I wanted to talk about the situation as I often get messages from friends and family related to the coronavirus issue. The fact is, on paper the situation is not that bad compared to Italy or North America. According to Worldometer, Japan is ranked 29th in the number of recorded cases. It seems that the culture of wearing masks here in Japan has really helped slow the outbreak of the virus.
Train stations and populated areas also have notices on how to cough. Announcements inside the trains have advisories on virus-control in Korean, English, and Japanese. Tokyo, if not Japan, is actually putting in effort to educate its citizens.
However, there are also a bunch of things that Japan bungled. Particularly, the government's response to the situation in the beginning was incredibly lackadaisical. There were reports of government officials visiting the unfortunate cruise ship, The Diamond Princess, and coming back without any form of medical checks, let alone a quarantine.
There were also reports of people being asked to quarantine themselves for the known incubation period of two weeks. The key word here was "asked," and the people promptly said "no thank you" to the quarantine, allowing them to move freely about the Tokyo area. No doubt this is why the number of new daily cases is rising exponentially in the past week prior to writing this post.
It's not just people in the news or the government that have gone about the issues softly. Regular people on the streets are also relatively relaxed about it. It's cherry-blossom season in Tokyo, and people are still out having drinking parties, people are still gathering at shopping areas, and people are still booking lessons at the schools I teach in.
I had to go out to view an apartment in the past weekend, and the streets were still relatively populated, despite the unexpected snowfall and a government advisory to stay inside. That advisory was basically the closest thing to a lockdown that I can see Tokyo doing. There's too many businesses and people for an actual lockdown to work, and Japan doesn't have the police force that India has.
On the other end of the spectrum, others are panic-buying supplies like toilet paper, much like in the western world. Most recently, non-perishable food items, bread, and frozen foods were being sold out. Even now, weeks after the first false account that paper products are being sourced from China first circulated, toilet paper and napkins are pretty difficult to come by.
Of course, these are just the more visible members of the population. Tokyo has such a large population density that while there seem to be many people outdoors, there are also many others unseen that are probably observing social distancing. Now that the Olympics have been postponed for one year, perhaps the police would be stricter and enforce a policy to keep people indoors.
That's an update on the current situation. Thanks for reading, and stay safe!
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