Japan to stage Tokyo Olympics without overseas spectators
japantoday.com
japantoday.com
This together with all the sub-human conditions the workers in Qatar for the football world championship make it seem like organising events like this not something I would feel comfortable with hosting in my own country. It seems like it's a combination of hot potato and ego projects for specific people in governments.
hell, couple of years ago my country "won" the rights to host eurovision song festival. I'm not against investing money in a broad set of cultural activities. But looking at the amount of money it costed to host it felt not something that was worth the tax payers money. Rather we just payed the artists then all the pseudo glamour surrounding it.
Are they not simply de factō slaves? deprived of a right to leave at their choosing?
That the world accepts this shows well the hypocrisy of man. — I suppose that for all of his theoretical abhorrence by slavery, a good football match weights heavier than that.
The worst thing, imho, is that Qatar is not even remotely the worst actor in the region. A World Cup in Saudi Arabia might well be inevitable over the next 20 years, and that will be even worse.
We're speaking of countries that were willing to wage costly wars on flimsy evidence of w.m.d.'s, that are now not willing to pressure a nation over real evidence of slavery.
But pressuring them all at once, and hard enough to get results? That could leave the US in a lonely spot.
For example I think the olympics put Barcelona on the map for a lot of tourists and they’ve been reaping the rewards since, but it seems to me that’s more of an exception than the rule.
Memories of an actually fascist government (which only disappeared some 15 years before) were still very present, and many foreigners thought the islands to be "safe tourist resorts", much like the tourist resorts of Cuba today (with few, mostly Boheme types ever leaving them during their stay).
Not sure if Barcelona as a tourist destination was caused by the Olympics, but in 1991, it certainly was not a major destination for Europeans.
If the goal is really to put a city 'on the map' you could spend less than 5% of that money on an extensive cultural/tourism marketing campaign and have more of an effect. I've yet to meet anyone who's chosen Sochi as a vacation destination.
The best bet seems to be a lesser known location which can use most of the infrastructure and has some non Olympics tourist destinations. Which isn’t a huge list, but there have been a few.
I would describe it differently, the facilities used for skiing events are usually already tourist locations, plenty of people take international skiing vacations.
That’s not a huge economy to absorb a short term spike in tourism when it’s focused on a few months out of the year. Worse it’s not like there is a massive untapped surplus of people doing international ski vacations. But don’t take my word for it their are actual studies looking into this stuff that come to similar conclusions.
Whistler. But then again it was a huge destination before the olympics too.
Far less hassle for someone from Germany to visit Cairo, Dubai, Nairobi, New York, than to visit Sochi.
Same issue with holding the world cup in 2018.
Give a 30 day tourist visa on arrival and they'd get far more tourists
Lots, probably hundreds. Most of them conclude 'it depends, but basically not worth it'. But the gist is that if you are already a functioning city and popular tourist spot (like London) you'll get close to zero benefit (at massive costs). London actually significantly had less total tourists the year of the Olympics compared with the preceding and following years.
Some cities, like Barcelona, Seoul and possibly Rio de Janeiro saw some benefit in terms of raising awareness of the city as tourist destination and better infrastructure for handling tourism. Both led to increased tourism the years following the Olympics. Barcelona and Seoul where also however cheaper events than current Olympics so it is hard to compare.
Also only the Summer Olympics has shown any sign of positive benefits on tourism. Winter Olympics has basically no effect.
In this case, they would have receive X thousand/million of tourists, which they won't come. If you travel to Japan (e.g. from Europe) you don't just go for the events. You also say an extra 5-10 days. That is a big loss for the tourist industry, the millions of mouths eating in restaurants, drinking in bars, and on top of the costs/profits, imagien that the state takes a 5-10-20% on taxes, which would be reinvested to the country (education, infrastructure, health, etc.)
It is a worse case sceario for the country. All these expenses and not near enought he revenue..
In some cases that is true. But I've been to Tokyo twice as a tourist and didn't see much in desperate need of modernization.
And even if your city is in need of modernization, hosting an Olympics is a very inefficient way to go about it. The only argument that can be made is a political one where it is easier to convince the government to spend $10 billion on hosting the Olympics (and spending some of that on infrastructure renovation) rather than just spending $2 billion on infrastructure renovation. In fact the Mayor of London even said: “I bid for the Olympics because it’s the only way to get the billions of pounds out of the government to develop the East End – to clean the soil, put in the infrastructure and build the housing.”
However as many cities have found, the modernization done to host an Olympics aren't necessarily the modernizations a city needs the most long term,
In this case, they would have receive X thousand/million of tourists
Would they be getting more that they would otherwise though? As I mentioned elsewhere, London saw a clear drop in tourists visiting over the Olympic summer (with a matching decrease in restaurant and shop revenue), since it turns out many people who want to visit London would rather do so when there isn't a major sporting event causing massive chaos.
I mean yes. Spending all that money preparing for an Olympics and having no one show up is probably worse than having people show up. But not hosting the Olympics in the first place would obviously be the most financially prudent move
Tokyo is in the order of Seoul, Miami, Barcalona rather than London, Paris, Dubai, New York.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_by_internationa...
* Adoption of Credit card and NFC payment on real shop is growing.
* Smoking in restaurant/bar/road is well restricted
* Haneda airport add a runway, by plane flying over Tokyo
* Airbnb is allowed in some situation because of lack of hotels for audiences
* R-18 Porn books are removed from convenience store (IMO it's bad for people who not affordable to internet, it should be zoned but not banned)
* It is rumored that police forces print industry/digital content shop to strictly hide/put mosaic on that on porn content, due to the Olympic. (Why it matters??)
"When the Park opens fully in spring 2014, it will provide a world-class hub for performance and community sport, offering a range of 25 indoor and outdoor activities every day, all year round. The iconic Aquatics Centre will offer two 50-metre pools and a diving pool, as well as seating for 2,500 spectators, while the Velodrome will be reopened as the Lee Valley VeloPark, providing state-of-the art cycling facilities. The Eton Manor hockey and tennis facilities, meanwhile, will operate as Lee Valley Hockey and Tennis Centre, offering two outdoor hockey pitches, six outdoor and four indoor tennis courts. In 2015, the venue will stage the European Hockey Championships – the first international sporting competition secured for the Park after the Games.
The centrepiece of the Park – the Olympic Stadium – will also host elite international sporting action, including five matches during the 2015 Rugby World Cup and the IAAF and IPC Athletics World Championships in 2017. From 2016, it will also be the home of English Premier League football club West Ham United, who will take residency as the Stadium’s long-term anchor tenant.
