
Number of confirmed COVID-19 cases rises in Japan - fspeech
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2020/02/14/national/wakayama-positive-coronavirus/#.Xke6CjWIZTs
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jdshaffer
I live in Japan, and the people here are definitely being cautious, but apart
from the local stores being sold out of masks, not much has changed so far.
(And here's hoping for the best!)

~~~
tkgally
I can second that. While more people are wearing masks than usual and Chinese
tourists have nearly disappeared, things seem otherwise unchanged. I'm sitting
in a cafe a few steps from the Hachiko Crossing in Shibuya right now—half past
eight on Saturday evening—and it's full of cheerful, chatting people. But I'm
sure most people are concerned about how things might play out in the days and
weeks ahead.

Edit: Sunday --> Saturday

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oxymoran
If it’s possibly being spread in the community and can take 14 days for
symptoms to emerge, shouldn’t it be quite alarming that people are still
congregating in public like nothing is wrong?

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tkgally
I see your point. But we're exposed to many risks in this fragile, densely
populated metropolis, including flu epidemics, traffic accidents, terrorism,
typhoons, earthquakes, and tsunamis, that we could avoid by staying home or
living elsewhere. Once we have made the decision to keep living here, I guess
many of us also decide to go on with our lives as best we can.

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deorder
Shouldn't it be "as SARS-Cov-2 spreads" or "as more people get COVID-19"?

I see a lot of headlines using COVID-19 as if it is the virus and not the
disease caused by it. Probably just semantics, but something I noticed.

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kgwgk
The disease spreads together with the virus, doesn’t it?

Edit: I mean that it is standard usage to talk about diseases like
gastroenteritis, tuberculosis and malaria spreading. One does not need to use
“spread” only for the virus/bacteria/parasite.

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escape_goat
Naming a virus after a disease is rather more monstrous than naming a disease
after a virus, but nonetheless the virus is exclusively responsible for the
causing and the spreading of the disease. In this particular epidemic, the
risk of asymptomatic transmission makes the distinction more salient than it
usually is.

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kgwgk
Do you have examples of diseases named after a virus? I cannot think if any.
(Edit: I found Ebola virus disease, Maburg virus disease and Nipah virus
disease.)

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rfoo
Also MERS.

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kgwgk
Middle East respiratory syndrome is the disease. The virus is named after the
disease: Middle East respiratory syndrome-related coronavirus (MERS-CoV).

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roenxi
The speed and scope of the Chinese response baffles me and it'll be
interesting but unpleasant seeing how this plays out in other countries.

The WHO situation reports had 258 confirmed cases in Hubei Province on the
21st of January [0]. Now 3 weeks later China is quarantined and new emergency
hospitals have already built. The speed and organisation behind that response
tells me that the fog of uncertainty still lies heavy and whatever the Chinese
government estimates might be they are not being published in the WHO
situation reports.

As other countries start managing outbreaks the picture of exactly how bad
this is will be a clearer. In no small part because the monitoring
infrastructure will be ready in advance of cases appearing.

[0] [https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-
coronavirus-2...](https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-
coronavirus-2019/situation-reports/)

~~~
makomk
It looks like the rapid hospital building was basically a PR stunt - once they
were "finished" they remained mostly empty despite the region struggling for
hospital space, whilst distracting from the problems China was having setting
up the makeshift hospitals in existing buildings that they've ended up relying
on. This only works in a country like China with a tightly muzzled press
because journalists would see through it elsewhere.

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bangboombang
Yeah sure, they waste money on building these things and then not bother to
put people in there for quarantine.

Great that these claims always come with no links to any halfway credible
source.

Just like a few days ago this guy claiming in another thread that the
hospitals weren't actually newly built but just some re-purposed resort
facilities, with the construction videos being fake. Suuure.

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dis-sys
Why Japan still refuses to test everyone (or at least all Japanese passengers)
on that Diamond Princess cruise ship is just strange at best.

