Hector Martin

When I visited Japan I saw a lot of people in public wearing masks. I asked, "Are they scared of getting sick?" I was told, "No, they think they could be sick and are protecting everyone else." And that was it. No complaining or wailing about masks. Just consideration for others.

And the Japanese flattened the curve w their mask use w no need for social distancing or shut down of business.

I'm all for masks, but this is incorrect. All shops are blaring social distancing and putting marks on the floor, the entire country was under a state of emergency for a while, concerts and other mass events have been canceled for months, businesses have reduced hours or stopped.

That's one place, and was that photo taken during the state of emergency or after? I can tell you plenty of places are closed, some temporarily, some permanently, and many others had reduced hours. Things are slowly becoming more normal now.

I was at a dollar store today and they were looking social distancing advice on the speakers, and the checkout lines had spots marked every 2m or so. Went to two sushi restaurants recently, one wasn't using the conveyor belt at all, the other was using plastic lids.

This is all after the state of emergency was lifted. I can't tell you much about before because I was staying the hell home as were most people, but the one time I had to leave for some necessary bureaucracy the trains were at like 20% of normal usage.

Since I had gone all the way there at the time I figured I'd grab takeout at a place I particularly liked, but no dice: it was closed. Also the supermarket nearest to where I live was operating on reduced hours (closing 10PM, previously was 24h, now it's back again).