But for some reason Japan and South Korea were informed and handled the problem, so what conspiracy explains this? Japan has good spies? Japan has supernatural future prediction technology?
According to the timeline of Japan's response in [1], the US responded at the same time as Japan. Their first countermeasure listed in [1] was a travel restriction enacted on February 3, the same time as US restrictions[2,3]
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_coronavirus_pandemic_in_J...
2: https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/traveladvisories/...
3: https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/02/us/coronavirus-us-travel-rest...
This is how arrivals in the US were handled a few days ago, this hall practially is a breeding ground for new infections: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/15/us/airports-coronavirus.h...
My point is NOT Japan good USA bad, I just want to show that there was the option to get a grip on the situation in January.
The past is the past, and every present discussion should focus on things that can be done now.
The question of how is to blame the most can be answered in a year or so, when things have calmed down.
I see two photos of people standing close together. Neither group is practicing social distancing.
The Japanese are wearing masks (not N95 masks) whose effectiveness is still being debated, but that's about custom, not government response.
The photo from America shows a bigger room, but I suspect that's just a choice of photo and Japanese airports had big rooms full of people in January too. Perhaps not, but certainly a photo of a small room doesn't disprove the existence of big rooms.
The current US Airport situation was in the news here in Germany, but perhaps not in the US. It breaks with most distancing guidelines. People are much too close to each other (compared to the advised 1-2m distance), and shared the same room (and air) for many hours. What good is that whole measure if you practically guarantee that more infected people will enter the country afterwards?
My overall point was related to the dates of both posts. Yes, on paper both Japan and the US implemented similar-sounding measures at about the same time. But one has to look at the actual implementation.
But it's not an option right now, there are no face masks available. That's a custom that has to exist before the pandemic starts so people will already have masks.
I am not defending China, just trying to address the blame shifting and maybe convince some people that the next one can originate in their own country and we all need to be better prepared.
A friend of mine living in Japan thinks there's a "burying their head in the sand" type mentality going on.
They've only performed 32,000 tests (which is 16,484 people); which makes it hard to know exactly how the disease is spreading there.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-japan-...
Thinking here is Abe/Japan do not want to delay the Olympics, so aren't testing...
Meanwhile in the Trump Administration was actively blocking attempts to perform surveillance by public health authorities as recently as Feb 27th.
[citation needed]
> State health officials joined Chu in asking the CDC and Food and Drug Administration to waive privacy rules and allow clinical tests in a research lab, citing the threat of significant loss of life. The CDC and FDA said no. "We felt like we were sitting, waiting for the pandemic to emerge," Chu told the Times. "We could help. We couldn't do anything." They held off for a couple of weeks, but on Feb. 25, Chu and her colleagues "began performing coronavirus tests, without government approval,"
https://theweek.com/speedreads/901405/seattle-lab-uncovered-...
So federal regulators (not Trump) told researchers not to test samples from a research study without the patients' permission?
Seems reasonable to me. They should have gotten permission from the participants instead of asking regulators to waive patient privacy.
> as part of a research project into the flu, she and a team of researchers had been collecting nasal swabs from residents experiencing symptoms throughout the Puget Sound region.
> To repurpose the tests for monitoring the coronavirus, they would need the support of state and federal officials. But nearly everywhere Dr. Chu turned, officials repeatedly rejected the idea,
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/10/us/coronavirus-testing-de...
“The White House considered issuing an executive order greatly expanding the use of investigational drugs against the new coronavirus, but met with objections from Food and Drug Administration scientists who warned it could pose unneeded risks to patients, according to a senior government official.
The idea to expand testing of drugs and other medical therapies was strongly opposed by the FDA’s senior scientists this week, the official said, and represented the most notable conflict between the FDA and the White House in recent memory.”
https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-sought-to-expand-virus-dr...