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COVID-19 Coronavirus: situation in Japan

It looks like the Abenomasks are actually going to come.

People have been very critical of the idea with negative opinions citing the number of 2 masks per household and the fact that cloth masks are far from N95. However, the way I see it, people should not expect every last little detail to be filled by government and if the people are too stupid or lazy to redistribute unneeded masks from single person households to those in need in their community well to heck with them anyway. And N95 is to protect the wearer. Anything less, including the disposable dust/surgical masks most people are wearing already are meant to protect everyone BUT the wearer by stopping their spit and cough vapor flying around...and they do that pretty well even if not perfectly.

So do I approve? No. This is because there is one criticism that sticks very well; so well that Abe should be tarred and feathered. The masks cost us taxpayers ￥466 yen a piece according to one poster's calculation which surely means one of Abe's pals is gouging us. Plus I have heard enough complaints that they are too small that I believe it.

So it was a good idea from many angles cited by many people until it was decided to jip us for them. (As ever, not that I personally believe anything but spring was really going to have serious effect on the spread of Covid-19)

Cloth mask deliveries to begin Friday under controversial Abe initiative

Cloth masks started arriving at post offices in Tokyo on Thursday under a controversial Japanese government program for their universal distribution to help contain the novel coronavirus outbreak. With the number of people infected with the pneumonia-causing virus drastically increasing in Tokyo...
japantoday.com
 
There is also talk of plans for the government to give people cash. Think about this: Its like you paying yourself money. Its your tax money.

But all the government actions and handouts are guaranteed to cost way more than what you receive. So its more like you giving yourself a loan but having to pay the interest, which will be exorbitant, to a bank. This will be doubly true if and when they decide to bailout corporations as well. The U.S. gov. is doing that. Japan follows suit so often.

So if and when they hand you money try and remember they are going take much much more from you in the very near future.

Please invest in tar and feathers.

Edit: Oh, yeah. I forgot to mention that prefectures were getting emergency money for being under a state of emergency. So prefectures that were not under it started asking to be so they could get some money too. And now it looks like the state of emergency will be expanded to the whole country. I guess its poverty or bust.

Enjoy.
 
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Lothor said:
Regarding the kids - they are not at much risk, but they can be vectors and are in danger of infecting older people, so the opening of schools is a major issue.
Click to expand...

I don't know this, but with the nation now on "state of emergency", are or will the schools now be shut down?
 


Because now the postal service is privately owned (very big mistake) us tax payers get to foot the bill of the postage also. Heartless stock owners there.
 


Japan in my honest opinion will be turning into a 3rd world country maybe with-in 3 to 4 months. I don't live in a big city, but yesterday evening I decided to go to Donkey Hotei and was surprised that the parking lot had a line of cars waiting to get into the parking lot. Having been on my bike, it was easy to get into the store. What I was quickly to find out was this: it is no longer the "silent panic" I've been talking about. Hysteria, well, its hard to say, but it sure looked like over 200 busy bee ants were filling up the upper and lower baskets. How was it in your city last night?
 
Some or most of this info is not up to date.

Apr, 15 2020 @ 07:32 PM

Update: Tokyo April 16, 2020 time: morning

This is just a small update, but its important to read it due to some facts that pertain to a world-wide situation.

1. an estimation of 400,000 people will die in Japan if "social distance" is not enforced
2. the big problem of "social distance" is that millions take the subway and trains
3. unless people start going to work by bicycle, this "social distancing " on the subways and trains is not going to work
4. remember I suggested buying bicycles (gas stations may close due to people being ill)
5. ambulances in Tokyo have been turned away from many hospitals
6. tourism is off by 95% in many places
7. tourist towns are like evening ghost towns now
8. theme park districts are all closed ( a few are still open, depends on location though, but attendance is way down)
9. Japan is on the "brink" (no sure why the govt. said that )
10. this is an estimate: ages 15 to 64 over 200,000 will get infected, 65 years and over there is no limit of how to guess the infections , but its being said "650,000". wow and this was on TV
11. one MUST distance themselves of 2 meter and never be with one for more then 30 minutes
12. it is now known it only takes 30 or less minutes to get infected by another infected person when close contact (just think of the subways here)
13. 127 new cases of infection in Tokyo
14. nearly 8700 cases of known infections in Japan
15. 180 have died ( I truly don't believe that is the case )
16. 901 people have improved and left the hospitals
17. this is the new world: Toshiba & Co. suspends its production, closes its doors from April 20 till approx. May 6. 76000 employees will be affected now ( I believe this is world-wide )
18. Ambulance new:
110 ambulances have been turned away in one day
80 ambulances have been turned away in one day
931 ambulances have been turned away last month
830 ambulances have been turned away ( I think this is for this month so far)
What the above should mean to us it that the patients in these ambulances might be corona virus infected and the hospitals here CAN NOT treat such patients. Not all patients in ambulances are infected, but... hospitals are taking no chances
19. Japanese hospitals CAN NOT handle the load of corona virus infected patients in the near future.

