News from the Covidiocracy
So apart from the assassination of former prime minister Shinzo Abe by a former member of the Maritime Self-Defense Force (i.e., Japan’s navy)…
…what else has been happening recently? Here’s a round up of Covid-related news in Japan.
Wave hello
Cases are rising 😱!
But why? Let’s ask the experts. From this article: “The government has eased its advisories on mask wearing and relaxed anti-virus measures at ports of entry. Business hours and services in entertainment districts are also returning to normal.”
Where to start with this nonsense. 1) The government’s advice is that people can unmask while outdoors, socially distant, and silent. But most people are still masking outdoors even in 35-degree heat. Oh, and masks don’t work. 2) The travel ban on tourists was kind of lifted one month ago, but in the first week, Japan received only 1300 applications. Not visitors or bookings; just applications. Only a few groups have come on the North Korean style monitor tours so far, and I doubt they’ve contributed much to the spread. 3) The quasi-emergency requests for bars & restaurants (B&Rs) to limit hours and services were lifted in March!
Is there any other reason cases could be going up? From here: “The BA.5 strain is believed to have the ability to slip through the immunity obtained from vaccines.”
“Slip through” is an interesting choice of words (hit-tip https://twitter.com/s0ftqbEJBEzhK2S for the graph).
And although the media and experts seem to have forgotten, cases went up around this time in July 2020 and 2021 too. It’s almost as if the waves were seasonal/cyclical (hat-tip Ian Miller).
So can we expect other round of economy-strangling B&R restrictions and calls for “self-restraint” from leaving the house?
From here: “Despite the surge in COVID-19 cases across Japan in recent days, Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Seiji Kihara said at his July 7 news conference that the government was not considering measures to limit the movement of people.”
Hooray!
“He said that was because no prefectural government had yet asked for pre-emergency measures to deal with the rapid increase in new cases.”
It looks like I cheered too early. So now Japan’s 47 governors are in a race to see who’s going to be first to apply for more powers to screw over their local economy. Place your bets now! I know who my money’s on.
Over 50,000 cases! But only around 8500 cases were reported in Tokyo yesterday. How did the experts come up with this projection?
“If the virus keeps spreading at this pace, projections suggested there will be 15,534 cases on July 20th and 54,903 cases on August 3rd.”
They lost me at “If”.
Fine time at the footy
Speaking of cheering too early, fans of Urawa Reds broke the J-league’s ridiculous no-chanting rule. Come on you Reds!
But the J-league was unimpressed.
As I’ve lamented previously, fans can only chant in designated areas while masked and socially distant at trial games. It looks like Japanese sports fans will have to suffer in silence some more.
Baby bust
Speaking of balls, below shows Japan’s live birth figures for 2021 and 2022 up to April. There were 63,066 births in April this year compared with 70,582 in April last year (a 10.6% drop).
I guess the Japanese must’ve been shagging less last summer. But I’m open to considering other reasons.
You can say that again
Speaking of Japan’s dark future, the upper house elections are this weekend. Two candidates for seats in Tokyo from Kishida’s Liberal Democratic Party (Akiko Ikuina (top) and Kentaro Asahi (bottom)) were asked by a Tokyo newspaper for their opinions towards lowering Covid’s infectious disease classification to Level 5, the same as the flu. Even people who can’t read Japanese may notice something odd when comparing their answers.
Yep. They wrote almost the same thing word-for-word opposing the idea, which incidentally happens to be PM Kishida’s exact position on this issue too. I guess this is proof Japanese politicians don’t just read from a script but write from one too. I can’t wait for the post-election constitutional revision “debate”.
So that’s was Japan. And in case you wanted my thoughts on somewhere other than the land of the falling yen, I also wrote a Twitter thread of my evaluation of the German Covid Expert Panel’s evaluation of Germany’s Covid response.
I do have interests other than Japan, you know.