WHY HAS JAPAN RECENTLY BEEN LEADING THE WORLD IN COVID CASES?

 From Worldometer, COVID-19 cases this past week (in parentheses, cases in the last 7 days/million population):

World  3,626,189 (453)

#1  Japan  1,029,587 (8198)

#2  S. Korea  455,268 (8869)

#3  France  396,007 (6038)

#4  Brazil  299,204 (1389)

#5  USA  294,280 (879)

#6  Germany  221,956 (2646)

#7  Italy  130,145 2160)

#8  Taiwan  106,827 (4472)

#9  Hong Kong  206,806 (14,045)

#10  Australia  103,147 (3957)

I can generalize in various ways.  

• Sure, China did start the pandemic, but the two epicenters quickly became Europe and USA.  
• Countries of the Orient and Oceania fared well for the first two years.
• Today, the leading COVID centers are Europe, the USA, the Orient and Oceania.

Early on, pundits remarked that countries like Japan did not get badly infected because they wore masks and culture provided a higher responsibility factor, plus, perhaps, some variation of the coronavirus must have reasonably recently somehow infected the general population (cold or flu, probably), leaving many immune to COVID-19.

Well, from late spring of this year, these previously unaffected nations began to be overcome, possibly because the more contagious Omicron sub variant had susceptible customers.  

• Fortunately enough, most were vaccinated, so the mortality rate of these recently impacted areas significantly dropped.
• The mortality rate for the first year was around 1.0%.  Note that the seasonal flu is around 0.1%.
• This COVID mortality rate has now dropped below 0.5%, and in some countries below that of the flu.  South Korea, for example, is down to 0.07%.
• In short, those countries of the Orient and Oceania are hurting today in new cases, but not being terribly hurt by too many deaths.
• Mind you, people are dying, and Japan this year will lower its life expectancy this year for a second straight year.

In general, many of these countries in the Asian/Pacific region somewhat reflect the plight of Japan.  The question, though, is why has Japan, week after week, usually had the MOST NUMBER OF NEW CASES?  Every so often the USA is #1, but most of the time it is Japan.  And Japan has a population 126 million, 38% that of the USA with 335 million.

• Japan was #1 for ten straight weeks during the so-called seventh wave this past summer, and #1 for 13 of the past 18 weeks from late July to mid-November.
• That article was written at the end of November, and into past the middle December, Japan remains at the top.
• As the numbers at the top show, for the past week, Japan had more than double the number of cases than #2 South Korea and 3.5 times that of #5 USA.

The Japan Times reported that Japan reports the highest number of cases because it is a diligent country, and officially reports the facts.  Other nations have largely abandoned tests and many long ago mis-reported by huge factors.

While the U.S. health reportage can be largely believed, the fact of the matter is that most tests are now taken at home, and an asymptomatic patient doesn't bother to tell its doctor or the local health authorities.  If China's 90% asymptomatic rate can be believed (and there is no reason why it shouldn't), perhaps U.S. cases might well be ten times higher.

Finally, another look at the above numbers shows that those countries that led the world in COVID deaths at the beginning are still there, even after vaccines.  So it's not only a matter of why Japan has so many cases.  Why are countries of Europe and the U.S. also too continuing to be impacted by this coronavirus?

Between 9300 and 28,000 Americans have died from the flu since October.  I count less than 20,000 deaths from COVID during this same period.  Maybe we'd better reconsider what is important and get on with our lives.

Oh well, I'm posting this from the ANA Lounge at Narita Airport in Tokyo,  An hour to our flight back to Honolulu.  Here are some photos I took today from Singapore to Japan.

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