Not a very good update, but there you have it.

People, its best to some form of face protection, and although the news isn't telling you to wear eye wear, I would not be going outdoors also without eye wear, very important.
 
musicisgood said:
I decided to go to Donkey Hotei
Click to expand...

The store is either Don Quixote (English spelling of the actual name origin) or Donkihoutei (romanization of the store name from katakana). There is nothing "donkey" about it.

musicisgood said:
it sure looked like over 200 busy bee ants were filling up the upper and lower baskets.
Click to expand...

What were they filling up with?

musicisgood said:
How was it in your city last night?
Click to expand...

As far as I could tell no different than usual in that regard.

Roads were crowded coming home but my last class was cancelled for reasons other than corona....so I was in rush hour traffic I believe. But I am almost never on the road at that time.
 
musicisgood said:
Japan in my honest opinion will be turning into a 3rd world country maybe with-in 3 to 4 months.
Click to expand...
I'm sorry, but this is ridiculously sensationalistic and over-paranoid. I'm honestly not sure how anyone actually observing the situation here could come to that conclusion.

The daily number of new infections in Tokyo over the past few days has actually gone down a bit. Perhaps it's not going down enough, but it still doesn't strike me as a reason to leap to conclusions with these doomsday scenarios.

That 400,000 deaths was a number cited by one doctor as a worst-case estimate, mostly to scare people (perhaps justifiably so) into taking stronger social distancing measures than they currently are by pointing out what could happen if they don't. I don't see any rational reason to assume that Japan is currently on course for nearly three times the COVID-19 related deaths that have been seen in the entire world, combined to date.

I can understand being concerned, and by all means we should all keep being circumspect, but if you stay glued to Japanese talk shows and news (and yes, the line between the two can often be blurred) 24/7 and accept everything that's being said as if it's gospel, you're going to turn yourself into one of those paranoid housewives who rushes out to buy a hundred rolls of toilet paper to prepare for the coming apocalypse.

I'm not trying to dismiss your concerns entirely, but if you feel like Japan is literally on the verge of complete collapse, you should probably step away from the TV for a bit. (Mind you, I watch TV from time to time, too, I just try not to take everything said to its most terrifying extreme.)
 
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musicisgood said:
I don't know this, but with the nation now on "state of emergency", are or will the schools now be shut down?
Click to expand...
The SOE is until May 6, for the moment, and schools in Tokyo are generally closed until then. The exception is kids who go to afterschool club (gakudo) because both parents work, which has been extended to the whole day, as it normally is during school holidays. Hopefully with so many parents now working from home there will be very few kids attending gakudo now.

I'd like to know the situation in new SOE prefectures - does anyone know?
 
Graphs remind me of analog clocks. I know some people love them, but I do not. Give me a digital clock any day. And also, just the statistical numbers and no pictures for me. That said, the daily new detected cases are as follows:

April 04 204
April 05 515
April 06 252
April 07 351
April 08 410
April 09 680
April 10 183
April 11 743
April 12 622
April 13 248
April 14 267
April 15 741
April 16 605 (so far)

One important thing to remember is that the numbers do not necessarily reflect actual facts. I suspect the actual numbers are much more fluid rather than this extreme up down we get that has been blamed on irregular testing and reporting.

Japan COVID - Coronavirus Statistics - Worldometer

Japan Coronavirus update with statistics and graphs: total and new cases, deaths per day, mortality and recovery rates, current active cases, recoveries, trends and timeline.
www.worldometers.info
 
Yesterday there were 555 new covid19 cases being reported in Japan. The number was slightly lower than the previous day. Of concern is the 201 new cases reported in Tokyo. 201 is a significant increase over the previous day, and a reversal of the slight downward trend that we saw over the course of the week.

