Coronavirus: Japan

According to a report by The Guardian, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan declared a state of emergency on April 7 in order to combat the coronavirus. The declaration applies to Tokyo and six other prefectures: Chiba, Kanagawa, Saitama, Osaka, Hyogo, and Fukuoka. "The declaration will give prefectural governors the authority to call on people to stay at home and for non-essential businesses to close, but will stop some way short of the stricter lockdowns in the US and parts of Europe. Japan's government does not have the legal authority to enforce a France-style lockdown with fines and other penalties."

According to a report by NPR, "The declaration, which falls under a law revised just last month in response to the pandemic, would allow governors of hard-hit prefectures to issue stay-at-home directives to contain the spread of the potentially deadly disease. Even so, Japanese law specifies no punishment for those who do not comply and does not grant the authority to ban business activity. Without the threat of coercion to back it up, the declaration of an emergency would rely on voluntary compliance."

According to a report by Nikkei Asian Review, the government of Tokyo prefecture will not request the closure of a wide range of businesses, including "restaurants and izakaya pubs". In an essay published by the New York Times, Motoko Rich confirms that "restaurants and bars may stay open until 8 p.m."

In other words, the Japanese strategy for handling the coronavirus pandemic resembles the Swedish strategy. The trust strategy in Japan and Sweden protects civil liberties.

According to a report by NPR, Abe expanded the state of emergency to the entire nation on April 16. According to a report by The Guardian and a report by Reuters, Abe on May 4 extended the state of emergency to May 31.

Because the Japanese strategy has greatly slowed the spread of the coronavirus, Abe lifted the state of emergency across most of Japan on May 14, according to a report by the BBC.

How effective is the Japanese strategy? As of September 1 (09:22 GMT), 1279 of 126.5 million Japanese succumbed to the coronavirus, and 187,737 of 328.2 million Americans died from it. The Japanese death rate of 10.11 deaths per million people is about 2% of the American rate of 572.02 deaths per million.

Could the low number of Japanese deaths be the result of undercounting the actual number?

According to a report by Bloomberg News, "Tokyo has not seen an increase in overall deaths during the coronavirus outbreak, boosting Japanese officials' assertions that they have largely kept infections under control despite criticism over the limited scope of its testing." The lack of excess mortality confirms that the 777 deaths are not an undercount of the actual number of deaths caused by the coronavirus. (In an essay published by Torkyo Review, Rob Fahey and Paul Nadeau observed that "excess mortality and hospital capacity data seems to confirm the low [coronavirus] death rate [in Japan].")

What is the principal contributing factor to the success of the trust strategy in Japan?

In an essay published by South China Morning Post, Neil Newman suggests that superior personal hygiene hindered the spread of the coronavirus in Japan. "In Japanese homes, shoes come off at the front door, hands are washed, throats are gargled and it is not uncommon to give groceries a wipe before putting anything in the fridge."

In an essay published by Foreign Policy, William Sposato gives the same explanation. "In general, however, Japan's culture of concern for others, keeping a distance, avoiding handshakes, and good personal hygiene appears to have played a significant, if difficult to measure, part in the low numbers."

In other words, the principal contributing factor is the culture of the nation. The strict immigration laws in Japan have maintained a single dominant culture that has high quality. Japanese culture has greatly helped to slow the spread of the coronavirus to vulnerable segments (like elderly people) of the population.

By contrast, the multicultural diversity of the United States (with its millions of Hispanic illegal aliens) has facilitated the coronavirus' killing a relatively large percentage of Americans. For the last several decades, most Americans of non-European ancestry have claimed that multicultural diversification (which is mostly synonymous with ethnic, racial, and gender diversification) makes organizations and processes more creative and productive. Treating this claim as a "truth" of life, politicians, bureaucrats, and administrators have applied multicultural diversification to all organizations and processes in the United States. The end result is organizations and processes that failed to appropriately handle the coronavirus, leading to a relatively high rate of death. The impact of the coronavirus has proven that multicultural diversification is a liability, not an asset, for American society.

note
1. According to a report by The Hill, "[Monocultural] South Korea's foreign ministry said Sunday that it had donated two million medical face masks to the [multicultural] U.S. to help fill shortages in hospitals hit hardest by the coronavirus."
2. According to a report by The Hill, "[Multicultural] Maryland has obtained 500,000 coronavirus tests from [monocultural] South Korea, Gov. Larry Hogan (R) announced Monday, as states push to increase their testing capacity."
3. According to a report by Bloomberg News, "No restrictions were placed on residents' movements, and businesses from restaurants to hairdressers stayed open. No high-tech apps that tracked people's movements were deployed. The country doesn't have a center for disease control. And even as nations were exhorted to 'test, test, test,' Japan has tested just 0.2% of its population — one of the lowest rates among developed countries." In other words, the Japanese used the Swedish strategy to successfully combat the coronavirus.
4. According to a report by The Guardian, "Masks are a common sight during the winter flu season, and in spring among people with hay fever. The custom of bowing rather than shaking hands or hugging, generally high standards of personal hygiene, and the removal of shoes when entering homes have all been held up as possible explanations for Japan's low infection rate." In other words, the culture of the Japanese helped them to successfully combat the coronavirus.