'Japan Model' Has Beaten Coronavirus, Shinzo Abe Declares (ft.com) 246
Prime minister Shinzo Abe has declared victory for the "Japan model" of fighting coronavirus as he lifted a nationwide state of emergency after seven weeks [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source]. From a report: Speaking at a press conference on Monday evening in Tokyo, Mr Abe said that Japan had avoided an explosive increase in cases without the compulsory lockdowns used in Europe or the US. The ending of the state of emergency in the last five prefectures it covered -- Tokyo, Kanagawa, Saitama, Chiba and Hokkaido -- will mean that the world's fourth-largest economy can start to reopen for business. "In a characteristically Japanese way, we have all but brought this epidemic under control in the last month and a half," said Mr Abe. "Surely, it shows the power of the Japan model." Japan's constitution prohibits a compulsory lockdown but, under the state of emergency that began on April 7, the government requested voluntary social distancing and business closures. Under that regime, the number of new Covid-19 cases fell from 600-700 a day in mid-April to about 20-30 a day last week. The country has diagnosed 16,581 cases of coronavirus with 830 deaths -- many fewer than similar-sized populations in Europe or the US.
Caution (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd be cautious about declaring victory against a somewhat deadly virus that spreads easily, has embedded itself in places, and for which we still don't have a vaccine. Until we have a proven working vaccine or treatment we have to be careful.
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Forgot to mention the other thing we may need is dirt-cheap diagnostic panels (we should be including influenza and HSV on them).
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I work and live in China and was free to post to Slashdot and Fark what I was seeing as I saw it beginning February 5th from inside China. My first posts to the topic were to Fark from Thailand, January 24th.
Why bring up Thailand? Thailand is not China.
Further, I'm guessing those posts didn't originate from an IP behind the great firewall of China.
Fact is, Fang Bing and Chen Qiushi are still missing and reporters and doctors who spoke up early on were killed. Kcriss was released, but only after posting a state-approved message.
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The Japanese model is like the Chinese model. Lie and obfuscate figures and data. Once people and media start investigating, they'll get silenced through intimidation.
~klipclop
I work and live in China and was free to post to Slashdot
What you're not free to do is to even look up information online about what is really going on in China.
So who cares that you can post?
And of course they wouldn't stop you from posting. If you post something that would offend them, you'll disappear and be harvested for your organs and you know it. Or if you don't know it, you can't look it up to check if it is what happens. (Hint: it is) So if you saw anything that contradicted their numbers, you wouldn't post it.
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If you post something that would offend them, you'll disappear and be harvested for your organs and you know it.
~Aighearach
Not if they started with my brain, moran!
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Well, it might still be possible to know it now, even if you won't know it for long. Give it a try.
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You are the liar.
Re:Caution (Score:5, Insightful)
I mean you should be cautious at believing anything coming out of Shinzo Abe's office.
He spent 22 million USD to shore up Japan's global reputation for their botched handling of the Coronavirus. They're basically doing what other certain large countries are doing, "Confirming the corona virus cannot be done post-mortem if you die at home".
https://www.lmtonline.com/news... [lmtonline.com]
https://www.washingtonpost.com... [washingtonpost.com]
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More people died, more freedom survived. What constitutes botching it up is not a value free question.
Without outright fraud it will show up in death statistics eventually any way.
Re:Caution (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course "freedom" can be brought back to life after the outbreak is over, people, not so much.
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When 3,000 people died on 911 America spent $2 trillion destroying a country that had nothing to do with it.
100,000 Americans have died of Covid-19, just think how much money is going to be spent on healthcare.
It'll be amazing!
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Long before 9/11 you still had to be at the airport an hour before departure
Certainly that's what the airlines preferred, it made life easier for everyone. Nonetheless, I had been on a flight that I had made with about a minute before the doors closed. A friend of mine made a regular practice of allowing no more than 5 minutes of slack, running to the jetway, suitcase in hand.
Re: Caution (Score:4, Informative)
"Is beating" rather than "has beaten". (Score:2)
Possibly this is a translation problem?
