The Japanese pandemic

A couple of weeks back I wondered, amid the many puzzles presented by the coronavirus, if anyone had yet explained why Japan had escaped so lightly, given that it's next to China, is densely populated, and has a high proportion of old people. Well, Richard Lloyd Parry, in the Times, tries to provide some answers to that question. It's certainly not down to the startling efficiency of Shinzo Abe's government:

The mystery of Japan’s response to the coronavirus pandemic can be boiled down to a simple question: how could it possibly have gone this well? From the beginning, the government of Shinzo Abe has given the impression of reacting inconsistently, bureaucratically and late.

There has been no hard lockdown, little of the aggressive contact tracing successfully employed in South Korea and Singapore, and above all very little testing. Opinion surveys suggest that Mr Abe’s response to the emergency is supported by just one in 20 of the population, the lowest in any country.

Only Brazil’s hard-right authoritarian, Jair Bolsonaro, has had his popularity slump by a larger proportion. But by the standards of many people in Europe, North America and China, the Japanese are blessed.

They have experienced no rapid explosion of infections, no mass deaths and no choked intensive care wards. There have been no arrests and fines — Japan’s lockdown, such as it is, has been largely voluntary. Like many other countries, it is now being eased; yesterday Mr Abe lifted the seven-week state of emergency.

And yet, compared with countries such as South Korea and Taiwan, Japan has won little praise for its handling of the crisis, either internationally or among its own people. [...]

Japan has had 16,581 confirmed cases and 830 deaths, compared with figures of more than 261,000 and 36,900 in Britain, a country with little more than half its population. But however successful in comparative terms, the government has often appeared faltering and uncertain.

Unfortunately, no clear answers are forthcoming. One possible factor is that the Japanese are simply under-counting. They've done very little testing. Another factor: the Japanese are not keen on close social contact, and many wear face masks anyway. It's common - well, it used to be common before people stopped traveling - to see groups of Japanese tourists round London wearing face masks. And a possible major factor, not mentioned by Lloyd Parry but brought up in the comments, is that the Japanese are simply not fat. Obesity is social anathema, and the diet is extremely healthy compared to our consumption of sugar and chips.

But, like so much else to do with Covid-19 and its impact in different countries, as yet we just don't know.

Comments

[Marc]

Do polling companies ever do polls that show rightwing/ conservative governments not losing support do they actually poll countries led by leftwing governments?

[John B]

‘ There has been no hard lockdown, little of the aggressive contact tracing .... One possible factor is that the Japanese are simply under-counting. They've done very little testing.’

In other words they treated it like any other Winter ‘flu outbreak. If you look for trouble you will find it, don’t look and you won’t. If other Countries had treated Wu Flu like any other ‘flu we would not have the current hysteria, daily death toll ‘from The Front’, and a population gone into spin and rinse over a virus which is no threat to 99,9% of them.

And considering those Countries with moderate, calm response, their outcomes are better than the lockdown lunatics.

[AlanS]

Along the lines favoured by Prof. Gupta at Oxford, might the Japanese - and other East Asians - be benefiting from a high level of preexisting immunity resulting from earlier infections with related but less harmful viruses?

[Mick H]

Well yes, that's another possibility.