Japan's experts refuse to part with partitions

Along with the still ubiquitous masks, the other great inescapable eyesores of Covid-era Japan have been the various types of partitions, which are still standard in supermarkets, convenience stores, post offices, etc.

During emergency periods in 2021, local governments made cooperation payments to bars and restaurants conditional on them implementing so-called “infection prevention measures”, meaning taxpayers subsidised the nonsense below.

And of course schools, often the site of Japan’s most absurd Covidiocy, regularly brought out partitions when the cameras visited to show they were teaching kids unthinking compliance with moronic rules.

Looking at these photos, some people in the west may even feel nostalgic about the Covid craziness of 2020 and 2021. And in 2021, even western mainstream media were willing to admit partitions were a waste of good plastic.

As evidence that partitions can even increase infection risk, the above article cited a study from…Japan!

But Japan’s experts even in 2023 can’t bring themselves to admit the pointlessness of anything they recommended for 3 years no matter how obvious it is. Here’s our old friend Takaji Wakita, chairman of Japan’s Covid Response Advisory Board.

“The effectiveness [of partitions] is difficult to evaluate.”

The only difficulty in evaluating the effectiveness of partitions is getting Dr. Wakita and his ilk to be honest. Of course if the experts came out and said “Partitions are useless”, some people might wonder why they recommended them for 3 years. And some people might even, heaven forbid, start to question the experts’ other recommendations, such as 24/7 masking.

So in a pathetic attempt to avoid admitting they’ve advocated a stupid policy for 3 years, Wakita and 11 other experts last week produced an assessment of the “effectiveness and limitations” of partitions. Here’s now state propaganda organ NHK reported it.

Partitions can be expected to physically block relatively large droplets emitted during a conversation before they travel from one person facing another person. When installed properly, it is thought they are effective against droplet transmission.

They’ve had three years, and the best they can do is “it is thought”.

On the other hand, very small droplets called aerosols and micro droplets float in the air and diffuse throughout the room, so partitions cannot sufficiently block them, so thorough ventilation is important.

“Micro droplets” was a term Japan’s experts started using in 2021 to avoid admitting SARS-Cov-2 was most likely spread mainly through aerosols not droplets. They grudgingly admitted aerosol transmission in 2022, a year after the US CDC and WHO finally got round to it.

After pointing out these effects and limitations, the experts’ view was that partitions may be used again in the future in situations such as customer-service work where many people come into face-to-face contact or where an unspecified number of people gather together to eat and drink. They also said that even if the partition are removed, they should be stored for the time being in preparation for reuse during future outbreaks of infectious diseases.

In other words, the government’s experts not only refuse to admit partitions are ridiculous but also plan to recommend them next time. Imagine looking at the photos above and publicly stating “This is definitely not embarrassing, and we should certainly do it again.”

But then again, what were you expecting them to say?

Japan's plans for the next pandemic: same again but faster!