The Olympic Park’s Copper Box venue has already reopened for public use, offering courts for 20 different sports including basketball, boxing and badminton as well as a state-of-the-art gym. The venue will not only provide fantastic facilities for the community, it will also be a home for elite sport, with the London Lions basketball team set to play their home matches at the arena.
But the Games have not only provided London and its residents with new sporting facilities, they also led to major infrastructure improvements, with Transport for London investing GBP 6.5 billion in its transport network in preparation for the 2012 Games.
This investment included ten railway lines and 30 new bridges, which will continue to connect London communities after the Games, while at least 60 Games-related projects were initiated to promote greener travel, including a GBP 10 million investment to upgrade pedestrian and cycling routes across London.
The Olympic Village, meanwhile, will also provide a permanent legacy for the whole of London, creating a brand new residential quarter of the city, to be known as “East Village”.
The Athletes’ Village is being transformed into 2,818 new homes – including 1,379 affordable homes – providing essential new housing for more than 6,000 people in east London. New parklands, open space and community facilities will also support the communities that develop in the area following the Games."
The only real argument for the Olympics from a legacy point of view is that it provides a fixed deadline and a potential for very public failure if you don't deliver - which probably stopped a lot of the graft and politicising that would normally accompany infrastructure investments of this size.
Instead of incremental improvements to wealthy nations, the Olympics is the opportunity to build up the developing world a as and highlight it for the world to see.
If only the IOC was not the peak of corruption
Living in Munich I have to say that the amazing park and infrastructures (widely used nowadays and close to the city center) left after the tragic 1972 Olympics are definitely worthy of the $1B spent over infrastructure
Multiple of those projects where pushed off before, but Olympics gave the "let's do it" spirit for those huge projects.
Having those projects done is an important part of today's quality of life here (while since the late 90ies underground construction mostly stopped and we're seeing consequences as the city grows ...)
Also you know that Ireland deliberately wanted to lose Eurovision at one point.
Vancouver Olympics 2010. No, it did not make a profit, and there was a fiasco involving how the athletes village was converted into condos, but the city did not go crazy over preparations. Most of the venues were already there. Whistler was already a winter sports mecca. Vancouver didn't need to build new airports or erect new mountains. Things like highway improvements and sports facilities were not left to rot after the event. They are all still there being used today. And it was canada. Canada knows how to do winter stuff. I think it was the first olymics where the ice doctors didn't hide the fact that every winter olymics has a Canadian coin buried under center ice.
The olympics isn't something that a city does to turn a profit, but that doesn't mean it has to bankrupt itself either.
There is/was a movement to make the winter olympics permanently fixed in a few northern cities, Vancouver being one of them, in order to prevent the wasteful fiascos that are witnessed from time to time.
Obviously that was a non-starter. The enormous expenditure (and wealth transfer) of public funds is sort of the point. ;)
There is much debate about this, particularly in regards to the Sea to Sky highway improvements. The old highway wasn't great, it was rough in spots, but the improvements have had unwanted effects. Making the highway easier means more people are doing day trip to whistler from Vancouver. Rather than stay in whistler people are staying at cheaper hotels in Vancouver. That means less local revenue and increased highway traffic. And no effort was made to improve non-car traffic along the route. No rail improvements. No bus lanes. Nothing much other than making the existing 2/4-lane road straighter and faster.
For most of my life skiing at Whistler was totally out of reach. The one or two of my peers who went yearly were among the wealthiest.
Glad it's no longer an exclusive playground for Vancouver's wealthy.
This is because LA generally reuses existing venues when possible, and almost all facilities built for the Olympics are designed with plans for post-Olympic usage.
For example, the LA Memorial Coliseum was built in 1921 as WWI memorial and was expanded for the 1932 Olympics a decade later. The Coliseum was not upgraded for the 1984 Olympics (though the track and field were upgraded), and the only two venue custom-built for the 1984 Olympics were the velodrome and swimming stadium.
The 1984 Olympics was one of the most cost-conscious Olympics ever held, and is still the most profitable Olympics. Like today, few cities wanted to host the Olympics due to cost concerns. Indeed, LA was the only remaining bidder by the time the decision reached the IOC (similarly, for the 2024 Olympics, Paris and LA were the only two bidders remaining, and LA was the only city willing to bid for 2028). The 1984 Olympics were almost entirely privately funded (thanks to Hollywood and other corporate backers). LA made significant use of existing structures, low-cost decorations, and was the first Olympics to truly take advantage of corporate sponsorships and television contracts. For example, the velodrome was funded by 7-11, and the swimming stadium was funded by McDonalds.
The forthcoming 2028 Olympics follows the blueprint set by the 1984 Olympics: reusing existing venues and infrastructure, to the extent that the only venues that will be created solely for the Olympics are the viewer stands for some of the outdoor events like bmx and canoeing. Extensive use of corporate and private sponsorship. Pretty much the only thing that requires government funding is the security, and the US federal government will be providing the bulk of that.
Westerners looked at the lack of public trashcans and decided it was not their responsibility and simply leave trash everywhere. They smoked in non-smoking hotels. They turned public transit from a library into a pub. They ignored all queueing procedures. I even heard a scottish man brag that he never flushed a toilet the entire time in japan because he was "afraid of it spraying him if he pushed the wrong button"
I would imagine for most locals, they are extremely relieved to not have to put up with the same thing x 5
Is it an example of the political pull of the IOC? The Asian culture of face-saving? Or plain old sunk cost fallacy? I honestly don't know.
Edit: sorry that's a bit generic, but I have never heard anyone say they are looking forward to the Olympics locally, pre covid, and post, I hear a lot of people wtf'ing it's going ahead.
It's completely anecdotal, but as a private teacher at 4 different schools I have a wide pool.
The press typically reverts this outlook by going full-jingo once the event happens, and then "you" will be "proud" that your homeland could be so excellent and well-organized and now attracting even more tourists. Expect a horrifying overflow of basic nationalism.
For Japan this will now be harder, but I'm sure a narrative will eventually emerge about resilience in the face of adversity and "showing the world" some of that proverbially-unbreakable Japanese spirit. And you won't have to endure a month of terrible commuting.
The World Cup was more popular, but still wasn't widely accepted as some people think it would be.
The Olympics was outright hated, so many stupid shenanigans happened there (like demolishing a NEW stadium, to build another identical one, just because the seatings positions were slightly bad).
So no, you don't need to be first world to recognize how stupid hosting the Olympics is.
A lot of the IOC (and probably FIFA) requirements seem silly. Pretty soon, we're going to see the Olympics go back and forth between LA and Paris just because they're the only cities that naturally have the required infrastructure, unless there's a change.
