Japan was feared to be the next US or Italy. Instead their coronavirus success is a puzzling 'mystery'

ABC Australia ^ | May 22, 2020 | Jake Sturmer and Yumi Asada

[Mr Rogers]

Cleanliness. For real. Amazing, but NYC will never try it.

[Presbyterian Reporter]

More gibberish from Non-Essential Media (nem) down under.

Japan has the toughest immigration protocols in the world. As I visitor in 2016 I was subjected to fingerprinting, temperature screening, and retinal screening along with the usual passport screening.

Japan knows how to effectively manage their country. And the people have a cleanliness standard that puts all other countries of the world to shame.

Thus it is not surprising at all that Japan has not had a major issue with covid.

[CatDancer]

That World Meter chart is wrong. MO has had 670 deaths.

[CheshireTheCat]

Hmm. Good points. Do Italians in parts of Italy other than the north eat more fish, shellfish, and mushrooms than those in the Milan area?

[logi_cal869]

You get a lollypop.

A follow-up: How many early U.S. deaths were Chinese nationals, students or otherwise?

I’d lay odds on “zero”.

[null and void]

See post #34!

Bring Out Your Dead

Post to me or FReep mail to be on/off the Bring Out Your Dead ping list.

The purpose of the “Bring Out Your Dead” ping list (formerly the “Ebola” ping list) is very early warning of emerging pandemics, as such it has a high false positive rate.

The false positive rate was 100%.

At some point we may well have a high mortality pandemic, and likely as not the “Bring Out Your Dead” threads will miss the beginning entirely.

*sigh* Such is life, and death...

If a quarantine saves just one child's or one old fart’s life, it's worth it.

[ifinnegan]

“Also why didn’t Seoul get a huge outbreak after South Korea was one of the hardest hit countries in the beginning? Ditto for Rome.”

The areas in Korea and Italy that got hit hard are the areas with most foreigners including Chinese from China.

New York same with Italy and Europe and Iran/Middle East added in to the mix.

[Mom MD]

Yup. over 1/2 the deaths in this country are from nursing homes and most of those deliberately caused by criminal acts of governors

[null and void]

Murder most foul.

[spintreebob]

Chronic disease, especially associated with morbid obesity is a common factor in Coronavirus hospitalizations and deaths. Not everyone in a Nursing Home dies. For example, a Nursing Home in Albany GA has 5 or 10 deaths. But why did the vast majority not die? Check out their co-morbidities. (also check out how many people died in that nursing home in March and April 2019 and 2018. It was less than i 2020, but not by much?)

Are the Japanese Obese (other than sumo wrestlers)? What factors do most Japanese share with the many elderly in other parts of the world that are not killed by coronavirus?

[spintreebob]

We can’t look at per capita when the virus targets a very small slice of each population, and not the entire population.

We are not all in this together. The elderly in nursing homes and assisted living centers, those with corbidities are the target.

[Blurb2350]

They also consume an a@@load of iodine. Iodine is antiviral.
Yes, diet certainly has a lot to do with the more homogeneous Asian nations not being hard-hit by the WuFlu. Seafood (for iodine, as you say), tea, fermented veggies, etc. Their traditional diets are much healthier than the SAD diet consumed by so many Americans -- highly processed foods, soda pop, chips, pastries, loads of bread, etc. And hygiene, as others have suggested.

[shanover]

Half the dead are from government mandated nursing home patients.

[Blurb2350]

A Tucson radio talkshow host said that the majority of Arizona’s ~700 deaths were in nursing homes and on Indian reservations. (American Indians exhibit the same poor health as many American blacks.) If you subtract those two groups, deaths in Arizona are just over 100.

[Mozzafiato]

The Japanese are extremely clean...heck, their fans at sporting events clean up after themselves after the game. Also, in terms of deaths per capita, the UK, Spain, and Belgium are all worse than even Italy. Brazil has a huge problem right now and, with their large barrios it can become a near disaster in the next few days. Also, Mexico is a sleeping giant. They’ve only tested 200,000 people in a country of 128 million. Expect Mexico to explode with cases within the next month.

[LoneRangerMassachusetts]

One thing left out of the discussion is the genetics of susceptibility. For instance, sickle cell anemia devastates mostly blacks who are carriers of the defective genes.

I would expect some ethnic populations are more susceptible to Covid-19. Maybe it's too early for medical researches to figure this out.

[GLDNGUN]

They are healthier, cleaner and didn’t inflate their numbers. Mystery solved.

[fr_freak]

Japanese are the Germans of Asia...brilliant engineers, scientists, precision manufacturing, medicine, chemists etc.

And wound as equally tight, ready to spring out like a demented jack-in-the-box once the tension is too great, God bless 'em.

[x]

more than 16,000 have been infected in a country of 126 million

Those are people who have been tested. The number of those infected is probably much higher. Their symptoms just haven't been serious enough for them to get themselves tested.

[fr_freak]

Korea got CLOBBERED early on, but Korea is rapidly getting better.

Korea wears masks.

Interesting. So, does Korea wear masks the same way that the other countries you cited wear masks? If so, why did Korea get clobbered initially as opposed to those other countries?