Japan is closed. (The moose out front should have told you.)
Currently, deaths that are attributed to respiratory illnesses are being tested postmortem for SARS-CoV-2. If they come back positive, the deaths are recorded as being COVID-19 related. There were a handful of cases in the news where “new” infections were found after the patient’s death. Even assuming non-tested COVID-19 deaths get attributed to something else, it’s going to show up in the numbers later on as average numbers for other deaths will see unusual spikes.
Even though everyone pretty much knows the number of infected is grossly understated, the general consensus among the public and public commentators is that the number of deaths is a fairly reliable barometer.
The ghost of Adm. Perry disapproves.
Certainly don’t want to take any chance that the horse might wander back into the barn, after all.
I don’t believe Japan’s numbers one iota more than I believe China’s. Japanese bureaucracies are famous for slow-walking and ass-covering.
Also, consider that Japan (like many wealthy countries) has an unsustainable demographic problem with far too many old people’s pensions being funded by a smaller population of younger workers.
Here in the US we have Glenn Beck and other Fox nutjobs openly floating trial balloons that grandma should die to save the economy. So I can only imagine conversations happening that may be happening behind closed doors in places like Japan and Bulgaria. Introduced in the right locations, this virus could solve a lot of financial problem for those governments.
I have no doubt that Japan’s ministries are misclassfying COVID cases, either intentionally or not. But to Alessan’s point, the number of ICU patients and dead are probably the real indicators of the severity of the outbreak. It’s obviously crucial for Japan to do things to get ahead of the virus, as once a health system falls behind, it’s screwed. So far, Japan seems to have avoided a major crisis, for reasons that aren’t yet clear. Maybe they’re just lucky and maybe their luck will run out.
There is going to be a relatively long lag time for that kind of analysis, though. Compared to highly publicized daily updates of numbers of infected and dead due to COVID 19 we could be looking at having to tweak out estimates of related deaths weeks to months later. If we are looking for a reliable metric for the effectiveness of current interventions and to guide future actions, deaths due to the disease has some real issues. It is best when the other numbers are reliable but can suffer when those numbers are unreliable and inaccurate.
They’re up to almost 2,000 sick today. I don’t think hey dodged this bullet at all.
I think they’re using some built in and ad hoc ways of fiddling the numbers. I don’t discount that they wear a lot of masks and aren’t a touchy feely society but these numbers just seem hinky. That iron clad rule that they only release pneumonia reports every three years, lung disease pandemic not changing that, is just indefensible.
Eta: taking a week to double at this point would be a “dodging the bullet” in many ways.
What do you all make of the suggestion that the BCG vaccine provides some degree of protection against COVID-19? Japan has mandated it since the late 40s.
Then again, France mandated it from 1950 to 2007, so unless the spread in France is mostly among immigrants, that doesn’t seem to explain the difference between Europe/US and Japan.
If French infections were largely among immigrants then the per capita number of infected would be significantly lower in France than in bordering nations.
And it does seem to be.
Japan is getting hit harder.
My Japanese friends report overconfidence among many people, with lots of drinking and karaoke going on. It’s not over yet.
In this country with a rich flora, there are also many allergic people who suffer from flowering pine trees in spring and wormwood in the fall, and in intervals from PM2.5 particles flying from China. In short, wearing masks is also a social norm. The habit of wearing masks that are worn both in the country and on foreign trips probably saved some percent of the Japanese from premature infection.
It’s common, but hardly the “social norm.” Even in a photo chosen for an article on Japan’s “mask culture”, only about 1/2 of the people in the picture are wearing masks. And that’s much higher percentage than I commonly saw.
The word in Japan is that they’re ready to declare a state of emergency as early as tonight. They have to put the finishing touches on some legislation wording when SoE come into effect. The problem is, no one is sure what’s going to change because of this. The government has already said the law does not give them the legal authority to stop people from going outside.
Japan is now facing a medical crisis.
Japan had several months in which to prepare for this, but wasted it. Reports from my friends in Japan say that nothing was being done. The government was not getting ready and that it’s insane that they were not preparing more such as manufacturing more masks and other PPE.
Here is another story discussing the situation. It talks about a small hospital (331 beds) what was not set up to handle patients with infectious diseases and then had to accept more and more of them. Tokyo’s hospitals are overwhelmed.
and
Not good at all.