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

Are you interested in getting few yen for doing next to nothing? Then head to a free PCR testing centre in Tokyo, where you can get a ¥500 gift voucher after taking a test! You can only go if you don’t have symptoms though. Symptomatic people have to go to medical institutions instead.

Now, if your reaction to that is “Er, what the hell?”, then you aren’t alone. So TV decided to do some journalism for a change. Interviewed outside a testing centre, this women said she’d taken 9 PCR tests and got a voucher each time!

So what’s going on here? Simple. In addition to paying for the testing kits, the Tokyo Metropolitan government gives testing centres ¥3000 for every test to cover business expenses. I didn’t think Tokyo could afford to pointlessly pour more money into the big black hole that is the Covid response, but apparently I was wrong.

So it makes good business sense for the centres to offer vouchers to pull in more punters willing to chance their luck in the PCR lottery.

But what about those unfortunate gamblers who unknowingly happen to have a few SARS-Cov-2 fragments stuck up their noses, causing them to test positive and thus have to isolate for 10 days? There’s a solution for that: Covid insurance.

For example, PayPay will give you ¥20,000 yen while you lounge about at home during your “recuperation” after testing positive.

PayPay’s product starts from ¥1500. The insurance premiums used to be cheaper before Omicron arrived.

I’m sure you’re all wondering whether the large number of healthy people taking needless but lucrative tests is the reason for Tokyo’s high cases. Surprisingly, it’s not. The below graph shows the weekly number of asymptomatic (pink) and symptomatic (green) cases in Tokyo. The red line shows the percentage of cases that are asymptomatic.

Although the number and ratio of asymptomatic cases have increased during the BA.5 wave, only 9.9% of cases (17,823) were asymptomatic in the week 19-25 July.

So mass-testing asymptomatic people is not only ineffective at stopping the spread…

Hunting asymptomatics: Are the opposition parties right about mass-testing?

…but also unnecessary for generating “cases are rising!” hysteria because there are more than enough symptomatic cases for that. Not only are 90% of cases symptomatic but also Tokyo’s positivity rate is over 50%! That’s a lot of virus going around.

“Symptomatic” of course covers everything from a runny nose to a cytokine storm. Thankfully, hardly any of Tokyo’s cases are severe.

And the severe cases are unlikely to rise much higher since the best leading indicator suggests actual infections have been declining for at least a week.

The media can still be counted on to drag the panic out for a few more weeks though. After all, they’ve got shots to sell.

But after the 7th wave has clearly finished, what will Japan do next? Prepare for the 8th wave!

But at least the 4th- and 5th-shot campaigns will give me the chance to test my hypothesis of vaccine-induced spike protein tolerance being the main cause of Japan’s excess deaths in February and March. And unfortunately, recent evidence suggests my hypothesis may not be wrong.

Tolerance Cometh: IgG4 After Multiple-mRNA Doses