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akg_67
Japan doesn’t have enough testing capacity. Last week, they could do only
about 300 tests each day nationwide and expect to increase to 1,000 by next
week. Actually, currently no country has capacity to test everyone on a
typical cruise ship. Even China has switched to chest x-rays and classifying
anyone showing pneumonia on X-ray to be infected.

That cruise ship has put lot of strain on Japanese resources from testing to
treatment. Once a persons has been tested positive, preparing hospital to
accept that patient is another can of worm.

~~~
lifthrasiir
> Actually, currently no country has capacity to test everyone on a typical
> cruise ship.

According to their official announcement last week [1], South Korean
government is currently able to test 3,000 persons per day and will be able to
test up to 10,000 per day by the end of February. Even after accounting for
false positives this would be enough to test everyone on a cruise ship.

[1]
[http://ncov.mohw.go.kr/tcmBoardView.do?contSeq=352788](http://ncov.mohw.go.kr/tcmBoardView.do?contSeq=352788)
"그동안 진단검사 기관을 시도 보건환경연구원에서 민간의료기관으로 확대하였고(2.7), 검사가능 물량도 대폭 늘리고 있으나(1일
200명→3,000명), 2월 말까지는 생산업체, 민간검사기관 등을 확대하여 현재의 3배 수준인 하루 1만 건의 진단검사가 가능하도록 확충할
예정이다."

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akg_67
I don’t read Korean so cant comment on validity of claim of able to perform
tests. It seems very unrealistic. I might be wrong but the translation seems
to give impression of count of diagnostic test kit versus capacity to perform
actual test per day after samples are collected.

Edit: see additional information in reply comment by @lifthrasiir

~~~
lifthrasiir
You have a good point, but the quoted text directly mentions the test
capacity, not the amount of diagnostic kits. For non-Koreans the following is
a rough translation (all errors are mine of course):

> 그동안 진단검사 기관을 시도 보건환경연구원에서 민간의료기관으로 확대하였고(2.7), 검사가능 물량도 대폭 늘리고 있으나(1일
> 200명→3,000명), 2월 말까지는 생산업체, 민간검사기관 등을 확대하여 현재의 3배 수준인 하루 1만 건의 진단검사가 가능하도록
> 확충할 예정이다.

> Meanwhile it was made possible to perform tests not only from local Health
> and Environment Research Institutes but also from private medical institutes
> as of February 7, and the diagnostic capacity has greatly increased from 200
> to 3,000 per day, but we plan to increase it further to 10,000 tests per day
> by the end of February, through more diagnostic kit producers and more
> participating private medical institutes.

The capacity might seem unrealistic, but the linked website has a live counter
for the number of diagnoses in progress ("검사진행") and that reads 558 as of
today. And that is not a stale counter; some daily report [1] has a table that
reads 2,736 candidates were tested (negative) from 2020-01-03 to 2020-02-11
09:00 AM, and 4,054 were tested to 2020-02-12 09:00 AM, yielding at least
1,300 actual tests completed that day, and the counter remains relatively
stable (992 back then). Probably it is true that 3,000/day figure is
theoretical, but 1,000/day is very real.

[1]
[http://ncov.mohw.go.kr/tcmBoardView.do?contSeq=352847](http://ncov.mohw.go.kr/tcmBoardView.do?contSeq=352847)

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akg_67
Thanks for clarification and additional info.

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hdiriekei
Bye bye Olympics. They are practically cancelled.

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peteretep
Unpopular opinion: the long term benefits to Japan -- in particular -- of
having a virus that mostly kills old people are substantial.

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Razengan
Even edgier opinion: The long term benefits to the entire planet of having a
virus that kills most people worldwide are substantial.

The elites who can afford to live comfortably in quarantined bunkers for years
will be the only ones left, and they'll remake the world in their image
without having to worry about the riff raff.

Solitary corporate overlords with armies of AI drones controlled from a
StarCraft-like console, to keep the slaves in line until they finish building
their personal pyramid spaceships.

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paganel
Afaik the elites already have an average lifespan higher by 10 or so years
compared to normal people, am on mobile and so I’m too lazy to search for
links but the information is easy enough to find.

