As I write this, dozens of states have recently reported record-breaking infection numbers for new Coronavirus cases and cases are rising in nearly all 50 states. Wisconsin has converted the state fairgrounds into a field hospital to help overflowing hospitals cope. Many Americans question if it is safe to see their loved ones for Thanksgiving or even Christmas as they cancel Halloween plans for their children. Nearly a quarter of a million Americans are dead and it is forecast that nearly a half-million could die by the end of the year.
Halfway across the globe in Japan, plans are underway for the Kyushu Sumo tournament. An audience of many elderly fans will gather inside a stadium to watch naked, sweaty men wrestle...as they have many times through the pandemic without issue. Bars are open and packed trains carry businessmen to work and home each morning and night. Live concerts and the theatre are on again. Group exercise classes are open and elderly Japanese gather together to stay active. In fact, while many businesses and public spaces have closed due to the pandemic Japan never truly shut down like most of the rest of the world did (partially due to weak laws, governments limited themselves to requesting people avoid bars and night life.)
Early in the pandemic, while the Trump administration hemmed and hawed about using the Defense Authorization Act, Japan’s government partnered with their industry to establish a robust, domestic supply chain of tests and masks. Companies that used to make fashionable textiles now pump out thousands of PCR tests while everything from heavy machinery manufacturers to cookware companies have converted their hydraulic fluid filtration and takeout container factories to pump out masks. The country quickly created a network of hospitals to direct patients to available ventilators and ECMO machines all over the country. A robust public health system for contract tracing infections was activated to prevent clusters from spreading.
Every person who enters the country now gets tested for Covid-19 before being allowed through customs and is isolated for 2 weeks (unless they come from a specially designated country with very low numbers of active cases). Businesses have installed plexiglass barriers to keep their guests safely isolated and extensive modifications to ventilation systems have been made to control the spread of aerosols that can spread the virus. People even refrain from speaking loudly in public to minimize how far droplets travel.
Japan’s number of deaths per capita is 60 to 70 times lower than that of the United States, United Kingdom, or the worst-hit European countries like Sweden or Spain, yet Japan is something of a failure in the region for its handling the Coronavirus Pandemic. Deaths per capita, so remarkably low compared to the US, are nearly 50% higher than their neighbor South Korea and 45 times higher than Taiwan. The government covered up the spread of the virus and was slow to act, some angry citizens mutter, because they were fearful of the possibility of cancellation of the Tokyo Olympics. Hospitals had no testing guidelines for months leading to critically ill Covid patients being rejected as many as a hundred times before finally being admitted for treatment. Japan’s contact-tracers were overwhelmed early in the pandemic and were unable to track infection clusters during the worst months like their counterparts in South Korea were.
As Joe Biden said in tonight’s debate, there should have been no need to shut down the country for an extended time or for further shut downs across the United States. If we had taken basic steps: given people and businesses guidelines to limit the spread, used the Defense Authorization Act to start producing PPE and tests, and had started tracking new cases much earlier (something the US amazingly still isn’t doing consistently even at airports) we should have been back to some semblance of normal life months ago.
What Joe Biden, other democrats, and the media are getting wrong is they should be screaming, red-faced and bug-eyed that all of China’s closest neighbors, even the most ineffective of the lot, has avoided shutting down and almost completely controlled the virus for the past year because they got off their asses and did something to try to keep their populations safe and healthy.