Japan has had a consistent and sharp drop in active cases for almost four straight weeks. That's the measure you want to watch. The peak number of active cases they've had was on 11443 on April 28th; That was 27 days ago. Today the number of active cases is 2317.
To put that in perspective, that peak is almost midway between now and the last time they had roughly as many cases as now. Amazingly, they've brought down active cases as quickly as those cases rose to the
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You have to look at a wider array of numbers -- specifically the ration of tests to cases. If you are cooking your case numbers by reducing testing, that shows up as dramatic reduction in the ratio of new tests to new cases.
Japan maintains a 16:1 test/new case ratio, compared to around 8.8 for the US and 74 for South Korea. This compares to an 11:1 ratio for Japan at the peak of it active cases. So Japan is not cutting down on testing relative to the cases it is finding, it's in a sense *looking harder*
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"The only worthwhile metric is number of deaths per million people.
But the only way to get the number of deaths per million is also only available if you test for the virus. If you aren't testing and just classify all deaths as due to the virus or attribute no deaths to the virus "deaths per million people" isn't very meaningful either.
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It is if you compare to other years. Pulling numbers out of my ass, if most years there's a 100 deaths per million and this year there's a 1000 deaths per million and no other natural disasters, there's a very good chance that means an extra 900 deaths per million due to the virus.
Re: "Is beating" rather than "has beaten". (Score:3)
Yes, I count all those ancillary deaths as caused by the virus.
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I'd be cautious about declaring victory against a somewhat deadly virus that spreads easily, has embedded itself in places, and for which we still don't have a vaccine. Until we have a proven working vaccine or treatment we have to be careful.
Indeed. Declaring "victory" will make people less cautious. And exponential growth is a bitch...
Re:Japanese Strength: Strict Immigration Laws (Score:4, Informative)
Uh that's a silly and un-reviewed speculation by you. If you bothered to check yourself, you would see that immigration rates are not correlated to cover-19. Singapore and New Zealand have very high immigration rates and yet they have a lower per capita infection rate than Japan.
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But less overweight; first pro athlete to die from COVID-19 was a 28 year old Sumo Wrestler.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/13... [cnn.com]
Different culture helps (Score:5, Insightful)
This whole thing has been crazy in the US. You have groups that say this is intentionally being dragged out for political reasons. You have others who say the Illuminati are behind this and Bill Gates is going to use this opportunity to microchip all citizens during the vaccination and become the world president. You have others in the "don't tread on me" crowd who see wearing a mask and social distancing as infringing on their rights to run your business.
You have absolutely none of this in Japan. The Japanese model can't work most other places and it certainly can't in the US. Isolated population? Check. Voluntary wearing of masks? Check. Population that generally does what it's asked to without heavy handed enforcement? Check.
The fallout of COVID in the US is going to be bad. New York and similar cities, the only places with any sort of density in the country, took the financial and public health hit. Everywhere else in the country is going to get off relatively unscathed and determine that it really was an evil plot to unseat Trump. Other US cities are so sprawled out that people have square miles of space to roam around in so no matter what happens no other part of the country is going to experience a public health emergency of any kind. I'm in NY (outside of NYC) and around the March timeframe lots of people were wondering if there would be total chaos if enough people got sick or a bunch of crazies touched off a riot that made the Feds bring the army in or similar. Very different from Omaha, NE or Topeka, KS where a couple of people get sick and there are plenty of resources to isolate them.
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Just being atypically respectful of the public commons [bbc.com]? Check.
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We'll see about that. You're correct in that the density is lower, but the facilities to handle the sick are scaled down similarly. In the low-density areas the medical system will be much easier to overwhelm.
Other demographic effects of Covid-19 have only been emerging recently, so it remains to be seen how populations in different regions are affected. The one thing we do know is that it can affect different people differently, and that's not just on a scale of zero-to-dead, there are different symptom
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I don't think your forecast is correct. The virus does spread where people are close together, especially indoors, but the real reason that NYC was hit so hard is because its a travel hub, and lots of different groups came through.
