Weirdly, before the border restrictions that did exist were lifted.
> as opposed to most other countries
That's a stretch[1], but by all means, feel free to claim that a highly virulent respiratory virus transmission rate and a large population's immune response should remain uniform. Make no effort to check excess death figures either. As they say, never interfere with an enemy while he’s in the process of destroying himself.
Meanwhile, an article[2] early in the pandemic that looked at why Japan was doing so well has this to say:
> Nor has Japan had a lockdown on the scale or severity of Europe. In early April, the government ordered a state of emergency. But the stay-at-home request was voluntary. Non-essential businesses were asked to close, but there was no legal penalty for refusing.
> Many paragons of Covid strategy, such as New Zealand and Vietnam, used tough measures including closing borders, tight lockdowns, large-scale testing and strict quarantines - but Japan did none of that.
and later in the article, after much speculation:
> A recent report by the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found people with underlying medical conditions such as heart disease, obesity and diabetes are six times more likely to be hospitalised if they get Covid-19 and 12 times more likely to die.
> Japan has the lowest rates of coronary heart disease and obesity in the developed world. Still, scientists insist such vital signs do not explain everything.
> "Those kinds of physical differences may have some effect but I think the other areas are more important. We've learned from Covid that there is no simple explanation for any of the phenomena that we're seeing. It's a lot of factors contributing to the final outcome," says Prof Fukuda.
Well, the professor was shown to be too conservative as we now have more data and know how strong the effect of these physical differences are. You know, facts, those inconvenient things that are better than (incessant) speculation. "It's a lot of factors" is true but attributing a cause to factors that don't exist is a weakpoint in any argument.
Weirdly, before the border restrictions that did exist were lifted.
> as opposed to most other countries
That's a stretch[1], but by all means, feel free to claim that a highly virulent respiratory virus transmission rate and a large population's immune response should remain uniform. Make no effort to check excess death figures either. As they say, never interfere with an enemy while he’s in the process of destroying himself.
Meanwhile, an article[2] early in the pandemic that looked at why Japan was doing so well has this to say:
> Nor has Japan had a lockdown on the scale or severity of Europe. In early April, the government ordered a state of emergency. But the stay-at-home request was voluntary. Non-essential businesses were asked to close, but there was no legal penalty for refusing.
> Many paragons of Covid strategy, such as New Zealand and Vietnam, used tough measures including closing borders, tight lockdowns, large-scale testing and strict quarantines - but Japan did none of that.
and later in the article, after much speculation:
> A recent report by the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found people with underlying medical conditions such as heart disease, obesity and diabetes are six times more likely to be hospitalised if they get Covid-19 and 12 times more likely to die.
> Japan has the lowest rates of coronary heart disease and obesity in the developed world. Still, scientists insist such vital signs do not explain everything.
> "Those kinds of physical differences may have some effect but I think the other areas are more important. We've learned from Covid that there is no simple explanation for any of the phenomena that we're seeing. It's a lot of factors contributing to the final outcome," says Prof Fukuda.
Well, the professor was shown to be too conservative as we now have more data and know how strong the effect of these physical differences are. You know, facts, those inconvenient things that are better than (incessant) speculation. "It's a lot of factors" is true but attributing a cause to factors that don't exist is a weakpoint in any argument.
[1] https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explor...
[2] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-53188847#main-heading
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