The stadium in question was the one for bicycle racing, it was built for the Pan-American games.
Right after those games, IOC decided to change the percentage of seats allowed behind pillars.
So they concluded the solution, instead of reducing amount of seats or something, was to demolish the entire stadium, and build a new one with the support pillars in new locations.
But 10% is quite a large number for any event, and sure to bring in quite a bit of profit. Name me a concert that 10% of the population claims to wish to attend?
The majority indeed does not care, but a sufficiently high number does that it is profitable.
To take with a shovel of salt of course, but that feeling of just getting shafted by the corrupt politicians and the IOC, and just not wanting more money to go into the pit is echoed by the people in my small sphere.
[0] https://www.cnnphilippines.com/sports/2020/3/4/tokyo-2020-ol...
There was a heated moment the first time the gov had to decide wether to swallow the sunk costs and just cancel everything, or only postpone, hoping the situation would be better after a few months.
The first set of damages have already be paid, so now whatever the course of events, Olympics will be a pretty bitter subject for most people I think.
Edit: postponing was not penalties per se, more contracting and maintenance costs. Fixed the wording,
I get that there is a grain of truth in what you are saying but this is mostly an outdated mode of thinking. The Japanese economy has plenty of access to $ denominated capital markets if they wanted $.
I will repeat. The Japanese don't have any specific need for dollars that they can't fulfill on a balance of payments basis. Some countries do. But Japan doesn't.
Earning money from foreign customers gives the Japanese as a nation purchasing power of future foreign assets, such as oil, food, or land outside Japan. It makes their country wealthier in the world. Exchanging currency does no such thing, because it gives the foreigners an equal claim against future Japanese assets: no net gain in wealth. Selling to each other also does not give them (as a nation) the increased buying power outside Japan that selling their goods and services for foreign dollars gives them.
Under your scheme, if a Polish person exchanges Euros for Yen in Japan and then buys a beer in Tokyo, did Japan just "earn dollars"? Because I think it's pretty clear that nothing referred to as a "dollar" moved hands here.
So, 'if a Polish person exchanges Euros for Yen in Japan and then buys a beer in Tokyo, did Japan just "earn dollars"?' Yes, they DID just metaphorically earn tourist dollars, and no, they did NOT literally earn any "dollars". I might also have said that thanks to the Polish customers, Japanese bartenders were able to metaphorically bring home the bacon, except that you would then probably get upset and explain to me that Poles in a Japanese bar would pay in yen, not in pork products.
Essentially letting billions of $ of infrastructure go to complete waste?
That said, I agree with you. Then again the host city always pulls the shit end of the stick when organizing such an event.
This is indeed what is called a sunk cost fallacy.
If Japan pulls the plug, they are likely on the hook to pay back billions to broadcasters and sponsors. So thinking purely in terms of USD, it might actually be cheaper to press forward than to cancel the games.
Some of them won’t get a chance to participate in 4 years time.
What is the cost of running the games though?
I assume (with absolutely no evidence) that the costs would be heavily skewed towards facilities setup and infrastructure. That’s a sunk fixed cost.
I’m sure there is a large security and labor cost when the games are going on. I assume this would be a variable cost that would be reduced without spectators.
If the majority of the cost has already been spent and it’s a relatively small (perhaps less than a few hundred million dollars) cost to conduct the games, why not go through with it? Maybe running a limited games could be a compromise?
I suppose all of the Tokyo 2020 merchandise is already written off and useless.
I acknowledge the whole calculus changes with public health and the pandemic. I’m addressing money as the issue.
Anyways I’m a huge fan of all Olympic events, and the Olympics is the only sporting event(s) I watch. I look forward to them when they come, so I’ll definitely be sad if it was all cancelled, and I’m definitely biased.
That's 0.027% of the population of Tokyo per day in a city that has over 6,000 people packed in per square kilometer.
By comparison, Idaho has a population density of 7.64 people per square kilometer, and right now the infection rate there is 0.021% of its population per day.
That's only a 30% difference in percentage of population infected per day, but there are three orders of magnitude between their population densities!
Whatever Tokyo is doing to keep COVID under control with such a crazy high population density, it looks like we've got an entire state over here in the U.S. that could still learn some of the basics.
Whether it’s some sort of evolved protection from a similar virus in the past or similar viruses being common in the present, there’s definitely a reason.
I haven't seen any suggestions that the region has a higher acquired immunity to coronaviruses. And other countries in the region (Japan, Indonesia, India and China) had high numbers of infections and fatalities.
The virus you are looking fo is SARS - but I would guess it is more the government response rather than the individual immune response that has learned for it.
You have Boise, Pocatello, and the CdA area up north. Besides that, there are only a few small, sparse towns. This affects the average density greatly.
Be fair in your conclusions, please.
I lived in Japan, have many friends there whom I keep in touch with, and watch the local news regularly. The restrictions in the major cities have been substantially fewer than we've had here in the US. There have been two voluntary states of emergency, where businesses were encouraged (but not required) to reduce hours. Nearly all have remained open. This winter, the government discussed enacting emergency laws to allow fining businesses that don't comply (not sure if that went anywhere...), but mostly they tried to incentivize businesses by providing subsidies to places that reduced hours.
To be sure, fewer people are going out and using transit, but a large number of my friends are still going to work in the office, going out to eat, etc. Until late this past fall, the government was actually encouraging domestic travel, via a national voucher system. This was only suspended once cases were clearly spiking around the nation. Compared to (e.g.) New York, Tokyo looks basically normal, even today. The most visible difference is the lack of tourists.
AFAICT, the only broad conclusion one can draw from Japan is that most of the things that are held sacred here in the US don't seem to matter very much at all in their context.
The mix of policies (specifically the lack of testing and rapid testing) has led to Japan being one of the least effective East Asian countries in containing COVID (just compare it to Taiwan, South Korea, or China), but leagues better than the west. Some of that calculus has changed with B117 and other variants, especially those that spread more with children, you’re seeing now reports of community spread of these variants in schools being reported (Japan’s focus in cluster tracing, while it has been overwhelmed at times I believe can also be given a lot of credit for keeping numbers much lower than they would otherwise be).
I had something in there about this, but deleted it because I thought it was distracting from the main point, and any mention of masks brings out the politics.
That said: I see an...well, let's just call it interesting...number of Japanese people socializing in small restaurants, bars, etc. without wearing masks. Likewise, it's really common to see TV talent wandering around Tokyo wearing no mask, or one of those teeny tiny transparent plastic chin-visor things [1]. I see it literally every day (via facebook, instagram, LINE, etc.) Try to wear one of those in a grocery store in San Francisco or New York. I dare you.
