Snow comments

There is a lot more information about the background to this story on Tokyo Reporter. It's even sadder than it appears.

According to worldometer, closed cases in Japan have a death rate of 2%. If you consider the number of asymptomatic people that haven't been tested, the death rate in Japan is probably around 0.2%.

Was all the economic pain worth it for a virus with a death rate of 0.2%?

According to worldometer, Japan has a 2% death rate in closed cases. If we assume that there are 10x as many people who have the coronavirus but are asymptomatic and haven't been tested, the actual death rate would be about 0.2%.

In 2018, Japan's third highest cause of death was "old age." (http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ201907150040.html) I don't know any other countries that use that category.

If old people in Japan die before getting tested, maybe those deaths are being categorized as "old age." Not saying it's happening, but could be a way to keep the official coronavirus death rate down.

Just walked past an izakaya in Shibuya at 8:30pm. Not an empty table in the place. I guess that close by 8pm request didn't convince everyone. The streets of Shibuya are pretty empty however.

But we do know the number of fatalities, or is there a government conspiracy hiding that too.

No need for a government conspiracy. Autopsies are incredibly rare in Japan. Also, Japan often uses the term "natural causes" for elderly people who die.

If a patient was not tested for coronavirus before his or her death, he or she likely would not end up in the statistics.

If this virus was as virulent as some media outlets are claiming, we should be seeing millions of infections in Japan by now.

Either it's not as virulent as some media outlets are claiming or we don't know the actual numbers of people infected in Japan.

As of March 4, Japan did 8,111 tests.

As of March 2, South Korea did 105,379 tests.

Why not just postpone everything by one year? Olympics in 2021 then again in 2024.

Why do passengers from other countries who test negative have an additional 14-day quarantine, but Japanese passengers who test negative are free to go home?

I can't believe Japan won't be re-starting the 14-day quarantine period on shore like other countries (US, Canada, Australia). At least one healthcare worker on the ship caught the virus, that means they could have spread it to other passengers part-way thru the original 14-day period. Even if the passengers are tested, the results might not show positive if they only recently caught the virus.