Category: Health
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Where I live in Japan mask-wearing is now pretty much universal – almost no one goes out in public and to see someone without a mask on in public is a kind of shock. The economy reopened after lockdown, in Tokyo, on 23rd May, on which date the number of cases had dropped to 5.…
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Daniel Defoe is the author most famous for Robinson Crusoe, an awful story not worth reading, but he also wrote an account of the great plague of London, which I recently read. This plague was apparently the Black Death, which is spread by fleas of a rat, so it attacks more effectively in summer and…
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On Tuesday 26th May Japan’s COVID-19 state of emergency ended, five days earlier than expected and with deaths down to low double digits every day. The state of emergency was accompanied by a voluntary lockdown that started on 8th April for Tokyo and six other prefectures, extending to the rest of Japan a week later…
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As I write this many countries are beginning to end their lockdowns and make plans to reopen. The UK has already begun to reopen, the US is opening state by state and much of Europe is beginning to return to work and play. Japan has ended its state of emergency in 40 prefectures, leaving the…
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In early March, when COVID-19 was starting to spread in the UK, the government announced a strategy of “herd immunity” in which they would shield vulnerable people (such as older people and people with pre-existing conditions) from the disease, and aim to slowly allow the rest of the country to be infected up to some…
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Since just over a week ago we have begun to see reports of changes to figures on deaths due to COVID-19 in many countries. The changes typically lead to upward revision of the death figures, and usually this seems to occur either because the daily reporting of deaths has not incorporated deaths occurring outside of…
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There is a lot of pressure at present for the expansion of testing for COVID-19 to enable better understanding of the spread of the virus and possibly to help with reopening of the economy. Random population surveys have also been conducted in many countries, with a recent antibody survey in California, for example, finding 50…
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The novel coronavirus (COVID-19) continues to spread globally, and at this point in its progress very few high-income countries have escaped its grip. On a per-capita basis Spain has 38 times the rate of infection of China, the US 10 times and Australia 3 times, but plucky Japan has only 0.3 times the infection rate…
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Conspiracy theories about Japan’s approach to the coronavirus (COVID-19) are beginning to spread online, as people find it very difficult to believe that the country still has only 1000 cases of the virus even though it has not been testing a great deal. This has led to suggestions that Japan is covering up the true…
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The 2019 novel coronavirus (COVID-19) has now escaped China and taken a firm grip on the rest of the world, with Italy in a complete lockdown, most of Europe shuttered and the UK and the US spaffing their response up a wall. A few weeks ago I wrote a short post assessing the case fatality…
Compromise and Conceit 