Is this "proof"? No, of course not. But I do roll my eyes when people present Japan as a magical masking wonderland. The truth is more complicated. Just like New York or SF right now, people walk around with masks on the street, where they do ~no good. They then go inside to tiny, crowded bars and restaurants...and take off their masks. At the very least, this is all a bit overblown.
(If you want my speculation, I think the fact that Japanese people have a culture of being quiet probably plays a bigger role than masks. There aren't a lot of people talking loudly in crowded public spaces. Except for bars and restaurants, people are quiet and respectful of shared space. One of the things I loved most about living there.)
[1] https://p.globalsources.com/IMAGES/PDT/BIG/614/B1176919614.j...
Same in Seoul. When discussing this matter with friends located elsewhere, they seem to have difficulty believing this, but every cafe and restaurant will have 90%+ of visitors talking without masks after they finish eating until the time they leave. (Those sitting alone quietly reading a book will wear masks, ironically they’re the smallest threat.) Government has been dealing with this by temporarily forcing franchised shops to shut down, and later restricting working hours of coffeeshops and restaurants (a few in the area, mostly franchises, had to close forever), while people more or less continued to behave the same way throughout the pandemic if they manage to find a place open for eating in. At a cafe or a restaurant, it almost seems like it’s socially unacceptable to be conversing with a friend whilst wearing a mask.
This makes little sense to me, especially since walking outdoors without a mask is perceived as taboo[0]. At some point public parks had sitting spaces and grass non-figuratively taped over with signs preventing people from gathering in fresh air, all the while restaurants stringing along park edges were visibly chock full of people gathering to talk indoors (I’ve taken a few photos as it was a shocking sight). Initially this made me furious as I saw pure malice in that arrangement; later someone told me that the government “just” wanted to not be liable for infections that occur in spaces under their direct jurisdiction. This persisted for months until people gradually started ignoring the tape in the park.
The only place where everyone reliably wears a mask is buses: bus drivers monitor the cabin and seem to take this matter very seriously.
If I’m to speculate, the reason it’s comparatively fine now is thanks to extensive testing and seemingly working contact tracing measures.
[0] You’ll be judged unless you are stationary and smoking, in which case no one would bat an eye. Go figure!
Are Korean people more likely to wear a mask in public when they're feeling sick?
I’d say “yes but not quite to degree people seem to expect”.
First, I don’t have direct evidence as I stopped working from an office a while back, but I believe that within office spaces—which fall under semi-public indoor spaces I suppose—being maskless outside smoking areas is not tolerated.
Second, I believe people have on average reduced the time they spend in indoor spaces (maskless or not) other than their homes or work, since eating out slightly lost popularity relative to getting food delivered since the pandemic started. (Still, many people do eat out in groups and restaurants have rarely been empty, only shut down during peaks.)
> Are Korean people more likely to wear a mask in public when they're feeling sick?
You’d be hard-pressed to find people being visibly sick in public, this seems to carry a strong stigma. I could maybe spot 1–2 people in a week sneezing/coughing outdoors or in a cafe, and this won’t be someone in a chatty maskless group. Transmission by asymptomatic carriers is the one that concerns me.
I think the above equally applies to Koreans as it does to foreigners residing in Seoul.
(Above is from my perspective only, could be biased.)
1. In USA, few restaurant workers have job security. If they take sick leave, they lose their jobs. So when they get sick, they go in to work and spread it. In Japan & Korea, most restaurant workers can stay home when sick.
2. In USA, most people don't have the idea of staying home from social events when sick. When they have a cold, they will take medicine to suppress symptoms while they visit family & friends, go to church, etc. This happens much less in Japan & Korea.
3. In USA, before the pandemic, nobody wore a mask while socializing when sick. Even now, it is rare in many parts of the country. In Japan & Korea, wearing a mask when sick in public is expected, like wearing clothing over your underwear. So a Japanese or Korean person who feels a little under the weather will opt to keep their mask on when attending a maskless gathering, but an American in the same situation will likely take theirs off.
4. Smoking was banned in restaurants & bars in Korea in 2015 and Japan in 2020. So most restaurants in those countries still have powerful ventilation systems designed to handle cigarette smoke. They can turn them up to reduce Covid transmission risk. In USA, most places banned smoking in restaurants & bars about 10-20 years ago. Since that time, many restaurant ventilation systems have been replaced or reconfigured to reduce the air exchange rate.
These and other differences add up to a large reduction in virus spread.
I have heard many Americans write essentially, "People are maskless in restaurants in Japan and Korea and there's no spike, so we can do it in my country too and not get a spike." I think this conclusion is incorrect. It is based on incomplete knowledge of the differences between their country and Japan & Korea.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_smoking_bans_in_the_Un...
If people here were more aware of the mechanics of spread and asymptomatic carriers, I think the high peaks could have been avoided.
As to ventilation, before it was officially banned many restaurants were already non-smoking. Add to that the incredibly fast churn of restaurants closing, opening and renovating, and you can see there’s no perceptible residue from that period. (I don’t observe particularly strong ventilation in Seoul restaurants or cafes, but to be fair I am mostly comparing to Hong Kong, not US.)
No, this isn't even close to true. I've spent far too many hours crammed into trains, classrooms, offices and bars, next to sniffling Japanese people who were walking around sans masks, to believe this silly narrative. Getting on a crowded train and having a guy repeatedly sniffing his runny nose six inches from your face is practically a running joke.
The Japanese people I know mostly seemed to wear masks to keep their faces warm in winter, and to reduce allergies during the cedar season. Girls would sometimes wear them to hide their faces or to hide a blemish. Maybe some people wore them to prevent disease, but it was far from a universal goal.
> So a Japanese or Korean person who feels a little under the weather will opt to keep their mask on when attending a maskless gathering, but an American in the same situation will likely take theirs off.
This is a great example of stereotyping and asian exceptionalism. If anything, Japanese people are immensely aware of social pressure, and won't go against obvious social cues.
:(
I interpret that as a personal insult. Let's disagree without insulting each other.
> > So a Japanese or Korean person who feels a little under the weather will opt to keep their mask on when attending a maskless gathering, but an American in the same situation will likely take theirs off.
> This is a great example of stereotyping and asian exceptionalism.
Yes, we're talking about millions of people in aggregate. This requires stereotyping. Stereotyping is only bad when you expect an individual to behave like the aggregate.
> If anything, Japanese people are immensely aware of social pressure, and won't go against obvious social cues.
That's what I was trying to convey with my statement that wearing a mask is expected like wearing clothing over underwear. Your point about people sniffling on the train is compatible with a social expectation of wearing masks when sick. Every society has some non-conformists. The difference is that sick-no-maskers in Japan & Korea are outliers and in many parts of USA they are the majority. This is what I meant about many small differences adding up.