This doesn't imply that sparser populations will be spared. The barbershop and the bar are great places for COVID to spread, and there are a large percentage of asymptomatic carriers. It means it will get to more rural places more slowly, not that it won't get there.
OTOH, anoth
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I happen to go to the grocery store today, and I'd say that about 4/5 of the customers and all the staff were wearing masks. For the US, I guess that's not too bad. Even so, I don't understand the 1/5 of people that are still not wearing them. At this point, they're a clear minority, so the social awkwardness should be gone. And everyone has had time to educate themselves and acquire a mask by now.
The CDC really screwed up when they yelled at the public early on about how "masks don't work". I think w
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I think there are going to be a LOT of clinical studies about how effective masks really are at helping to reduce the spread of these sorts of pathogens.
There already are a lot of studies about this just in the last two months. A quick search will find them.
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Population that generally does what it's told? Check
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Actually, Alabama currently has more new infections per capita right now than New York state... The other rural states which are opening up right now without effective countermeasures (like pervasive masks and contact tracing) are likely to follow the same path.
fatalities, not cases (Score:5, Insightful)
The number of "cases" depends on factors like the number of doctors, the number of hospitals, the number of tests, the overall culture of the people and the culture of the healthcare community. It also depends on what the government wants to report. In a lot of countries, the government decides what they want the statistics to be, and miraculously, that's how they turn out. My county reports only 600 cases. I'd be truly surprised if that number is within a factor of 10 of reality. I wouldn't be too surprised if it was off by a factor of 100 to be honest.
It's all about the fatality rate. While a government can kinda-sorta fudge a death rate, it's much harder. You can't disguise the number of mass-graves recently dug or the number of crematoriums that are running 24-7. I want to know if there's been a recent spike in respiratory-related deaths per-million-people, and how that number compares to other countries. And I don't want to hear it from the government. The number needs to come from independent groups of scientists/doctors.
Report an accurate death rate, and then we can talk about whether your strategy is better than ours.
Re:fatalities, not cases (Score:5, Informative)
Report an accurate death rate, and then we can talk about whether your strategy is better than ours.
The death rate can be seen here: https://www.worldometers.info/... [worldometers.info]
Staying positive is important, which is what Japan is demonstrating, but their death rate has a very slow decline. They need to stay vigilant.
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That's the official number of deaths due to C19. What you really need is the number of excess deaths over the norm for this time of year, because that will include people who were not diagnosed with C19 but had it, people who died due to the lockdown and the like.
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Interesting that this was modded troll. Anti-lockdown trolls with mod points? Something else?
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Read actual history written by actual experts. If you're having trouble identifying them, here's a pro tip: if it's an angry guy shouting saliva into a microphone, he's not an expert. The ACTUAL experts will tell you that multicultural civilizations are stronger. The isolationist ones tend to be weak and unstable.
Ever. (Score:3)
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Trump is the worst president in my lifetime, by far, but I'll leave "ever" to future historians.
Japan Model : Ignorance is bliss (Score:2)
Just don't allow people to get tested and especially don't test deceased people afterwards.