Here is the graph up until Thursday. Friday's numbers have not been added yet. Thursday there were 574 new cases, so Friday's bar will be slightly lower than Thursday's. The trend of the past few weeks is to see high numbers reported on Saturday, followed by low numbers on Sunday and Monday. We shall see what the new numbers bring in today. The mood in the Majestic house was cautiously optimistic throughout the week, but that optimism was dashed by yesterday's Tokyo numbers. The nationwide trend is good, but Tokyo is the engine for the spread of the virus, I think.

Daily new cases nationwide up to Thursday the 16th.

 

Why are our sources giving us different numbers I wonder?
 
bentenmusume said:
I'm not trying to dismiss your concerns entirely, but if you feel like Japan is literally on the verge of complete collapse,
Click to expand...

My biggest problem with a lot of the apocalyptic forecasts is over-focus on the disease rather than the government, business and individual reactions to it. That makes all reactions seem valid no matter how dangerous and unnecessary they may be.

One JT poster, carpslidy I think the name was (someone to pay attention to BTW) said the suicide rate is going go way up. Articles have pointed to things like domestic violence going up, but I think the government allows that sort of talk in the press because its hard to blame the government for that. But suicides due to stay at home "suggestions" (cough) and businesses imploding for them? Yeah, that's on the government, particularly if 20/20 hindsight later reveals a general opinion the whole thing was over-reach.

I will say that the opinion of over-reach is quite possible to become popular even if it turns out it wasn't. But I still believe it is over-reach. I still do not believe anything was going to or will stop this but spring and destroying people's livelihoods (such as that of bar and restaurant owners) is simply throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

Plus there is the idea that general health is going to plummet for the stress, financial and many others, and destruction of routine.

We may very well be looking at the next Great Depression, but once again, I am not blaming the disease but the reaction to it.
 
One might have suspected this forum to continue to explode with activity in Covid-19 threads. Interesting that the pace has dropped to a crawl.

Remember when the British government was chastised for predicting a sort of fatigue on the issue would set in and was timing implementation of measures in consideration of it?
 
Mark of Zorro said:
One might have suspected this forum to continue to explode with activity in Covid-19 threads. Interesting that the pace has dropped to a crawl.
Click to expand...
Maybe most of us accept what is happening, regardless of our misgivings about how it's being handled in Japan or wherever we live, and don't feel the need to debate it.

I'm rather pessimistic about the situation (even though my prediction of 20,000 cases in Japan by today that I made two weeks ago was a factor of two out) judging from the rather half-hearted measures. People in Tokyo do not seem to have got the hang of social distancing. Although more measures, such as plastic sheets between the customer and the person at the register and marks showing where to stand on the floor (often rather close together) are appearing, I haven't yet seen a one-way system installed in supermarkets or a restriction on numbers, which would greatly reduce the number of close interactions. Also, many people do not seem to be making much effort to stay apart. During my twice-weekly meeting with a friend in a park, we got chatting to a nurse and her friend. Even the nurse had no qualms about coming up close and seemed surprised when I shrank away!

So from what I've seen of the behaviour of people coupled with the lack of enforceable measures (and I suspect that young people are less susceptible to the social shaming that underpin's Japan's measures) I think the problem in Japan is going to be a prolonged one with the worst of both worlds - a relatively high number of fatalities and a massive blow to the economy.
 
Well it seems like the number for Friday of 605 newly detected cases was the final number for my source. So the update for today is:

April 15 741
April 16 605
April 17 556 (so far)

I should point out that even if the numbers of new cases drop, the number of deaths may continue to rise for up to two weeks before having a corresponding fall according to what I believe has been happening elsewhere.
 
Do you folks think if it (virus ) leads to food shortages in Japan, will it lead to civil unrest?
Went to the store yesterday, very busy, most shoppers were using the upper and lower cart baskets to put food in. But pasta was all gone. Some items of frozen food (food for lunch for children) were almost depleted. Hot dogs, as bad as they taste were almost depleted. Good thing is, people don't have much storage in their apartments so hoarding I don't think will be a problem.
 

Although I feel your statement is truly spot on, I actually see a worse situation coming to the table after the Golden Week period. My thoughts are this Lothor, that . 1. an infected person after 3.5 hours of being infected can pass the virus now to other people.
2. GW ends May 6 th
3. Starting about April 25th I'll start with the 37 to 42 day asymptomatic stage of possible silent infection (some will not have much illness at that time, and some will end up in the hospital )
4. So between June 1st to about June 20th, Japan will be in a brink of crises that most likely will kill any economy that is still left due to a horrible increase of sick and infected people.
5. The above will come true if people still continue to take the subways, trains, shinkansen and airplanes to their GW destinations.
6. The 960 bucks Japan is sending out, well, its nothing more then putting one in what I'll call a "spider web trap" of false escape from the harsh realities that face each and everyone of us.

by the way, what happened to all the English Juku teachers, were they able to leave Japan or now that the state of emergency is in place, surely they are not working?
 
musicisgood said:
Do you folks think if it (virus ) leads to food shortages in Japan, will it lead to civil unrest?
Click to expand...

