
Japan’s winning its quiet fight against Covid-19 - tomohawk
https://asiatimes.com/2020/03/japans-winning-its-quiet-fight-against-covid-19/
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nabla9
>Japan appears to be severely and deliberately under-testing for the
coronavirus, although it has stepped it up in recent weeks

and

>Possibly, coronavirus deaths are being hidden among pneumonia fatalities.
South Korea has had 120 deaths from Covid-19, but Japan only 49. So, it is
possible that the more populous Japan is sweeping Covid-19 fatalities under
the rug?

I suspect that they are hiding the spread of disease. Until just recently
their main motivation was to make Tokyo Olympics happen.

Japan is full of elderly people, so I fully expect the death toll to
relatively large.

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Barrin92
The press in Japan is relatively free and I find it hard to imagine that Japan
could effectively hide outbreaks on the scale of northern Italy. In the
country's urban setting this would surely wreak mayhem that would be visible.

Yesterday people here discussed John Ioannidis article and he stressed that
hygiene and isolation of the sick are significantly more proven to fight
respiratory disease than social distancing and lockdowns. Japan may be a case
that this is true given a strong culture of cleanliness and lack of close
physical contact in particular between family members. Together with the
excellent healthcare system and pneumonia treatment in the country this may be
protecting vulnerable patients.

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nabla9
Japanese media has tendency for self-censorship. They just don't publish
inconvenient news until long afterwards. They rarely lead with fact finding
for critical news. It has just been increasing when Abe became PM.

Japanese culture has strong hygiene standard, no doubt. But sometimes it has
bad side effects. People who carry diseases are shunned. Japanese Association
for Disaster Medicine has asked people from harassing doctors and staff that
treat infected (including their coworkers)

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__warlord__
I live in Japan and from what I can see, even if they are under-reporting the
cases, the hospitals (at least in Tokyo) doesn't seem to be overloaded with
cases.

Another thing that I notice is that people here are not in panic mode, which
might help a lot to not overload the hospitals and might help as well with how
people mentally react to the situation. Being stressed all the time won't help
at all during this pandemic.

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glofish
winning the fight? I think for that the fight would need to be over.

It remains to be seen which strategy works in what way.

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mycall
When I first heard that 14% of Covid-19 ICU patients had viral pneumonia, some
comment said vaccinations are available. Next day, I got vaccinated. I was in
ICU for pneumonia before so I didn't want this high chance again.

