What's behind the rapid disappearance of the delta variant in Japan | Hacker News Reader

What's behind the rapid disappearance of the delta variant in Japan

japantimes.co.jp

29 pointsyoquan17 comments

  > According to a potentially revolutionary theory
  > proposed by Ituro Inoue, a professor at the
  > National Institute of Genetics, the delta
  > variant in Japan accumulated too many
  > mutations to the virus’s error-correcting,
  > non-structural protein called nsp14. As a
  > result, the virus struggled to repair the errors
  > in time, ultimately leading to “self-destruction.”

I know it's been 50 years since its publication, but please don't spoil the plot of The Andromeda Strain likes that, Japan Times.

They've shut their borders to virtually everyone since the Olypics ended, they've got one of the highest rates of vaccination in the G20, they also follow the masks, distancing and hygiene rules quite carefully, so that could explain why its not spread as much over there. However there's also a huge stigma attached to catching covid in Japan, which could lead to under reporting, also the presentation of the data may have been a bit inaccurate in the past, it may be better now, but we dont know.

Under reporting maybe, or possibly doing everything within ones power to avoid catching it.

For past year anyone catching covid at my wife’s school caused a massive disruption for dozens of people. With insane rules where sick kid positive still required teacher mother to go in anyway as well as other sibling. But anyone in the teachers class would be quarantined.

A simple stomach ache meant kid was home for 3 days. They figured that one out fast.

After a 3 months of total insanity you started hearing kids say things like,” my momma gonna swat me if goto the nurse”. Teachers were guilt tripped if they got sick. So Teachers would not report any symptoms, etc.

Now they just test everyone weekly regardless of vaccine or not.

http://web.archive.org/web/20211121142824/https://www.japant...

Government wanting to relaunch economy? Maybe they finally get that high count of infected doesn't matter if it doesn't kill people, and that the anti-social measures are going against other goals such as birth rate (which is made difficult since people meet way less than before) so it sends the memo to the media and scientists.

I am not sure about other countries, but here is what's going on in the Netherlands in 2021:

Since March, an average of 1,100 more babies have been born monthly compared to last year, an increase of 8 percent.

What are you implying? Government fudging birth numbers as well?

It seems plausible. To throw out a hypothesis, if work-from-home/lockdowns started in April/May 2020, people staying home/not going out on weekends might just get busier boinking each other, and even if they didn't want kids, statisically more accidental pregnancies will happen.

OP is not implying government conspiracy, OP is implying the latter.

You have a very high opinion of Governments in order to perpetuate a conspiracy on that scale.

> You have a very high opinion of Governments in order to perpetuate a conspiracy on that scale.

That's exactly what a government shill would say. /s

But seriously, I never found Hanlon's razor particularly convincing. The conspiracy theories usually say that there is some entity ABOVE your government that hands down the orders to the oblivious politician actors. Compartmentalization[0] is a common method in the military and intelligence community to keep the majority of their minions in the dark about the true nature and extent of their work.

Take Snowden for example: none of the (according to wikipedia) 30,000-40,000 internal employees stepped forward to blow the whistle on NSA's pervasive and illegal dragnet surveillance. It took Snowden, an external contractor of all things, to do what's right.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compartmentalization_(informat...

It's a matter of what you can persuade people is reasonable. It's not surprising at all to me that pretty much all the people in the NSA think that dragnet surveillance is justifiable. In fact they clearly do think that. I have a much harder time believing that CIA agents would think it's ok to blow up the Twin Towers in order for George Bush's cronies to clean up on military contracts, for example.

And in the case of the Japanese COVID figures, it’s not some single government agency, subject to pressure from above, that announces the infection totals. Hospitals and clinics throughout the country report infections they’ve identified to local government agencies, and those local government agencies put the data on their websites, from which the media get them. The Tokyo site is at [1] and the Tokushima Prefecture site is at [2], for example; NHK’s compilation site is at [3].

There are many people working throughout health care and government who would get very angry if they learned that the figures were being artificially suppressed, and there is an independent press that would be eager to report on it. And now that many prefectures are reporting zero cases and deaths on most days, if some people there had in fact been recently infected or had died, they or their families would notice the discrepancy and raise a stink, too.

I live in a Japan, and it is a relief that, at least for the moment, the infections have dropped so low. The nationwide figure on Monday was 50 new infections, the lowest in a year and a half. I doubt, though, if anyone who follows the news from Europe believes we’re necessarily out of the woods yet.

[1] https://stopcovid19.metro.tokyo.lg.jp/en

[2] https://www.pref.tokushima.lg.jp/foreignlanguage

[3] https://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/special/coronavirus/

It's part of the secret plan. Governments make sure they appear to be hopelessly incompetent at almost everything, so that nobody believes they can execute on conspiracies flawlessly.

why do you think governments cannot perpetuate conspiracies at this scale?

https://scroll.in/article/1005956/behind-bihars-vaccination-...

https://caravanmagazine.in/news/narendra-modi-birthday-covid...

https://science.thewire.in/health/bihar-manufactured-a-vacci...

what they did was, knowing this "birthday" of the idiot in chief was about to come, they falsified official covid vaccination figures to "show the acheievement" of having done that many vaccinations in one day.

Just a pointless exercise one might say but this is a concerted effort by the ruling party in india to normalize hiter/lenin/mao/xi style obedience to the "great leader" because that is how they wish to remain in power. conspiracy? probably. people already know so doesn't matter but still

I don’t know. If only because of the erectile dysfunction reports, I think most men would prefer not to get COVID. Probably their partners would appreciate them not getting it as well.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8450276/

I wonder why you got downvoted. I've found the paper you had linked quite interesting and to the point of this discussion

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