Re: [tlug] GW projects

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <turnbull.stephen.fw@example.com>]

Raymond Wan writes:

 > I wasn't following the news in Japan too closely in regards 
 > to the coronavirus (experiencing coronavirus news [and false 
 > news] overload right now) but I thought the cluster in 
 > Hokkaido and the cruise ship in Yokohama was it and that 
 > Japan could manage the situation.

No, it's all over the country (fsckin' *Ibaraki* is in the top 10
COVID prefectures now, about 1/3 in Tsukuba area but not clear why --
it's not being traced to people with recent foreign travel -- although
some of the locals consider Tokyo an alien outpost :-).  I'm afraid
the politicians have waited too long to be able to "manage" any
"situation" -- we may already be in "ride it out" territory.  Some
major urban areas (maybe including Tokyo) are at already 90% of
hospital capacity with cases continuing to increase by > 100/day, and
many rural areas have zero beds suitable for infectious respiratory
disease.  Even when we see a second wave, it will be a second chance
to get it right, but not really manageable unless the LDPcritters get
religion on this soon.

I'm "afraid", but it's very hard to say much with confidence because
unlike the US, Japan has PRC-quality data[1][2] (but I'm not following
the more serious Japanese media closely, and I know that the serious
epidemiologists have data, it's just not making into my corner of the
public domain).  No reports on excess deaths, each local outbreak
treated as separate news, no reports on prevalence among military and
first responders (except medical, and even those are episodic rather
than systematic).

 > Vigilantism with a smart phone...not sure what our society is
 > becoming!

"Sticks and stones."  I wear a mask because it's the right thing to do
for society, but I frequently forget.  You know what gets me back in
the elevator to retrieve it?  Shame.  Not the principle of the thing;
it's the shame, even though before going out the door it's the
principle.  People are weird that way.  (There's a difference between
public shaming and bullying, of course, and the line is really blurred
on social media :-(, so I see your point too.)

 > And maybe western countries should learn to make some masks at
 > home...

Some of the USian folks I follow on Twitter are making money at it.
Fashion masks are big too (Sara Benicasa, HacksForPancakes).

 > I guess this kind of outbreak will happen again and 
 > hopefully we all learn from it...

Johns Hopkins "Public Health on Call" pod estimates every 5-10 years,
and any of them could be a COVID or Ebola.

 > Good luck to those of you in North America, Europe, and of 
 > course Japan!  And yes, we're expecting our third wave...

Thanks!  In America (where I vote) we're gonna have to make our luck
on November 3....

Everybody, stay safe, stay healthy, I want y'all to be there when we
start meeting again.

Steve


Footnotes: 

[1]  Although otherwise they have very similar head-in-the-sand
policies toward an eventual reopening: avoiding testing, no serious
plan for tracing.  They do differ on declaring the sex industries
"essential" (rather than "can't beat 'em, so join 'em", the same for
participants but a different public policy), where many US red states
have tried to use the pandemic to ban abortion (which is obviously an
essential procedure in the sense that it can't be postponed very long).

[2]  PRC data *can* be very good, except when it's potentially
politically controversial.  But their bureaucratic data is often much
better than Japan's because you get regular surveys on the same thing,
where in Japan it's more when the bureaucrats feel like it, or done by
the private sector (Nikkei, Toyo Keizai) which tend to avoid questions
that touch corporate sensitivities.

-- 
Associate Professor              Division of Policy and Planning Science
http://turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp/     Faculty of Systems and Information
Email: turnbull@example.com                   University of Tsukuba
Tel: 029-853-5175                 Tennodai 1-1-1, Tsukuba 305-8573 JAPAN