Japanese lessons: how not to respond to a pandemic

The main reason I started writing this blog was to counter fawning western MSM articles about Japan’s supposed success responding to Covid by pointing out Japan is actually a case study in pandemic response failure: Japan would’ve been much better off not responding at all.

The first two years of Covid in Japan: turning immunological victory into economic defeat

And that was when Japan had relatively few cases. So now that BA.5 has generated Japan’s largest wave yet, how well is Japan responding? Badly according to this recent Reuters article.

Japanese companies are temporarily shutting offices or suspending production as they battle a record wave of Covid-19, disrupting businesses in a country that has until now weathered the pandemic better than most advanced economies.

Carmakers Toyota Motor and Daihatsu Motor last week halted production line shifts because of employee infections.

KFC Holdings Japan has had to shut some fast-food restaurants and move staff to fill gaps, while Japan Post Holdings has temporarily shut more than 200 mailing centres.

Not KFC!

So what have companies been doing to protect their employees from the virus?

"We have divided the meal time into several time slots and have told workers to sit in one direction and not to talk at all," Subaru's Chief Financial Officer Katsuyuki Mizuma told reporters recently, describing how the carmaker was trying to fend off infections and work stoppages.

Please read that again and ask yourself whether you’re now more likely to buy a Subaru. This sentence tells you two things about the pandemic response in Japan: (1) Even now, people will go along with any idea how matter how dumb “because corona”, and (2) the Japanese are so oblivious to the stupidity of their Covid measures that the CFO of a major company will tell international media that employees are forced to have prison-style lunches [1] completely unaware of how riduculous it will make his company look.

The latest outbreak will likely show whether [Japan] can maintain its flexible response aimed at "living with the coronavirus" and limiting the economic impact, particularly if the disruption now being felt gets worse of lasts for an extended period.

“Limiting the economic impact”, eh?

Health authorities advise that those who test positive should quarantine for 10 days and their close contacts should isolate for at least five.

That’s actually maximizing the economic impact!

Railway operator Kyushu Railway suspended 120 train services in southern Japan last week when 53 crew members tested positive or where close contacts of cases. Mitsui O.S.K. Lines cancelled four ferry crossings in western Japan, and bus operator OdakyuBus slashed dozens of routes around Tokyo.

If you ever wondered why the WHO’s 2019 pandemic response guidelines recommended against quarantining exposed people, there’s your answer. These quarantine policies don’t solve any problems; they are the problem. Trains kept running and KFC stayed open in prior flu seasons for the simple reason that people weren’t made to take time off work when a relative or coworker caught the flu. And people who caught flu would be back on the job after symptoms cleared up. Oh, those were the days!

So rather than “limiting the economic impact”, Japan’s pointless quarantine policies for cases and contacts are causing companies to suspend services and operations due to needless absences. The Covidian retort is “If cases and contacts aren’t made to quarantine, infections will spread.” Er, if these polices prevent the spread of infections, why aren’t they preventing the spread of infections?

So how are medical institutions handling the high 7th wave? The Japan Times details the horror on the front lines.

As another wave of coronavirus infections pummels Japan, the country has emerged as the world’s No.1 COVID-19 hot spot, at least in official statistics. Despite data suggesting that many patients now only develop mild symptoms, the nation’s health care system is nonetheless strained more than ever before.

Tell me more about this strain.

Until recently, Japan had encouraged people with mild COVID-like symptoms, such as fever, throat pain and coughing, to visit so-called fever clinics in their neighborhoods. PCR and antigen tests were mostly performed at such clinics, which are designated by prefectural governments. These clinics, numbering nearly 40,000 across the country, have been the first point of medical contact for people who suspect they may have COVID-19. If people test positive, the clinics then report the cases to local public health centers.

With the recent surge in patient numbers, however, fever clinics have been swamped and unable to keep up with demand. Some worried residents have turned to ambulances for help, which means that service has been inundated with calls from people not necessarily in need of emergency care, experts say.

So people are calling ambulances when they have fevers and coughs, leading to misallocation of limited medical resources. This pandemic of hypochondria is caused by the government and media overhyping the dangers of Covid for most of the population, causing impressionable TV viewers to think standard cold/flu symptoms are signs of imminent death. Not exactly a good example of successful risk communication.

Also, if Japan’s 40,000 fever clinics managed in past flu seasons, what’s the problem now? An article in the Mainichi explains.

Of the roughly 15,000 medical institutions in Tokyo, one-third, or around 4,600, are open to coronavirus patients.

Covid’s special status enables the authorities to formally request that positive cases be hospitalised at designated facilities, but it also enables private medical institutions to refuse to accept Covid patients. So the places that do accept them risk becoming overwhelmed. Remember this nifty graphic from early 2020?

Well, Japan thought it was a good idea to limit healthcare capacity, rather than increase it. The complete opposite of a rational pandemic response.

And this leads to one of the most bizarre aspects of Japan’s response. I as wrote about previously, Tokyo offers free tests to asymptomatic people…

Take a PCR test, get a gift voucher: profiting from the pandemic in Tokyo

…but symptomatic people have to pass through the bottleneck in the healthcare system to get tested. This means it’s easier to get a test if you don’t have symptoms than if you do!

Japan’s illogical Covid response can be summed up as treat the healthy like they’re sick (universal masks, close contact quarantine, etc.) but allow the majority of medical institutions to avoid actually treating the sick.

Of course, there’s a really simple solution to all these problems.

Kanagawa Gov. Yuji Kuroiwa said during a July 28 meeting between the National Governors' Association and the Japan Medical Association, "In Kanagawa Prefecture, only around one-third of medical facilities examine coronavirus patients. If the coronavirus is categorized like influenza, all medical institutions will be able to examine COVID-19 patients."

Shinzo Abe suggested the same thing in August 2020, but subsequent administrations didn’t follow through. However, since even the government’s so-called experts have finally got round to saying the same thing…

…I suppose Covid will finally be downgraded later this year. The experts are certainly slow learners.

But despite the above examples of problem-generating policies and backward priorities, the Japanese government has decided it knows enough to teach the world some lessons.

Japan has agreed with the World Health Organization to establish a new organization that will focus on strengthening health care systems in developing countries, Foreign Ministry sources said Thursday.

The new organization will also raise awareness of universal health coverage, and build a framework to prevent the spread of infectious diseases including the coronavirus.

Those lucky developing countries! I’m sure they can’t wait for Japan to tell them how to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.

If I had to take a wild guess, I’d say the framework will focus on pushing the jabs rather than silent lunches. The Japanese might want to tell other countries what they’ve learned about the shots too. But somehow I doubt they will.

Post-vaccine adverse events in Japan: evidence of racial differences?

[1] In case your confused by the logic of these measures, the Japanese government and media even now stress contact and droplet transmission as the main transmission routes. So facing the same direction and not talking while unmasked are assumed to prevent droplet transmission. Japan insistence on continuing these idiotic measures and resistance to recognising aerosol transmission are other examples of response failure too.

https://archive.ph/kiddh