This is not about individual no-maskers, but rather a peculiar social norm to collectively forgo wearing masks in certain situations.
If you're having lunch with someone, you probably know them well and trust them to have a sense of hygiene. Some random person who sneezes on Line 9 during the morning rush, not so much. Or at least that's how people's minds appear to work.
This behavior seems to be sustainable only because the background rate of infection is so low. It really is vanishingly unlikely for anyone you come across in a coffee shop to have the virus, as most of the cases have occurred in relatively isolated groups like religious cults, prisons, and hospitals.
My exasperation mostly comes down to nonsensical norms/regulations where a person safely not wearing a mask outdoors to get fresh air has to fear being judged (or having police called on, I suppose) by the very people who semi-daily engage in active airborne fluid exchange with random strangers sharing the same cafe as their group of friends or coworkers. If I had a say in this, either the former has to be recognized as socially acceptable (2m distance and so on, of course), or the latter has to stop being tolerated. It almost physically pains me to see people getting outside to enjoy a clear day with great AQI, and everyone must be either wearing a mask or smoking.
Oh, and the measure with the parks seems absolutely ridiculous. Never been one to hang out in a park, but seeing groups of friends virtually being ushered by signs from outdoors into a cafe to talk is bizarre.
Good for the country on the testing effort and having things more or less under control, though.
Are Japanese people more likely to wear a mask in public when they're feeling sick?
Do Japanese restaurants still have good ventilation systems, originally installed to remove cigarette smoke before the 2020 indoor smoking ban?
I know at least one study that shows infection rates did not change with co-morbidities, see Fig 6b in https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-19509-y
However I would not be surprised to see slightly higher infection rates mediated by healthier immune systems in healthier folks.
"... indicating that SARS-CoV-2 is more likely to enter the human body in obese people as compared with non-obese people."
Not sure why you left out that the study was done on obese patients that also have COPD. You can also check the primary source [3].
"In summary, we have shown increased ACE2 expression in the bronchial epithelium of COPD patients who are overweight compared to those who are not overweight. This may provide increased opportunities for SARS-CoV-2 infection of the respiratory tract. These individuals may be at greater risk of developing severe COVID-19."
Again, that's a hypothesis that makes completely sense, but from your study alone we do not know how much greater the risk is - 0.5% 5%, 50%?
> Of the 2.5 million COVID-19 deaths reported by the end of February 2021, 2.2 million were in countries where more than half the population is classified as overweight
Japan is not one of those countries.
As someone who lives in Japan I can tell you that the general population isn't wearing high quality, fitted masks in controlled conditions and using their clinical training to avoid disease transmission, which might provide the conditions that any study done on masks could have the possibility to back. No, there's plenty of cheap, reused, badly fitted, incorrectly worn, regularly touched and inconsistent mask wearing by people who've not had any training in how to limit transmission, which would explain the frequent flu epidemics[1][2][3].
[0] https://www.worldobesityday.org/assets/downloads/COVID-19-an...
[1] https://www.nippon.com/en/japan-data/h00386/japan-gripped-by...
[2] https://english.kyodonews.net/news/2018/01/e609ee653721-flu-...
The only reasonable answer I have seen so far about Japan is that we don't really know. It is certainly true that many people don't wear masks properly in Japan (e.g. every time I get out, even just to combini, I see people not wearing masks on the nose). But is it worth than not wearing one ? I am not sure we really know. I've seen conflicting info there.
> The figures are affected by the age structure of national populations and a country’s relative wealth and reporting capacity, but our findings appear to be independent of these contributory factors
It's got links to a lot of other studies (admittedly, I'm yet to read those) but the summaries they give seem to really place the importance on the size of the waistline.
Now, according to https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-data/investi..., the risks of hospitalization in 85+ years is more than 10x the risk in 30-39 year old range.
If we're talking about mortality, it is more than 100x difference between those two age ranges.
It is really not comparable: being old is much much worse than being obese as far as hospitalization/mortality goes w/ covid.
> As we show in this report, increased bodyweight is the second greatest predictor of hospitalisation and a high risk of death for people suffering from COVID-19. Only old age rates as a higher risk factor.
But if you're really going to compare against age then you'd need to correct for obesity or you're simply including it and possibly compounding any risk.
> the risks of hospitalization in 85+ years is more than 10x the risk in 30-39 year old range.
Is the difference 10x in Japan, too?
The point is (or was) to discern a difference between why Japan has lower cases and/or mortality vs Europe and America. All three have plenty of old people, Japan has the greatest percentage. There is also a marked difference between their average waistlines too.
Japan should have the highest cases and/or mortality of the three and yet it has the lowest. I'm not a betting man and "masks are the reason", without a shred of evidence to back it, isn't going to change that habit, especially given the competition:
> Is this link between COVID-19 and overweight found across the globe? > Yes. > A large number of studies and systematic reviews have found increased risk of severe symptoms from COVID-19 associated with excess bodyweight. The table here gives some examples (pg 14)
And the table really does give plenty of examples. From the US:
> People with obesity more than twice as likely to need hospitalisation and more than six times as likely to need mechanically assisted breathing and more than six times as likely to die following development of COVID-19. (pg 14)
From the UK:
> People with overweight 67% more likely to need intensive care, and people with obesity three times as likely to need intensive care, following development of COVID-19. (pg 14)
…among many others. It continues:
> Taking data from over 160 countries, we find linear correlations between a country’s COVID-19 mortality rates and their estimated degree of overweight or obesity prevalence (pg 15)
and here's the kicker:
> The diagram shows high mortality rates *only* in countries where overweight prevalence exceeds around 50% of the adult population. (pg 15)
Emphasis mine. As to directly comparing Japan and the US and UK, they've added a helpful index:
- COVID-19 deaths per 100,000 population (01/01/2021)
- Adult overweight BMI >25kg/m2 (2016)
- Adult obesity BMI >30kg/m2 (2016)
- Population age over 65 years (%) (2020)
- Per capita Gross Domestic Product $US (2019)
- Healthy life expectancy years (2019) Insufficient physical activity % adults (2016)
- Japan 2.60, 27.2, 4.3, 28.4, 74.1, 35.5
- UK 110.73, 63.7, 27.8, 18.7, 70.1, 35.9
- US 105.68, 67.9, 36.2, 16.6, 66.1, 40.0
As to mask wearing, well, if survey results of real world usage are to be believed, then it really is no contest, as the charts here show:
https://twitter.com/ianmSC/status/1366148529983426560
Edit: formatting. I do like the stripped down approach of HN but would it really be too much to supply a markdown processor, or <gasp> a format guide?
