Basic understand of disease spread and hygiene is lacking here. Changing into slippers when entering a building and wearing decorative masks are all about appearances, and that’s what’s most important in Japan. It’s even more evident with that sham of a quarantine on the cruise ship before letting infected people off.
People also rarely touch each other. No hugging, no kissing, no handshaking. All of this is important at times like this. Riding the subways here and in Tokyo recently, I notice that no one is holding a strap or pole any more.
I had to visit a few clinics until I finally managed to get one to give me a test. Even then, I had to argue with them to do more than test only chlamydia and at least include gonorrhea. Syphilis and HIV weren’t included with any degree of persuasion, since they said only certain foreigners from certain countries have it, so there’s no chance of having that. That’s in the midst of a syphilis outbreak in a country that offers unprotected services with prostitutes. It seems like a pattern of fundamental misunderstanding among doctors.
I also once had pinkeye and went to an ophthalmologist. The doctor was calling people in one by one during allergy season and examining people in an open office setting so it was possible to see them be person before you being examined. The doctor wore no gloves. The doctor didn’t wash his hands before seeing me. After touching my eyes, he said he’d get me some eye drops, told me I was good to go, and immediately called the next person over.
I’ve also frequently been prescribed kanpou/traditional Chinese medicine and had to go to another clinic to get real medicine.
These are my experiences with medical understanding here. There’s a big problem with blaming “foreigners”, but the only people I’ve seen washing their hands with soap have been... foreign tourists.
Also, I have had doctors just look at me, feel my throat and look into my eyes then give me the all clear at a physical. Like, how do you know I'm even okay just taking a glance?
Kanpou is something I have tried with limited success. I think it works on a placebo effect rather than actually curing you.
From my experiences in a bit less than a dozen countries in the US, Europe and East Asia, that unfortunately seems to be a worldwide standard. Unless you're showing very obvious symptoms, it's on you to proactively request tests/medecine.
This is why I'm bullish on AI doctors, free from the negative incentives of an overbooked practitioner's schedule.
I regularly see all of the unhygienic behaviors you have described in public in Europe and in the US as well.
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"For colds, most individuals become contagious about a day before cold symptoms develop and remain contagious for about five to seven days." / "If you have the flu, you'll be contagious one day before developing symptoms and up to five to seven days after becoming ill."
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One cold would take up all your sick days. By following your recommendation, someone falling sick more than once a year would have to quit their job.
In most EU countries you are not allowed to work and your employer will get into trouble if he lets you work when you've got a sick cert. Your employer obviously also has to pay you and is not allowed to fire you for getting sick[1].
If this outbreak causes the US to update its workers protections for the 21st century, at least something good will come out of it.
[1]: in some countries you can receive a reduction in pay after being sick for X months in a row, usually to ~60%.
So you "might" have the cold or coronavirus - do you go to the ER (costs hundreds even with insurance) and lose out on your pay? (Not to mention you'll likely have your hours cut as "punishment"). Or do you tough it out and keep making money that you need to pay for your rent?
It's not just the poor--some of this really just is our (crazy) culture.
Doesn't this fall to the government to create some kind of aid? At the very least, the gov could offer a tax break for wages paid sick workers.
Because pooling risk results in more robust social systems.
The business owner can take the risk of losing a worker for a week much better than a worker can take the risk of not getting paid.
Because it aligns incentives properly.
If you don't get paid for not working while sick, and you need the money, you'll show up to work, and get other employees and customers sick. If the business has to pick up the tab for sick days, though, they are now incentivised to keep sick workers at home - lest they infect others.
I'd much rather have robust systems, with good public health incentives, then I am to see business owners pocket a few percentage points of profits.
> I'd much rather have robust systems, with good public health incentives, then I am to see business owners pocket a few percentage points of profits.
For many small business owners, it can be the difference between paying yourself that week or not.
If you're in a service related industry - do you want staff coming to work if they are (or recently) suffering from digestive illnesses? How would an outbreak of people getting sick after being at your facility look? It could potentially result in very very bad publicity - to the point of destroying your business.
If you're running a smaller business / facility - do you want an employee coming in and spreading the illness to your other workers in the early stages of being sick (and then later taking time off)? This could result in your business lacking sufficient staff to open if you can't use labor hire staff.
The reason why it might be good for businesses to provide an incentive (like sick pay) not to work when sick is that it reduces the risk of negative outcomes to the business.
Is it really such burden to the business owner to see to the well-being of their employees?
> At the very least, the gov could offer a tax break for wages paid sick workers.
I like this idea, tbqh.
Up to how much? I can't imagine wages paid are 100% deductible. Otherwise nothing's stopping people from starting businesses and paying wages to friends to reduce tax burdens...
(Those are the fairly standard tests for all business deductions, only the third is at all specific to wages.)
There's no way to "make money" by incurring additional expenses and deducting them. If you have $100 in deductible business expenses and your marginal rate is 35%, you are paying $100 in expenses and getting back $35 on your taxes, so you're still out of pocket $65.
Paying family/friends wages counts as a business expense to the company and taxable revenue to the employee. The business can also incur additional overheads for having employees like payroll taxes, super, etc.
How do you transmit the flu to others without symptoms like sneezing/running nose?
We don't yet conclusively know what vectors this virus can use to spread.
As I understand it, the bar is really low on that. If you're coughing or sneezing, you should wear a mask. It doesn't matter if you otherwise feel fine. I don't think it's necessary to stay at home simply because you're sneezing, and I doubt it's a valid excuse to skip work or school.
Nobody is going to staff up to make more masks because everyone knows that you will make lots of money for a couple months and then the demand will crash afterwards when Coronavirus has passed.
How can both parts of this statement be true?
No, these masks are not bio-safety level 4, but they're probably better than nothing. At worst they prevent a portion of your sneeze and cough ejecta from landing on surfaces around you.
It's the aerosolized smaller droplets that travel far and end up infecting others in your vicinity.
Depending on the day my guess was that 40-70% of people were wearing masks - more on public transit.
I assume that you mostly were at the Airport or public transit/other huge venues - otherwise I cannot really explain our different experiences.