By the end of August 2021, most Japanese prefectures had either declared a state of emergency (SoE) under which bars and restaurants across the whole prefecture were ordered to close at 20:00 and not offer alcohol and karaoke…
or had introduced quasi-emergency measures (QEM) in specified areas ordering bars and restaurants to close at 20:00 and not offer alcohol and karaoke.
[https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/backstories/1746/]
To see whether these measures made a difference, I plotted the weekly case rates per 100,000 people for different regions using data from here https://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/special/coronavirus/data/
To make the comparisons as apples-to-apples as possible, I excluded regions with only one prefecture (Hokkaido and Okinawa) and prefectures containing Japan’s main cites (Tokyo, Aichi, Osaka, and Fukuoka) [1].
In each graph, dates after prefecture names indicate the start of the QEM. So is there any evidence the so-called “infection prevention measures” measurably prevented infections?
Not in Tohoku. Maybe they were more effective in Kanto.
Looks like they were pretty useless there too. How about Chubu?
Hmmm, still no clear effect. Next up, Kinki, otherwise called Kansai.
What about Chugoku?
Well, maybe the measures work better on smaller islands like Shikoku?
Or Kyushu?
See any infection-prevention effect? Neither did I.
[1] For those prefectures, see my previous post.