Japan leads the world (in cases)!
After almost two and half years of 24/7 masking, closed borders, and chanting bans at sports games, Japan finally leads the world in Covid cases!
This is odd because the New York Times reported at the start of July that Japan had tamed Covid.
To be fair, Japan leads in absolute numbers rather than per capita, but its per capita case rate is one of the world’s highest too.
So will this lead to a reassessment of the effectiveness and necessity of any of Japan’s Covid restrictions?
The headline says it all. The country with some of the strictest entry restrictions now has the highest number of Covid cases. The solution: extend the entry restrictions!
But would it be worse if Japan were letting in uncultured barbarians who can’t be trusted to mask up outside in 35-degree heat? Well, Japan’s neighbour South Korea opened its border and had 227,000 tourists in June, a few more than the 1500 that came in the first month of Japan’s “reopening”. Since Japan and SK are so similar, this is probably the closest thing we have to an RCT on entry restrictions. You don’t need to run any regressions to see the results fail to reach statistical significance.
Unsurprisingly, Japan’s business community is moaning in The Nikkei about “Japan passing” due to the entry restrictions.
The Nikkei has been giving a platform to these complaints for a while now.
But since it also gives a platform to people who want to legitimise the stupid beliefs many Japanese hold about filthy foreigners and magical masks…
…it’s helping to maintain the fundamental problem that’s kept Japan’s borders closed: the widespread support for keeping foreigners out.
As I mentioned in my last post, Japan’s mask-psychosis is helping to keep the entry restrictions in place. If Japan’s business community really wants to avoid “Japan passing”, it’ll have to cure the nation’s mask addiction.
Anyway, back to the immediate viral problem. So how is Japan going to flatten its largest curve so far? With more tests for asymptomatics, 3rd jabs for the unboosted, and 4th jabs for the boosted of course!
I’ve already written a review of the real-world evidence showing that testing healthy people has no benefits to offset its harms.
Put bluntly, increasing tests to bring down cases is like going to a gay orgy to avoid monkeypox.
As for the jabs, well I can’t see any problems with that idea. Can you?
Forget I asked.