Tristis Quepe comments

Kenkyusha is going to have some interesting definitions for "safe" and "secure" when the next edition of their dictionary comes out.

I’d suggest changing “a lot of” to “one lot of” to avoid ambiguity.

Going down in time for the paralympics.

As Antiquesaving often says, the virus is so altruitstic.

Taliban spokesman: "We think women should be put in their place and we don't trust technology".

Japanese minister: "Would you like a job?"

Up, down, up, down. up, down.

We should turn this into a non-gambling sweepstakes. Everyone makes a guess as to what the next day's figures will be and the person who gets closest wins respect and street cred.

The number of daily infections has roughly tripled in Tokyo since the start of the Olympics on July 23

Strange, that.

Government: "Isolate at home! Don't go out as you may spread the virus!"

Also the government: "Come on down to Shibuya, one of the busiest districts in Tokyo."

Also the government: “let’s hold two huge sporting events and Fuji rock!”

At the rate this guy is going, one can only assume he is getting advice from Joe.

It's a coin toss as to whether it's politics or Covid which brings out the highest rate of "comments which have absolutely nothing to do with the topic at hand, but which people seem absolutely desperate to shoehorn in".

it is of course a complete coincidence that this unusually low number comes out on the same day as Suga announces his bid for re-election as head of the LDP.

And of course because there is absolutely no bullying in Japan, said children will in no way be picked on when they go back to school and called names. "Hey everyone, it's Corona-kun! Corona-kun! Corona-kun! Corona-kun!"

Comparatively young candidate, evidently highly educated, with actual expertise on Covid?

Wait for him to get the Horiemon treatment. Maybe they'll suddenly discover signs of "misconduct" or ten million yen in a bank account somewhere and he'll end up on the wrong side of the justice system.

Sorry, that main italic part is my own writing, I used the quote function incorrectly.

Why? The vaccine does not protect against transmission.

I used to study a martial art. (I'm going somewhere with this, mods, so give me a moment before deleting it). One of the facets of this martial art was training the body to take hard punches and kicks. Don't ask me the precise physiological mechanisms behind it because I don't know what they are. It was hard training, but the result was that you could take a shot which would likely hurt most people or even put them on the ground.

I like to think of a vaccine in that way. It won't necessarily stop you getting punched (i.e. getting the virus), but it will ensure that it won't hurt as much. The better the vaccine, the more protection you get from the punch.

"Two doses of Pfizer-BioNTech have greater initial effectiveness against new COVID-19 infections, but this declines faster compared with two doses of Oxford-AstraZeneca," researchers at Oxford University said.

I would be interested to hear Pfizer's response to that.

Many Japanese experts have already made their case. But they continue to stall. I don't know if it's incompetence, corruption, or both... but blood is on their hands for stalling and letting people die.

So step up and put your money where your mouth is. You obviously think that you can get through to the government when these "experts" can't. So why waste time posting here? Go get 'em.

Wow, the fear-mongering authoritarians are out in force this morning. Masks have very little effect, especially outdoors

That's irrelevant. He broke the law.

I know that the "mah freedumbz" people insist on shoe-horning their Facebook Conspiracy Theories into every possible conversation, even if it's about something totally unrelated, but let me walk you through it nice and slowly so you can grasp it.

1) The man was in Singapore.

2) Singapore has determined that masks should be worn.

3) The man did not wear a mask, and was also a public nuisance.

4) The man was arrested.

If you run into any trouble between step 1 and step 4, find an adult and ask them for help.

All the LDP politicians care about is avoiding responsibility, blaming someone else and winning the next election. There's no planning and no system because they don't care about anything except money and the next election.

Digging a bit further, the obvious (yet rhetorical) question is "why?"

The answer, obviously, is that they know that their chance of winning the next election is very close to absolute.

So this can also, indirectly at least, be laid at the feet of the people who just keep on voting for them come hell or high water.

The law takes a very distant second place to perception here. Japan's just held the Olympics and is going to hold the paralympics shortly. People will have eyes on the country, ergo Japan wants to look good.

My guess is that they'll bide their time until the media (international, obviously: the local media just report what they're told and follow what I imagine is the first thing they learn at journalism school in Japan: "ask questions, but don't ask questions, if you know what I mean") go home, then throw the harshest possible penalty they can at this guy.

Really only one! I hope they don't hide the things like the Lambda case last time.

If the olympic fiascoes give way to a new variant, it deserves to deviate from the Greek alphabet and be christened the Baka variant.

So bowing to Nissan, Hitachi, Panasonic, Fujitsu, Rakuten, TEPCO, etc. (all corporate owners of J-League clubs) to allow them having thousands of untested fans twice a week is not the same kind of issue, because it’s domestic?

Yes. It is different.

It doesn't make it any better than the cases in the olympic village. But it is different, because all the people you refer to had complete freedom to do what they did and go where they went. The olympic athletes were and are here at the invitation of the Japanese government (well, let's be honest: they're here because the IOC walked all over the LDP, but). Further, as we saw during the main games, a number of athletes openly violated their instructions to stay in the village and went out; two of them were stupid enough to wear their country's jackets while doing so.

I'm not defending packed football stadiums, packed beaches, and packed whatever else, but they should be seen as a separate issue to what we're talking about here.

Just this week, 64 dead and 135 more positive in a cluster in Okinawa, over 40,000 fans attending J-League matches, seems all more worthy of attention no?

None of those things were the result of a spineless government bowing the knee to the IOC. They may well be the result of people not acting very smart, but it's a separate issue to this one.

Seriously how is this even a headline. Surreal.

Cos Bach, Suga, and the entire IOC were braying nonstop for months about a "totally safe and secure" games where the athletes' village was supposedly an impregnable fortress.

Now they've had cases already and the games haven't even started yet.

I call that a broken promise. Heck, I call that intentional deceit.

You may define it otherwise.

"You know, guys, if you look at this situation under the influence of a lot of beer, it's not really that bad, and the paralympics (which has just seen its first Covid case) are starting soon, so let's hope Japan wins lots of medals and gets people looking the other way! I'm going to be watching every single event because, hey, I matter more than anyone else!"

In before the "it's only one person out of x thousand....OK, it's only ten people out of X thousand...OK, it's only 256 people out of x thousand...." brigade.

Japan Atomic Power Co needs to issue a public statement about what it intends to do.

"We apologise deeply for whatever it is we are alleged to have done, and will reflect long and hard on our alleged misconduct" (bows, counts to five, straightens up, goes back to work and continues falsifying data).

The only problem I see is how to convince the young people to take the vaccine.

Have you seen "Battle Royale?" The scene near the beginning where the super-genki woman is explaining the rules to the students?

I'm thinking something along those lines.

My first shot is in a week, then the second in mid-September. I was honestly not expecting to get a shot this year, so I'm pleasantly surprised.

Who had this "thought"?

Best of my knowledge it was a representative of the Japan Communist Party.

It was a great idea, putting the needs of the many over those of the IOC and a handful of athletes, which is probably why it was ignored.

These guys decided months ago with no evidence and will never change their stance, regardless of the facts.

As the Japanese say, 目糞鼻糞を笑う

If they started off by following requests to close early / not serve booze / both, then I can see why they're getting cheesed off with these endless follow-ups and likewise, I would understand if they started feeling like they were being singled out, just for trying to earn a living.

I often tell my friends that while the UK (my neck of the woods) could learn a lot from Japan, the reverse is also true, and that the Japanese could stand to learn a bit about civil disobedience and political cynicism rather than the shrugging "shou ga nai" mentality which seems to be baked into their DNA.