The grim reaper will come again in Japan
Compare (Score:2)
How long do they plan to keep their borders closed (Score:2)
Avoiding getting sick is a strategy that's best for an individual. I
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No, it means you can effectively use contact tracing and isolation to keep the virus in check. Effectively, you continue the lockdown for the small minority of people who are infected or were in contact with an infected person, while everyone else can go about their lives more or less normally (wearing masks, and mass events like sports and concerts cancelled, but everything else operating normally)
No magical Japan model required (Score:3)
It is not clear that there ever was a competent "Japan model". People being turned away from hospitals or dropping dead in the streets because they were told to stay home only indicate the prevailing status quo from before the pandemic. The spotty reporting by fax and lack of transparent kpi, reporting via fax, refusal to check cause of death on suspected covid related fatalities, cluelessness of the top minister in charge, and political posturing are the way things are always run in Japan. Since there was no legal requirement while most remained closed or only for takeout, a small number of restaurants were open and crowded (though most people thought they were nuts). From next week more or all will be open. I think most people will be suitably skeptical and many companies may keep people home longer, but the pressure to open will increase as it gets warmer. My guess is that there will be an increase in infections due to this opening but that contact tracing and reporting of it may induce people to stay at home and further heighten skepticism, I hope. However this past week in a popular area of Tokyo there have been a lot of people on the street, with a slightly lower incidence of mask wearing. (It had been 99% but yesterday I would say 5% glaringly without masks. It is now a difficult to avoid non-mask wearers if you walk the main streets.) High risk people and intelligent people who stayed away from any open restaurants will I hope continue to do so but due to the opening, the environment will actually become more dangerous for them. The only positive side is immune systems will probably get healthier I expect if people get outside more. Frankly the situation in the U.S.A. is far more dangerous since people are starting to have home get-togethers even though there is a high death rate and half the states are seeing high spikes directly caused by opening due to corruption. I would say that Japan's generally compliant and unassuming public, high mask wearing and not hugging and kissing people when you meet them, and in general not being insane, plus avoiding a high initial viral influx aside from Hokkaido and the cruise ship, are the reasons why Japan seems to have done well. Japan also naturally self-isolates the country and downgrades compassionate responses as a go-to thought process when at risk, which is not so good for foreigners but additionally reduced new influx. The idea of armed protests and anti-vaxxers with a narcisstic president egging them all on is so alien I don't think it is comprehensible to the Japanese. The Japanese petri dish was not continually provided nutrients and agitation, is all. No magical Japan model was required.
Not sure about the numbers (Score:2)
Japan has done ~3400 tests per million people. That is less than 1/10 of what US has done. There are reports of people with several people clearly having a fever traveling in the crowded subway system. I've read about the hospitals being overwhelmed with patients, like one example from Tokyo where an ambulance had to go through tens of hospitals before finding one that would accept a new patients.
So I think there is something fishy in the numbers, and it's not sushi. But hopefully they still have managed to
Re:Following rules (Score:4, Insightful)
Get over yourself, not everything is about Trump. Most other western countries are also currently struggling with the question of when and how to reopen their economies, and none of them have Trump for a president (thank God). No one is self-destructing the economy just to make Trump look bad; he is more than capable of handling that task himself.
Re:Following rules (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, since one of Trump's adult sons saw fit to declare the pandemic will vanish the day after election day - it seems apparent some subset of his supporters are sympathetic to the "fake pandemic" narrative. The Trumps' understand their base better than anyone.
Re:Following rules (Score:4)
Trump's adult sons
About the only person in the that entire family that qualifies as adult is Melania, and I based that opinion out of ignorance, I simply haven't seen her be as mindbogglingly stupid as anyone else. Certainly I haven't seen her get into a fight on twitter with a teenage girl.
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Get over yourself, not everything is about Trump. Most other western countries are also currently struggling with the question of when and how to reopen their economies, and none of them have Trump for a president (thank God). No one is self-destructing the economy just to make Trump look bad; he is more than capable of handling that task himself.
Indeed every other civilized country in the world is looking at America and shaking their heads in a mixture of amusement, horror, and relief that it is not us.
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Indeed every other civilized country in the world is looking at America and shaking their heads
Mostly they are thinking about themselves, not America. This is similar to you, when you think of other countries, all you can do is imagine what they are thinking of your country.
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I am skeptical of what the typical American knows or cares about the world beyond their borders, but that is not my problem either. Just thankful I don't live there.
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Where would you expect them to get their idea of us? For that matter, where do you get your idea of them?
I've no idea which country has been hurt most, and I don't see why I should care. There's lots of factors in play. The US has been badly hurt, and it looks as if it's going to be getting a lot worse. I thought Britain had finally got things pretty much under control, but recent events indicate that they're going to have a huge upswing of cases in a couple of weeks...and the government has just shot i
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Cummings.