It's unsurprising countries with obesity epidemics such as the United States have higher rates of covid mortality. There have been several stories where someone in their twenties dies of covid, but until you see the photo you had no idea they were morbidly obese.
If I had to guess I'd say in healthier populations many people may have covid and just shrug it off without necessarily getting tested and adding to case numbers.
Following that tangent, I had a couple of family members turn 16 recently and I wondered what advice I could give them now that they are adults (or, at least, they will certainly believe that to be so! Ah, the folly of youth:)
My thoughts settled on what would basically be me telling my younger self about my regrets or (perceived) failings in life and to avoid them. I then wondered if they'd listen, which I doubt (again, the folly of youth) and whether I'd even be able to put it in a form that they would understand. Rather like me trying to teach them programming before they've opened a terminal or even an HTML file, I can't tell them the deepest insights until they've done quite a bit and failed quite a bit too.
I haven't decided on my advice yet or if I should, but yours sounds good. Still, it's hard to realise what unhealthy means when you're young and fit, even if it's only relative to your older self.
But to be perfectly blunt, to a young man I would just tell him girls aren't going to really like you unless you get down to a healthy weight. That's the only thing that will probably get though.
Note that age is actually the most reliable predictor for hospitalization and death with COVID-19 [3][4] although you can make more accurate estimates with some other factors as well [5]. Note, based on the age-stratified pyramids, Japan's expected IFR sits right at the top [6], so even if you discount the undercounting of hospitalizations and deaths, there's still a huge disparity to make up.
BTW, your argument on flu outbreaks actually lends credence that the mask mitigations have been extremely effective. Here's a recent NHK report on the flu numbers this year [7]: - "The number of patients with seasonal flu in Japan was below 100 during the first seven days of February. That's far below the levels seen before. ... Usually, seasonal flu peaks at this time of year, with the number of flu patients per week ranging between 100,000 and 200,000 people." Flu cases are 1000-2000X less than normal.
I'm in Tokyo myself and paying close attention to how people are behaving (and comparing it to the footage and media I'm seeing from the US and other countries) and there's a huge difference in behavior from what I've seen over this past year. If you're disappointed by how the general population behaves here, I suspect you'd be horrified/stupefied by what's going on in the rest of the world. My conclusion is that on a population/public health level, it actually doesn't take all that much effort to contain the spread of the virus (elimination is much harder, although several countries have shown that it can be done, and have reaped the economic & social benefits of doing so).
[1] Richardson, Safiya, Jamie S. Hirsch, Mangala Narasimhan, James M. Crawford, Thomas McGinn, Karina W. Davidson, and the Northwell COVID-19 Research Consortium, et al. “Presenting Characteristics, Comorbidities, and Outcomes Among 5700 Patients Hospitalized With COVID-19 in the New York City Area.” JAMA 323, no. 20 (May 26, 2020): 2052. https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2020.6775.
[2] https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/adult.html
[3] O’Driscoll, Megan, Gabriel Ribeiro Dos Santos, Lin Wang, Derek A. T. Cummings, Andrew S. Azman, Juliette Paireau, Arnaud Fontanet, Simon Cauchemez, and Henrik Salje. “Age-Specific Mortality and Immunity Patterns of SARS-CoV-2.” Nature 590, no. 7844 (February 2021): 140–45. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-2918-0.
[4] Levin, Andrew T., William P. Hanage, Nana Owusu-Boaitey, Kensington B. Cochran, Seamus P. Walsh, and Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz. “Assessing the Age Specificity of Infection Fatality Rates for COVID-19: Systematic Review, Meta-Analysis, and Public Policy Implications.” European Journal of Epidemiology 35, no. 12 (December 1, 2020): 1123–38. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10654-020-00698-1.
[5] Ghisolfi, Selene, Ingvild Almås, Justin C Sandefur, Tillman von Carnap, Jesse Heitner, and Tessa Bold. “Predicted COVID-19 Fatality Rates Based on Age, Sex, Comorbidities and Health System Capacity.” BMJ Global Health 5, no. 9 (September 9, 2020). https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjgh-2020-003094.
[6] https://github.com/mbevand/covid19-age-stratified-ifr#age-st...
You definitely have a point there (and that's not to say you don't have a point in the rest of what you wrote, some very interesting stuff, before I get lost on a tangent…) as I've not left Japan during the pandemic, making a good comparison is that bit more difficult.
I certainly wouldn't deny there are many factors at play, though if I were going to bet on the major factors and their order of importance (which is hugely simplistic but lists are fun):
1. age (obviously)
2. weight
3. vitamin D levels
4. hand hygiene
5. limiting contact / social distance
I can't say that I'd be impressed at Japan's attack on (4) and (5) but (2) and (3) seem like very strong buffers for the virus and/or disease. I'll be interested to see what comes out in the wash but I'm expecting it to take years, at least, if only because of political considerations.
> BTW, your argument on flu outbreaks actually lends credence that the mask mitigations have been extremely effective.
I do wonder if it's more the case that people feeling sick are sent home or don't come to work at all? Certainly it's happening far more often than in the past (as an aside, my wife's friend had a stroke while at work, continued working, and the next morning still rang into work to excuse herself, while partly paralysed and increasingly losing motor function… and wasn't believed and told to come in!). That and all the temperature checking could improve matters from other years. Again, it needs research.
The part of me that likes dark humour would muse that bringing real sick days to Japan and the end of the hanko might justify releasing the virus from the lab it was created in…
* There's probably consistently an undercount (in my head, I just multiply the daily numbers by 5-10X), but not much more than that as we saw in Dec-Jan that a true spike will be reflected by hospital overflows (https://www.stopcovid19.jp/ has been my go-to for tracking hospitalization numbers). There's some finagling of the death toll as well (COVID-19 deaths reported as pneumonia) but I think we'll get a true accounting eventually with excess mortality modeling (offset by much lower flu) that won't be so far off to matter. [1][2] Overall, somehow, the numbers really have been pretty low. This is corroborated by most seroprevalence research. [3][4]
* There seems to have been a lot more spread amongst young people in Tokyo/Osaka, especially over the summer but it seems to be fairly well contained - I think that metabolic health does play a big role there in why there wasn't a big spike in serious cases (obesity, and maybe more importantly, hypovitaminosis D is significantly lower in Japan). As to why it didn't spread beyond that group like most other places, I believe that the lower rate of shared housing is likely a big factor - single person households makes up an amazing (and still increasing) 35% of the population. Anecdotally, there seems to have been a conscious decision by many people to not see older family members to put them at risk, and there's been some interesting (but not conclusive) research on Japanese lockdown behaviors that seem to differ a bit from what I've seen in the West. [5][6]
* While there are exceptions, again, totally anecdotally, I've seen a huge decrease in people publicly coughing, sneezing etc and when there have been people coughing in public, generally people were well, avoiding them like they had the plague. In any case, I think an early focus on ventilation and near universal masking was pretty successful in significantly lowering casual spread.