Of course it will. The question is the degree of civil unrest. Japan will probably have the least of any nation on Earth. What we will see is petty crime increasing, but we won't see mass violence or riots.

I can imagine a mass exodus of people from Tokyo and Osaka...many even perhaps on foot. But generally these people would starve peacefully rather than act like Americans after a big hurricane or a randomly chosen and mass televised police murder among thousands. Sometimes its hard to believe these people's grandparents and great-grandparents brutally invaded nearly the whole of East and South-east Asia.
 

I've been saying "cars are useless", the whole family needs to have bicycles and some camping gear. I live in a Yakuza stronghold. The area with all the pubs and bars are all but shut down. Like how are they getting insurance money these days. Well, use your imagination, they are not going to starve. Unless the police round them up and keep them out of sight and the petty criminals, Japan can be swamped with a very high level of crime. I've always said something about the foreigners going to ruin it for us law abiding foreigners. How, well, just think of all the contract workers from Brazil that got laid off, they like to party on the weekends. Do you honestly think they will sit home in a very hot company apartment and be a nice resident of Japan. I don't think so.
Anyway, have a bike and camping gear ready . And look for options to survive. The govt. already said this: JAPAN IS ON THE BRINK
That should tell us something.
 

Even the yak won't ruin the general wa. They will select a few from the herd to feed off, but they won't spook the herd in general.

The expat Brazilians will be crushed if they rise up in violence. Police from around the nation will congregate and crush them one at a time if need be. The biggest worry is that they might be too stupid and ignorant to know that and rise up anyway.

If they have any brains at all though they will go back to Brazil in such a situation. Even I might be better of using my last penny to get to America if Japan runs out of food.
 
Updated graph showing data to Friday the 17th.



Number of cases yesterday, Saturday the 18th, was 584 new cases, with 33 prefectures reporting. (So the actual number will be slightly higher, although all numbers from the big prefectures are already included above). Of the nationwide 584 cases, Tokyo had 181 (30%). We are off the peak of the previous week, but still high in Tokyo.
Hopefully the crappy weather would have kept some people indoors yesterday. Numbers will drop today and tomorrow due to testing reasons.
 
Majestic said:
Hopefully the crappy weather would have kept some people indoors yesterday.
Click to expand...

It seems a strange way of looking at it. Its the seasons of crappy weather that keep people generally indoors when cold and flu viruses propagate most. Oh, yes, there are a million ins and outs and we could debate every facet until the cows come home. I just cannot see any solid foundation to hope for what you have. In any case, the roads here were pretty full and there were lines at Don Quixote here. The lines were not so especially long according to my experience, just a bit longer...but I have probably never been there on a Saturday afternoon before.
 
musicisgood said:
Unless the police round them up and keep them out of sight and the petty criminals, Japan can be swamped with a very high level of crime.
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"Yakuza" are not going to start mass raiding and looting for food. They rarely if ever interfere with law-abiding citizens in the first place, and besides, there is really no sign at all at this point that Japan is even heading for some massive, starvation-level food shortage.

musicisgood said:
The govt. already said this: JAPAN IS ON THE BRINK
Click to expand...
You are overreacting to a literal translation of the Japanese word 瀬戸際（せとぎわ, setogiwa). The government has been using this word for weeks (if not months) to hammer home the point that people really need to take the pandemic seriously if they want to flatten the curve. They do not mean that Japan is just a few steps away from devolving into a Mad Max-style free-for-all wasteland of crime, starvation, and poverty.

musicisgood said:
Although I feel your statement is truly spot on, I actually see a worse situation coming to the table after the Golden Week period.
Click to expand...

I'm not going to address point-by-point your doomsday scenario, but no one is going anywhere for Golden Week (all the tourist destinations are shut down), and regardless of whether or not you think the government has gone far enough, there has certainly been a marked decrease in people going out and interacting since the state of emergency was declared last week. Given that the life of the virus is roughly two weeks, why are you expecting a massive, unprecedented spike in infections and deaths to occur after two weeks have passed since the stricter measures were enacted?
 
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