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That all depends on what you consider "the worst hit area in the world". The US currently has 1,700,000l confirmed cases (the highest so far) and the next closest is Brazil with 370, 000. I think it is quite obvious that the US is by far the worst hit area in the world.
The US also has the highest number of active cases.
The US is only 12th if you go by deaths per million though.
https://www.worldometers.info/... [worldometers.info]
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And number 1 in that list has exactly 42 deaths.
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The US is far from the worst hit area in the world so why would they be 'shaking their heads in relief' unless they get their idea of what its like over here from CNN?
America is doing pretty poorly on a deaths per capita basis. Yes, there are worse hit areas. Would not want to live there either.
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No one is self-destructing the economy just to make Trump look bad
Easy to glibly claim; your post appears to demonstrate that it's not so easy to prove.
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No one is self-destructing the economy just to make Trump look bad
Easy to glibly claim; your post appears to demonstrate that it's not so easy to prove.
"Not so easy to prove"? That "No one" is self-destructing the economy just to make Trump look bad"
So are we trying to prove that someone is trying to self destruct the economy to make trump look bad?
I got nothing, looks like a global pandemic to me.
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We had to have lockdown because we are not as socially minded as the Japanese. Japanese culture emphasises thinking about others before yourself, the impact you are having on them. So when the government asks nicely to stay home and for business to shut they do.
They also did a decent support scheme for individuals and businesses.
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Get over yourself, not everything is about Trump
To be more specific, for every country in the world, it's about their own country, and they only reference Trump to make a point about their own politics.
Re:Following rules (Score:4, Insightful)
Everything just seems too political now to have a rational discussion.
And Trump owns that politicization as much as anyone. Early on he ran to a rally and loudly declared "it" was a Democratic Hoax. You decide what is "it" was but he clearly threw gasoline on the politicization. And then there is Hydroxychloroquine which he purposely politicized and still is. He is suppose to be a leader and lead by example.
There's too much "flatten the economy until Trump loses" going on for people to separate politics from rationality right now.
Point to some of examples of this "too much"? There is a very real question on what and to what degree should we apply measures to combat covid-19... in this country and others. For you to identify that all measures are motivated to "flatten the economy" is disingenuous and reveals your bias.
But I do hope that after November, we can start to have an enlightened retrospective on "what's the actual best trade off between mortality and economy when the next big virus hits."
Remember with the Republicans had their panties in a knot about "death panels"? Don't expect a rational discussion.
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Early on he ran to a rally and loudly declared "it" was a Democratic Hoax.
He responded to a reporter's question regarding the framing of the administration's response to the virus.
You put scare quotes around the word "it", didn't explain what "it" was, and got the venue and delivery incorrect.
Re:Following rules (Score:5, Informative)
You are the guy who was claiming that the Gates Foundation study of HCQ was being fixed so that the drug would appear to be unsafe/ineffective, thereby making Trump look bad. The first step towards a rational conversation is to stop talking crazy, and a meaningful precondition is to stop thinking crazy.
States, and countries around the world are not flattening their economies until Trump loses--even California is opening up slowly. Bill Gates is not rigging studies to make Trump look dumb. Almost everything you opine on regarding these topics is wild speculation predicated upon the apparent conviction that very large numbers of people around the globe are willing to act against their own interests to hurt Trump.
Public policy is political, but the effect on Trump should not be one of the considerations, let alone the defining concern. That you seem to see it that way suggests derangement or bad faith.
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Everything just seems too political now to have a rational discussion.
Epistemological nihilism via the "politicization makes truth impossible" fallacy.
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There's too much "flatten the economy until Trump loses" going on for people to separate politics from rationality right now.
You seem to be saying that the explanation for current measures is that people are deciding to lockdown so they can hurt Trump. Have I correctly understood what you're saying?
As an explanation, it's a poor one because it's not necessary nor sufficient to explain the data. Compare the US to the UK, which has had a broadly similar infection trajectory and economic impact but harsher lockdown enforcement. Is the UK doing it to hurt Trump? Or are the UK opposition parties doing it to hurt the government? No - t
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There's too much "flatten the economy until Trump loses" going on for people to separate politics from rationality right now.