* One thing that hasn't been reported much, but Bromhexine and Ambroxol are both very common OTC cold medicines in Japan. These are TMPRSS2 inhibitors, blocking the primary entry path for the SARS-CoV-2 virus (the secondary path, endosomal entry, can be blocked by Nitazoxanide or Niclosamide). It's quite possible that in Japan, people have been unknowingly taking medicine that has been effective in moderating COVID-19 severity (this to me, seems more likely than any proposed variolation effect).[7] To me, one of the frustrating things over the past few months is that there's been enough research pointing towards many low-risk prophylactics/treatments that are probably effective for preventing severe COVID that have been pretty largely ignored.
[1] Yorifuji, Takashi, Naomi Matsumoto, and Soshi Takao. “Excess All-Cause Mortality During the COVID-19 Outbreak in Japan.” Journal of Epidemiology 31, no. 1 (January 5, 2021): 90–92. https://doi.org/10.2188/jea.JE20200492.
[2] Kurita, Junko, Tamie Sugawara, Yoshiyuki Sugishita, and Yasushi Ohkusa. “Excess Mortality Probably Due to COVID-19 in Tokyo, Japan in August and September, 2020.” MedRxiv, February 9, 2021, 2020.07.09.20143164. https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.07.09.20143164.
[3] Yoshiyama, Takashi, Yasuki Saito, Kunitsugu Masuda, Yoshiko Nakanishi, Yasutoshi Kido, Kazuhiro Uchimura, Satoshi Mitarai, et al. “Prevalence of SARS-CoV-2–Specific Antibodies, Japan, June 2020 - Volume 27, Number 2—February 2021 - Emerging Infectious Diseases Journal - CDC.” Accessed March 11, 2021. https://doi.org/10.3201/eid2702.204088.
[4] Tanaka, Akihito, Shohei Yamamoto, Kengo Miyo, Tetsuya Mizoue, Kenji Maeda, Wataru Sugiura, Hiroaki Mitsuya, Haruhito Sugiyama, and Norio Ohmagari. “Seroprevalence of Antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 in a Large National Hospital and Affiliated Facility in Tokyo, Japan.” The Journal of Infection. Accessed March 11, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jinf.2021.01.010.
[5] CARF:Center for Advanced Research in Finance. “Japan’s Voluntary Lockdown.” https://www.carf.e.u-tokyo.ac.jp/en/research/5603/.
[6] Muto, Kaori, Isamu Yamamoto, Miwako Nagasu, Mikihito Tanaka, and Koji Wada. “Japanese Citizens’ Behavioral Changes and Preparedness against COVID-19: An Online Survey during the Early Phase of the Pandemic.” PLOS ONE 15, no. 6 (June 11, 2020): e0234292. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0234292.
[7] Gandhi, Monica, and George W. Rutherford. “Facial Masking for Covid-19 — Potential for ‘Variolation’ as We Await a Vaccine.” New England Journal of Medicine 383, no. 18 (October 29, 2020): e101. https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJMp2026913.
Again, veering into speculation: I think we're going to find out that the #1 most important thing any country did was to close the borders fast and hard before case counts became so large as to be unmanageable. Everything else is just nibbling around the edges of the problem.
Of course, you have to ask yourself if the US ever could have done anything like that. There's pretty decent evidence that the virus was circulating silently in the US in late 2019. Even if we closed the borders on January 1, 2020, it was probably already too late. It's a lot easier to get ahead of that game when you aren't one of the world's leading international travel destinations.
Most places have followed the suggestions. For the last 2 months nearly every bar and restaurant has closed by 8pm. While being open at all might seem like a problem subtracting 2 to 8 hrs off opening time, especially 2hrs of the busiest times in Japan at least, reduces the number of people exposed reducing the R number.
I live in Shibuya (one of the more busy places in Tokyo). I can walk out there right now (8:06pm) and show you that 95% or more of restaurants are closed. Even the ramen places (usually open til 5-6am) and places like Yoshinoya, Matsuya, etc (usually 24hrs) are closed.
OTOH if I go walk down at 7:30pm (before they close) lots of places will be fairly full (60-100%) and of course most people have their masks off to eat and drink. Lots of places do have extra dividers between tables and/or between the kitchen area and everything else.
As for fewer people using transit, that is not clear to me. You can look at the ridership numbers for the various train lines and compare them to before COVID. The numbers are at 80-90% ridership, at least during commute. Of course even 10% less ridership would lower R but rush hour is insane in Tokyo so I'm surprised the crowded rush out trains have not been a huge vector for spreading.
All of this suggests something about Japan is different. It could be mask compliance. It's probably 98-99%. (where as for white foreigners I'd say it's around 75%). It could be that the changes are just enough to keep R low. I could be genetics (Japan is fairly homogenous)? It could relative health level? It could be cleanliness?
update: took that walk. My guess is at least 80% of restaurants and bars were closed. I feel like if I'd counted places on the 2nd/3rd/4th/5th floors it would be higher. When the video zoom in on some sign it's to show the "20" for 20 o clock (ie, closes at 8pm). The video is 8:30 to 9pm, tonight, March 10th, 2021
In Canada, we didn't had a lot of policies against air travelers until last month.
So if you're living in Japan, you're basically flying blind, it's very hard to ready what's really going on and assess the situation.
It's also worth noting that he number of tests performed each day wildly fluctuates between 2000-9000 in Tokyo, so again, it's very hard to read. Weekend testing is far lower than weekday etc.
See https://covid19japan.com/ for more information.
My guess is, Western countries have much more transparent agencies and government watch dogs which help keep things honest, whereas Japan is a grey area when it comes to Government influence over the situation and the perception surrounding it.
Are you suggesting that the media is to blame for something?
If the results presented are hourly, daily or weekly, that’s just the resolution of said metric.
Maybe you’re arguing there isn’t much point in having higher resolution metrics than weekly but I don’t see how taking more frequent measurements matter, it doesn’t change the outcomes.
There is an interesting trick that is often taught to students of Japanese to faithfully reproduce the sounds in the language: that is to cover one's teeth with one's lips while speaking as much as possible, as most of the characteristic sounds of Japanese are caused by this.
This greatly reduces the amount of air that escapes as one speaks Japanese.
