So, I went to O'hare last week and picked up someone flying in from Tokyo. Tokyo is a city with a population of ~13 million. For perspective, the state of Illinois has a population of ~12 million.
During her 2.5 week stay she went out to bars, restaurants, on the *packed-like-sardines* JR train lines, and to *Hanami* -- the annual drinking picnics in the parks as the Sakura shed their blossoms. You see: they have yet to close their bars and restaurants.
WHAT? IN A TIME LIKE THIS? THAT'S INSANE!
Wrong.
You see, at this moment, the more-populous-than-Illinois city of Tokyo **plus** the rest of Japan has an out break count lower than *just Cook county* [Source](UPDATED: Coronavirus World Outbreak Map – 2019-nCoV Outbreak Map)
Now, some of you who keep up with the half-truth & lying media may be saying "Ahh, but I read that's because they're not testing so aggressively. Naturally, they will have a low count. So, they're likely super sick, but it's just not being counted"
Wrong again.
You see, Japan has a larger, and older, elderly population than Italy. If it were the case that they were *still catching, just not counting* the massive elderly population would bear no exemption. They would be dropping like flies, their clinics overwhelmed, and the count would skyrocket.
So why can they romp about the bars, go to ramen shops, pack into the subways like sardines in a can, and drink in the park while we red-blooded, freedom-loving Americans cower in fear in our houses? Why can a nation of 160 million, packed in an area the size of California, keep calm and carry on, still having a lower outbreak count than *just Cook county*?
Well, there are a couple popular theories. One is that Japan rejects Western multi-culturalism and, lacking diversity, has an abundance of social cohesion in which everyone has an attitude of being in this together. The "Spirit of Wa", they call it. Another theory is that with weekly and daily earthquakes, twenty some typhoons each Summer, and the constant threat of tsunamis, crisis is a fact of life in Japan and they live in a constant state of preparation.
The theory I find most plausible is that they wear their masks, don't touch their faces (it's inelegant), and they *wash their hands*. I was talking about this, and I learned that in elementary schools in Japan they have hand-stamps that look like a germ or some overly *ka-wa-ii* character. When a child goes to the restroom he gets a stamp on each hand. The stamp is designed to come off after twenty seconds of washing. When they graduate to middle & high school the schools no longer employ janitors. Instead, the students have "cleaning hour". This includes bathroom, cafeteria, and gym facilities. At the entrance of schools they have shoe lockers, where students remove their outdoor shoes and put on indoor-only slippers. I've witnessed paramedics, of habit, slip off their shoes when entering a home solely to carry a man out on a stretcher. If you've spent any time there, you know the Japanese are very clean.
Another possible contributor is being fat puts you at increased weakness against the virus. And while Americans are obscenely over weight, obeisity is virtually non-existent in Japan. While roughly half of Americans are not just overweight, but clinically obeise, about 3% of Japanese are overweight. At 6'3" and 235 lbs, I actually got fat jokes during my last visit there. That's saying something, given be-polite-and-never-offend Japan. If you want an epidemic to worry about, it's the obeisity epidemic.
So yeah. In conclusion, this whole "12 million under house arrest" thing is *waaaaaaay* overblown. IMHO we have a governor using a fancy flu as a pretext to flex his inner Mussolini and put 12 million *cough* freedom-loving Americans under quasi house arrest. Meanwhile, 13 million jam-packed Tokyo-ites are going about business as usual. Because they wash their hands.
During her 2.5 week stay she went out to bars, restaurants, on the *packed-like-sardines* JR train lines, and to *Hanami* -- the annual drinking picnics in the parks as the Sakura shed their blossoms. You see: they have yet to close their bars and restaurants.
WHAT? IN A TIME LIKE THIS? THAT'S INSANE!
Wrong.
You see, at this moment, the more-populous-than-Illinois city of Tokyo **plus** the rest of Japan has an out break count lower than *just Cook county* [Source](UPDATED: Coronavirus World Outbreak Map – 2019-nCoV Outbreak Map)
Now, some of you who keep up with the half-truth & lying media may be saying "Ahh, but I read that's because they're not testing so aggressively. Naturally, they will have a low count. So, they're likely super sick, but it's just not being counted"
Wrong again.
You see, Japan has a larger, and older, elderly population than Italy. If it were the case that they were *still catching, just not counting* the massive elderly population would bear no exemption. They would be dropping like flies, their clinics overwhelmed, and the count would skyrocket.
So why can they romp about the bars, go to ramen shops, pack into the subways like sardines in a can, and drink in the park while we red-blooded, freedom-loving Americans cower in fear in our houses? Why can a nation of 160 million, packed in an area the size of California, keep calm and carry on, still having a lower outbreak count than *just Cook county*?
Well, there are a couple popular theories. One is that Japan rejects Western multi-culturalism and, lacking diversity, has an abundance of social cohesion in which everyone has an attitude of being in this together. The "Spirit of Wa", they call it. Another theory is that with weekly and daily earthquakes, twenty some typhoons each Summer, and the constant threat of tsunamis, crisis is a fact of life in Japan and they live in a constant state of preparation.
The theory I find most plausible is that they wear their masks, don't touch their faces (it's inelegant), and they *wash their hands*. I was talking about this, and I learned that in elementary schools in Japan they have hand-stamps that look like a germ or some overly *ka-wa-ii* character. When a child goes to the restroom he gets a stamp on each hand. The stamp is designed to come off after twenty seconds of washing. When they graduate to middle & high school the schools no longer employ janitors. Instead, the students have "cleaning hour". This includes bathroom, cafeteria, and gym facilities. At the entrance of schools they have shoe lockers, where students remove their outdoor shoes and put on indoor-only slippers. I've witnessed paramedics, of habit, slip off their shoes when entering a home solely to carry a man out on a stretcher. If you've spent any time there, you know the Japanese are very clean.
Another possible contributor is being fat puts you at increased weakness against the virus. And while Americans are obscenely over weight, obeisity is virtually non-existent in Japan. While roughly half of Americans are not just overweight, but clinically obeise, about 3% of Japanese are overweight. At 6'3" and 235 lbs, I actually got fat jokes during my last visit there. That's saying something, given be-polite-and-never-offend Japan. If you want an epidemic to worry about, it's the obeisity epidemic.
So yeah. In conclusion, this whole "12 million under house arrest" thing is *waaaaaaay* overblown. IMHO we have a governor using a fancy flu as a pretext to flex his inner Mussolini and put 12 million *cough* freedom-loving Americans under quasi house arrest. Meanwhile, 13 million jam-packed Tokyo-ites are going about business as usual. Because they wash their hands.
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