You seem to be saying that the explanation for current measures is that people are deciding to lockdown so they can hurt Trump. Have I correctly understood what you're saying?
As an explanation, it's a poor one because it's not necessary nor sufficient to explain the data. Compare the US to the UK, which has had a broadly similar infection trajectory and economic impact but harsher lockdown enforcement. Is the UK doing it to hurt Trump? Or are the UK opposition parties doing it to hurt the government? No - the UK government decided on the course of action and is taking the action of its own accord for domestic reasons unrelated to Trump. What about France and Germany with similar lockdowns -- are they doing it to hurt Trump? No. Therefore your explanation is insufficient.
Therefore: there must be something other than "hurt Trump" and "hurt current government" which explains why countries around the world have entered lockdown. My candidate reason is "government advisors and specialists think it makes sense from a scientific and epidemiological reason". My reason explains the data better than yours (it explains why lockdown happened all around the world). And my same candidate reason also explains what has happened in the US. Therefore your explanation isn't necessary.
Your idea that "flatten the economy until Trump loses" is neither necessary nor sufficient to explain what we're observing in the US. That makes it an unhelpful idea.
Very well said
Re:Lockdown was never needed (Score:4, Insightful)
That's not what I read in the article: the article states that Japan didn't impose a mandatory lockdown, but requested the citizens to effectively enact one voluntarily, request which many of its citizens responsibly decided to actually comply with.
So Japan didn't question the need for social distancing and closing down business to prevent the virus from spreading: they merely managed to achieve that without involving law enforcement.
This is Slashdot sir (Score:5, Funny)
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That's not what I read in the article: the article states that Japan didn't impose a mandatory lockdown, but requested the citizens to effectively enact one voluntarily, request which many of its citizens responsibly decided to actually comply with.
Of course the article also notes that Japan's government can't impose a mandatory lockdown.
On a side note... many of these restrictions regarding what the government can and can't do were obviously imposed on Japan by the US and others after the end of World War II, roughly 75 years ago. It made sense at the time, but the world has fundamentally changed... I would think at this point they should be free to make changes to their constitution, if they see fit.
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Luckily in Japan, even though the government cannot technically declare a mandatory lockdown, de facto they did, because they issued guidelines, and the Japanese followed the guidelines. That didn't happen in the US, since the US political leadership sent out the strong message that the CDC guidelines should be ignored. Despite that, 80% of Americans want the lockdown to remain in place, but the other 20% not only don't care, but are using their controls over the levers of power to force businesses to open
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In Canada, the Constitution is clear that Provinces can't shut down their borders yet a few have and I haven't even heard of anyone taking it to court.
I don't know about Japan, but in most countries, the government can ignore the Constitution as long as the people agree and in cases of disagreement, the courts can be slow
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Yep, this is the quarantining equivalent of the NRA's Switzerland comparison argument: it only makes sense if you do zero additional research into the omitted facts, and accept propaganda at face value.
Re:Lockdown was never needed (Score:5, Insightful)
That's not what I read in the article: the article states that Japan didn't impose a mandatory lockdown, but requested the citizens to effectively enact one voluntarily, request which many of its citizens responsibly decided to actually comply with.
There's a huge culture difference between the US and Japan. In Japan, if the government requests that the population do something, most will comply. In the US, if the government requests that the population does something, a large portion of the population will do the opposite, because "fuck you, freedom!".
Re:Lockdown was never needed (Score:4, Informative)
There's a huge culture difference between the US and Japan. In Japan, if the government requests that the population do something, most will comply. In the US, if the government requests that the population does something, a large portion of the population will do the opposite, because "fuck you, freedom!".
Yeah, and they also wear masks face mask (as opposed to murder people) when they're just sick with anything.
Of course extreme lockdowns were never neccessary under the condition that governments and people took reasonable measures early enough. Places like Taiwan or South Korea never had mass lockdowns. We've known this, we just didn't have the desire and capability to do what they did, so it was necessary to stay at home to slow the stop the old fashioned way.