As there is scientific evidence to back up the idea that phonological features of languages affect the spread of diseases:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7263261/
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...
I’m in a country where cases are now exploding because of the Brit mutation. And the whole Italy situation last year was a mutation I believe.
I can’t help but think Europe is completely fucked with this virus. Our genetics don’t seem well adapted to the virus, and now we have super infectious strains.
Meanwhile everyone is getting vaccinated, so by the time the mutations would get out of Europe they’ll be ok. (Brazil and SA being the exception).
So I feel like us here in Europe are proper fucked compared to the rest of the world.
I honestly don't understand why we don't see restaurants here in the U.S. (edit: my reference is New Hampshire) with at least HEPA filters. Ideally they'd crack the window open even in the winter.
Maybe, but I'm skeptical. Maybe the COVID strain active in Japan is much less virulent than the one in the US. Maybe testing standards are different. Maybe infection identification standards are different. But in general, I'm highly skeptical that this is an apples-to-apples comparison.
I have a friend who is a Westerner with a Japanese family, 2 young kids, has been there decades... she couldn't risk leaving the country to visit her own parents in an emergency because she would be prohibited from reentering Japan and seeing her husband and young children again for an undefined period of time. Ultimately that period ended up being something like 6~8 months before they finally changed the freaking law. The policy was unprecedented and illogical, I don't think any other extreme covid prevention countries went that far. Slightly mistiming a trip pre-covid and she would have been kept from her children for that many months, completely crazy
There is no single Schengen visa system- while holders of a visa for one Schengen country can travel freely within the area, the individual countries still have the choice to issue them. As far as I know most Schengen countries kept issuing long-term visas.
Humans have an innate bias to trust members of their own social group more than strangers and it takes effort to correct this bias. When under (perceived) threat this in/out thinking is exacerbated.
Olympics make everyone build a bob sleigh track. But it's such a niche sport and no one will ever use it again in most of the world. Or for summer olympics, one basically has to build an artificial river so a few people can kayak slalom.
Cost of these things are huge, and will most often not be much used by the population after. Instead, split it so that existing stuff can be reused. While it's cool with an olympic city, having 3 or more is probably just as nice an experience.
I fear the only way things will change is if the world refuses to bid on hosting these things. Then the IOC will have to get creative if they want to see their corrupt legacy continue.
I think that having the Olympics in one place for each season would be most 'entertaining', and better for the IOC.
Let's take the summer Olympics, likely to be in Athens as the spot. 'Top' countries would then pay pretty good money to have practice locations around Athens, so that the athletes get used to the area and are comfortable with the event locations. Heck, you could have them use the actual facilities as well.
Now, as is usual with Olympic coverage, the lead-up is all about how terrible things are going, and the ~two weeks of it are all about how the Olympic Village is running out of condoms. Not to be too crass, but having many athletes in Athens all the time would be a 24/7 discussion about very fit young people's intimate relationships and national pride.
It's a TV goldmine. And one the IOC can license.
Think about it: something like a HS-teen drama, with very beautiful/fit people, all in a crowded space, all competing together in disparate events, all with national pride on the line, and with a four year deadline for the 'show'. The relationships, of course, would be a big part of the idea, to further amp up the drama that the competition provides. Language barrier mishaps, tall-dark-hansomes, different dating customs, distant parents, coaches yelling, slipping out at night to abscond with a new relationship, national pride, crossing national barriers in friendship, creating new rivalries, the pressure cooker, etc. And then, at the end, the actual events and the epilogue that is a gold-medal ceremony after four years of hype.
And all of it being done with the IOC getting a cut, possibly making even more cash so they go along with it.
I think it would be great TV.
I agree that the Tokyo Olympic situation sucks. Rather, it’s the worst of both worlds.
I still remember that Tokyo started removing swastikas around the city because of the olympics around a year ago and that felt so backwards already then, before COVID.
Depending on what they'll decide to do, I can clearly see this becoming a situation that many will consider unfair.
Vaccination in JP lags the US and UK. A survey found 75% of locals don't favor foreign visitors for the Olympics. They are fearful of SARS-COV-2 variants.
On the other hand, why not allow foreigners who can prove they are vaccinated with the vaccine that immunizes against variants and also get the locals vaccinated?
And, implicitly, if Japan isn't trusting vaccines, should other countries have similar concerns about free travel?
https://reason.com/2021/03/08/contrary-to-what-the-cdcs-new-...
In fact, the CDC just updated it's own guidelines to reflect these same facts:
https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2021/0...
If anything, these guidelines are conservative.
Continuing to wear a mask in public is about compliance, not safety per se: if exceptions were made for the vaccinated, people who just don't want to wear a mask would be hard to separate from those who are no longer at risk of catching or spreading the disease.
As someone who has had natural immunity (it sucked, made a full recovery) for most of the pandemic, this has been on my mind, since masking is purely cosmetic for me.
Every additional exception introduces costs and risks so it makes sense for a part of the population to signal compliance unnecessarily.
> During a follow-up period beginning seven days after the second dose, vaccinated subjects were 92 percent less likely to test positive for the coronavirus, 94 percent less likely to develop COVID-19 symptoms, and 92 percent less likely to suffer serious disease. In other words, the risk of infection at this stage was much smaller than it was in the unvaccinated group. Although that risk was not completely eliminated, the CDC notes that "preliminary data from Israel suggest that persons vaccinated with Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine who develop COVID-19 have a four-fold lower viral load than unvaccinated persons," which implies that they are less likely to transmit the virus even when they are infected.
This seems consistent with what I wrote earlier.
Further, from the NPR article:
> Vaccinated people can also visit, unmasked, with people from another household who are not yet vaccinated, as long as those people are at low risk of serious illness from the virus. However, the agency said, vaccinated people should continue to wear masks when they're in public, avoid crowds and take other precautions when gathering with unvaccinated people who are at high risk of serious illness from COVID-19.
Nothing is guaranteed in life. There is always risk.
Lol, it's Japan. I bet on any given day you could find that 75% of locals don't favor foreign something. (To be fair, they are not unique in this)
Japan isn't even currently granting long-term work visas for professionals who will contribute to the economy for multiple years, ostensibly to curb spread of the virus. Consequently, it's a bit silly that they will soon be allowing tens of thousands of Olympic employees and athletes to enter the country, who will all be exempt from the standard quarantine procedure.
People are still able to move to Japan and visas are being granted. There's just a 2 week quarantine when people arrive.
However, on December 28, due to rising case numbers, Japan declared another national state of emergency and stopped issuing new visas. My partner has a job offer in Japan, but is currently unable to join me / start work due to the stoppage of new visas.