Party like a Japanese Covidian: advice for New Year get-togethers

With the end of 2022 upon us, Japanese magazine Shueisha Online (SO) recently published an interview with Dr. Yuji Morisawa, director of infection control at Jichi Medical University, about dos and don’ts at Year End and Start of Year parties.

With the variant prevalent in the 8th wave, most people who get infected who aren’t elderly and don’t have underlying diseases won’t become seriously ill. So banning parties would be going too far. When you’re thinking about getting together at a Year End or Start of Year party, there's no problem if there are no infected people attending.

However, even if people bring a negative result of a PCR test or antigen test, there are false negatives, so you can’t tell whether they’re really infected. So you should only get together with people for whom you can think “If they infect me, it can’t be helped.” That means relatives, romantic partners, and people you trust who you see on a regular basis in your daily life.

On the other hand, it’s better not to go out to dinner with colleagues, business partners, or other people who think, “If they infect me, that wouldn’t be good.” It’s good to draw the line here. Your coworker or client may have underlying medical conditions you don’t know about. Nobody wants to go as far as to reveal such private information to go dining.

Dr Morisawa is certainly more suited to medicine than business. What’s bizarre about his anti-social advice is that late eventing footfall in big city entertainment districts returned to about 80% of the pre-pandemic baseline months ago, and there are plently of bars packed with people who didn’t take PCR tests beforehand. But his corona über alles mindset is representative of medical professionals who appear in the media.

Next, he tries to answer the question of whether you can get infected via a hot pot.

If you put your own chopsticks into the hot pot to pick out food, it depends on the amount, but your saliva will mix with the soup and ingredients in the hot pot, and other people will be able to ingest it.

Also, I don't know if the heat from the pot will always kill the coronavirus. So instead of using your own chopsticks, it’s much less risky to use serving chopsticks or a ladle. When you decide meals now on, it’d be better to choose a set course that doesn’t include hot pots or shared platters.

I know it reads like parody, but as a director of infection control, Dr Morisawa’s job is to think up every possible way infections may occur, no matter how unlikely, and devise harebrained solutions to them. This kind of Covid monomania is par for the course at Japanese medical institutions.

Dr Morisawa then explains how to pick the location for your get-together.

In a restaurants with a lot of customers, you don't know the health conditions of the people. In that case, as I mentioned earlier, it’s safer to get a private room with people you trust.

Obviously, there’s no point being picky about who you dine with if you have to share space with potential biohazards.

Dr Morisawa also discusses the pros and cons of that great symbol of Japan’s brain-dead Covid polices: acrylic partitions.

Also, many restaurant have acrylic partitions installed, but these only prevent droplet infection and aren’t effective unless there is a certain amount of distance between people. If the restaurant is crowded, the acrylic boards may hinder ventilation. It’s important to understand that just having acrylic partitions doesn't mean you're safe.

Has anyone ever felt safer after looking at these absurd eyesores? Acrylic partitions became commonplace in Japanese eateries during the various emergency/quasi-emegency periods in 2021, when businesses had to show they were taking “thorough infection control measures” to get support payments. Like masks, partitions are still used since experts like Dr Morisawa are too dumb/dishonest to admit their uselessness.

Next Dr Morisawa discusses one of Japan’s greatest inventions: karaoke.

Karaoke rooms are fully ventilated. Companies also take infection prevention measures, such as disinfecting the room and changing microphones. However, karaoke invoves people singing loudly in a closed room. The risk of infection is higher than at a year-end party, so I think you should still refrain from karaoke multiple people.

Also, even if you wear a mask while singing, if you continue to vocalise, aerosols will leak out from the gaps in the mask and spread throughout the room. In addition, the non-woven fabric masks that everyone wears only prevent you from infecting others, so a protective mask such as an N95 is necessary to prevent infections in a closed room.

Think of how many lives have been saved by wiping down karaoke microphones! I’m surprised he stopped at N95 masks and didn’t recommend people follow the official Covid guidelines for audiences at gigs: sing at conversational volume for only 25% of a song. While masked, natch.

Anyway, Happy New Year, everyone! Eat, drink, and be maskless. And with so many Covidian killjoys like Dr Morisawa trying to spoil people’s fun, it’s important to remember what three wise men once said: You gotta fight for your right to party!

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