Baank Bailout 2 (Score:2)
The US stock Market had been hyper inflated for a long time and a crash was about to come. The only way to prevent it was Bank Bailout 2 but it would have been political suicide. But Covid19 provided an opportunity. Let it get bad enough that a lockdown is necessary. Than it becomes an economy problem and you can justify Bank bailout 2.0. 12 trillion dollars have been spent on the bailout - 6 fiscal and 6 monetary (by the fed). If US had done social distancing, mass testing and wearing of masks in February
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Nobody said that there was no human-to-human transmission, just that (very early on) they couldn't prove human-to-human transmission.
And they didn't say that masks didn't work, they said that because there were shortages of n95 masks, that they should be reserved for healthcare workers, since they were in a higher risk environment than others going about their daily lives.
As for the timeline, all this was public: China warned the WHO Dec 31 last year that there was an outbreak affecting dozens of people of
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Well, if your government was depending on China telling the truth, that seems like quite a failure. Here, our local CDC decided that this was serious back in mid-January. Haven't had an enforced lock down like some places either and our numbers are looking not too bad considering.
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Places like Taiwan or South Korea never had mass lockdowns.
Taiwan cancelled schools and banned large gatherings. Korea did similar lockdowns. It wasn't as extreme as China, but they both took countermeasures when necessary.
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That's the exact same lockstep conformity and blind trust of government that the Americans deployed to implement the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment. You need people who don't question, who will obey, who trust without verifying. The same ones who guarded the concentration camps in Germany.
I can't tell whether you are being serious here, and the horrific thing is that it seems like you are. You are literally arguing that people complying with voluntary water usage level is the same attitude as taking part in genocide. My grandmother had a number on her arm, and in that context I can confidently say that you even thought this was something that made sense for you to say should cause you to seriously reexamine your life.
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People usually notice a drought, or a ways a way from here, a river diversion failure, so when the government says there's a water shortage due to no rain for months, and you look at the dried up creek out back, why wouldn't you comply?
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It's just as mindless to always do the opposite of what the government wants. Ideally people should be able to think and reason for themselves so when the government points out it hasn't rained in months and the rivers are drying up, so conserve water, it should be enough to look around, think about how much rain there's been and agree. Instead we have stupid Americans acting like sheep doing the opposite of whatever the government says.
Sometimes the government is wrong and sometimes they're right.
Re: Lockdown was never needed (Score:2)
I'm sure those waving yellow flags and showing guns will gladly comply and go home if they're just asked nicely.
Re:Lockdown was never needed (Score:5, Insightful)
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Yup. America got stock a ME while most of the rest of the first world moved on to WE.
Re: Lockdown was never needed (Score:2)
Not to mention that even prior to an ongoing pandemic wearing face masks in Japan [indiatimes.in] has long been a socially acceptable practice, that just doesn't carry the stigma that it does in the West.
Re:Lockdown was never needed (Score:5, Insightful)
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Japanese do not greet by touch, they wear masks just for having a cold, so for them social distancing is almost a norm.
I give you the masks, but do you have any idea what rush [youtu.be] hour [youtu.be] looked like [youtu.be] in Tokyo, before Covid-19?
Re:Lockdown was never needed (Score:4, Informative)
People were already reducing visits, social distancing and many other things across the U.S. well before official lockdowns hit. All you need is for a significant portion of the populace to be careful, and most were.
Yea, for about two weeks, then the weather started getting nicer and people started getting bored and flooding places still open like home improvement stores, Walmart, Target, etc. It was fun to actually be able to watch it thanks to Google maps tracking every android user's every move. Pick a store in different places around the country, and look a the stats. They went from way below normal in the early days in march, to well above a few weeks later, and pretty much stayed that way ever since. After all, got to build that essential deck, and buy up a few bags of that essential mulch!
