevered dreams of a Japanese Empire. Abe a right-wing nutcase. Corrupt and craven. Sent packing once. And should be shunted aside and kicked to the curb.

Huh. Something happened. A person is reported dead. No one has any facts. Other than the individual posted a picture of herself and cat, with an apology. Allusions to bullying, but no actual description of circumstance.

Japan is a client-state. The result of a long and horrible war and Imperial Dreams. As for going toe to toe with China, it isn't a game of Trobriand cricket or counting coup. There was mention of Vietnam, which was invaded by the Americans, in case it is forgotten the U.S. was defeated by Vietnam. The U.S. is a war machine and the resources devoted to the military will bankrupt America, if it hasn't already - it is certainly spiritually bankrupt.. The endless wars across the planet and the decline of The Empire poses the USA as another cautionary tale, one unlearned again and again by various empires. Japan lacks natural resources which was one of the many reasons that doomed its war against the Paper Tiger. It will never be a military colossus, why would such be the fevered imaginings of right-wing nutjobs like Abe and his ilk. The best scenario is to join the Silk Road endeavor and parlay that relationship into a future that China will rule. The U.S. is headed to the historical dustbin. Trump or Biden, it doesn't matter both are a moronic choice and will further erode U.S. power and drive the economy into the ground. Japan should cut itself loose. The U.S. military, it an employer of last choice. Lacking any manner of a jobs program, and in fact lacking jobs, the US military is an obvious means for employment. U.S. military is chock full of teenagers and post teens, lambs ready for slaughter is their role.

Mah jong. Ping pong. He's gambling, playing games, while at work. Your tax dollars at work for someone who isn't working. He needs to be deep-sixed. It is convenient.

The most 'effective' means for transmitting the virus is immediate contact. Though the virus lives on surfaces, acquiring the virus is avoidable by the simple act of washing one's hand and using disinfectant (100% alcohol destroys the virus). I have to ride the train into Osaka to work, one day a week. The trains are less crowded, everyone is masked, there is no direct contact and a determined avoidance to be face to face. Given the circumstances, that is about the best scenario, at the moment, when riding the trains. Awaiting the train, folks are spaced out. Trains are the major means of transport in Japan, no other type of locomotion comes close.

Yes, there is a large contingent of asymptomatic, perhaps larger than those with easily identifiable symptoms. This is another reason to follow protocols and hygiene standards. Minimizing contact is of course key. It tamps down the route of infection. Instead of clusters of disease, it is possible to create clusters that are disease free - difficult and the numbers would be large. Thusly, not traveling to other prefectures is incredibly sensible. Isolating the vulnerable is not just a necessity, but required.

To reduce the spread to a slow burn is the only viable stratagem, as a vaccine is lacking. The lack of determinants describing the nature of the virus, is perhaps due to the conservative nature of science - though that standard has been violated numerous times by speculative conjecture that has been proven to be inaccurate to lesser or greater degree. The course of the disease cannot be plotted out at the moment beyond the obvious data and metrics. Models are not adequate and the use of similar disease vectors, though providing insight, no matter how similar, are differing to an extent and degree it cannot predict what will rise in the next six months. An interesting study is referred to in a recent addition of The New Yorker, the town of Bolinas, California, where all the residents were tested. Japan as a whole, is in a good place. Thank one another and the culture. As for the politicians, it is in-spite of them, though whatever little help they offer is welcome. Be safe, follow protocol and standards of behavior.

Uh, yeah. Should have used killerbots on the visitor side.

Someone is still bitching about a lack of soap in public restrooms at train stations. Or as they say: major toilets. And asserting that 'Japanese' (who or what that means) have poor hygiene, which is noticeable if you live in Japan long enough. Really? You have spent significant time in toilets all across Japan? And sniffing around to identify bad hygiene among the entire population? Maybe you should write up a study. Or better yet, develop a hobby.