This is the first article where I've found Japan's odd "cluster-infection" theory of how coronavirus spreads laid out in the English-language press. There are three important things to understand about the Japanese response:https://abcnews.go.com/International/japans-sudden-spike-coronavirus-cases-tokyo-olympics-postponement/story?id=70041840 …
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First, at least part of the public health community in Japan holds to a "cluster and megacluster" theory of the disease, where most infected people don't spread it, but a few are very good at spreading it. You stop the spread by identifying the clusters, then isolating the seed.pic.twitter.com/WlD784Stji
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Second, the protocol for a very long time was that anyone testing positive would be hospitalized. This meant that hospital space was the gating function for testing—you didn't want to bother testing anyone who would be a waste of a good hospital bed. This precluded wide testing.
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Third, the national government (as the article discusses) has been preoccupied with the Olympics and their own economic reform plan. They seem to imagine the economy as existing apart from whether or not thousands of people become gravely ill or die.
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The dynamic is somewhat similar to the US—you have prefectural governors begging the central authority for action, or at least a coherent message, to give them room to act more forcefully on the local level. It is a failure of national leadership.
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Now, I'm just a random tech guy who happens to be in Japan. I welcome anyone to the thread who has a deeper insight into the Japanese context. But these are three things that seem obvious to people here, that are not really mentioned in the anglophone journalism I read online.
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Good people to follow on coronavirus in Japan:
@HirokoTabuchi ,@motokorich,@jt_mag_os1 reply 2 retweets 7 likesShow this thread
For the inside perspective, you should follow @fightingenie55, an account that translates tweets from @ClusterJapan into English
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One thing I forgot to mention about Japanese coronavirus theory: they place great weight on the "three C's": 1.Closed spaces with insufficient ventilation 2.Crowding 3.Conversations in short distance The public health focus is on places where all three are present
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