People also like to bring up Sweden (really surprised it hasn't happened before I typed this) but the numbers there are a lot different if you look at it adjusted for population. Sweden is #8 for deaths per capita in the world, well ahead of the US (#12). And 2 of the countries ahead of them are tiny and their numbers are skewed due to their low populations. In reality they are #6. That's much higher than their neighbors, who did lock down. Now consider if that was here, where people can't seem to put their need for mulching their flower beds above their social responsibility 'cause muh freedoms! Hell right now some states around me are opening back up and people are acting like the virus just vanished. Packing bars, partying at the lake, etc. Can't wait to see the numbers in a few weeks. I'm really hoping the virus doesn't spread well in warm, humid weather as some have postulated, otherwise it's going to be a nasty summer.
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If it does settle down for the summer, a good possibility as most respiratory diseases do, come September/October, things are going to be bad.
Re:Lockdown was never needed (Score:5, Informative)
All you need is for a significant portion of the populace to be careful, and most were.
You and I clearly have different views on this. My part-time work was deemed "essential", so I got out a bit more than most people did. At least where I live...
- Traffic remained high until the shelter-in-place orders went into effect, then it dropped to practically nothing, but it's right back to normal again now that restrictions are easing.
- Outside of food prep, I saw almost no one wearing masks until just a few weeks ago, at which point a slim majority of people were finally wearing them, but now that restrictions are being eased, mask wearing is already way, way down. Only around 1/4 of the people I saw at the grocery store a few days ago were wearing them, and that's even including the employees who were supposedly required to wear them.
- Outdoor seating at bars and restaurants didn't stop being packed until they were ordered to stop, but now that restrictions have eased those places are packed again when I drive by.
The vast, vast majority of the people I've seen have not been demonstrating care other than when they have been required to, and even then, only marginally so. I know the situation is different in other parts of the country, and I don't mean to suggest that my experience is indicative of the US as a whole, but at least here, a mandatory lockdown was absolutely necessary if you wanted to make a dent in the spread of this disease. People are definitely not engaging in best practices when left to themselves.
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Well since you say there's proof I'm sure you can present it including a nice peer reviewed statistical analysis. But you won't. To paraphrase what's going on in your mind: "Dammit Jim I'm an internet troll, not a statistician!"
Re:Lockdown was never needed (Score:5, Informative)
Sad to say, but the proof is absolutely conclusive from nay states and countries that did not lock down - locking down or not locking down made little difference in actual spread of infection and death rates.
Not sure how you're drawing that conclusion. If you want to compare similar population densities and cultures, certainly didn't-lock-down Sweden's death rate per million inhabitants is significantly higher than than that of the other Scandanavian countries that did lock down.
https://www.worldometers.info/... [worldometers.info]
The vast majority of US citizens were under lockdown orders for a minimum of several weeks, and the most population-dense areas of the US are still under restrictions to one degree or another. So it would be hard to draw a meaningful comparison involving states "that did not lock down" - especially since we still don't have widespread representative test results to measure the disease's spread. You can't really compare New York with North Dakota.
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Hahahaha Trump got bamboozled into going along with the lockdown. Wonder what other tricks his players will do that he will go along with like an idiot.
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Yeah, we basically had a lockdown in Japan. Except here if your business was asked nicely to close, and you chose not to, you'd be publically shamed on TV. Would never work in America, but that works in Japan. I've been working at home since February, and lots of other people have been as well. It's only not-a-lockdown on the technicality of the constitution forbidding calling it such a thing.
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We have a leader that has made nearly 18000 lies in less than 4 years. He lies continuously and profusely and yet nearly a majority of the country just shrugs their shoulders and accept it. Lying seems to have become an accepted part of our culture.
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Those are restrictions on the federal government, not on the state governments. Perhaps your state has the same rules in its constitution, but many don't.
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Those are benefits for slowing initial exposure, but they don't keep the virus from spreading once it shows up. You need to jump on it hard to do that, and this is difficult if you don't have reliable tests, and you do have asymptomatic carriers.
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Section 9, part 2,
So in the case of an invasive virus threatening the public Safety, the government can lock you up without recourse. I'd assume that includes house arrest.