Japan is an interesting one. They did next to nothing.

Life is almost back to what it was before atm. How did Tokyo not have a massive outbreak is an absolute mystery. But it did not.

Was it that 99% of people when told to started wearing masks and people do not hug or shake hands? We have no idea, no tracing, very small amount of testing, no house arrests of any kind.

They didn’t do “next to nothing.” They used a cluster-based approach through their public health center network, that was put in place to combat TB in the 30s. Turns out, that was pretty effective at combatting COVID.

> In 1935, with funding from the Rockefeller Foundation, Japan opened its first public health centre (PHC) in Tokyo. The country then put in place a programme that led to the building of another 187 nationwide. They survived the war and the occupation. But the thing of note is that before and after the war, their priority, says Taniguchi, was always to “stay watchful all the time” for the emergence of TB cases. If one was found, they were tasked with rushing to the patient's residence, checking for clusters and sterilising the house Seventy-five years on, 469 PHCs are in operation across the country, with each manned, on average, by 64 medical professionals, including one to two licensed doctors. They still locate clusters, track links and conduct tests. It is this “accumulated wealth of expertise, rarely found elsewhere” that has made the difference. Japan has not had to rely on mass testing strategies because it’s health care history had already left a cluster-crushing strategy embedded in its system

https://moneyweek.com/economy/global-economy/601264/cluster-...

> They didn’t do “next to nothing.” They used a cluster-based approach through their public health center network, that was put in place to combat TB in the 30s. Turns out, that was pretty effective at combatting COVID.

Also, IIRC, their culture is naturally more socially distanced than western ones (e.g. mask wearing was already common in some situations, bowing instead of hand shaking, etc.).

Mask wearing, yes. I’m not sure about the other parts. Unmarried people live with their parents well into adulthood. There are less children, so maybe that’s a factor. But most stores, restaurants, and other venues in Japan would seem cramped and overcapacity by Western standards.

America's rate was kept under control ever since the lockdown. As planned.

By definition a pandemic is not eradicated if it is still rampant.

Without a vaccine, Germany, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and anyone else are still at the same risk they were five months ago.

not really: in five months we (humans) have gathered ideas on how to treat the disease; we've ramped up the production of masks, ventilators, tests, an so on; we've educated the population on how to be safer; we've set up special paths to manage infected people in hospitals so we can avoid contamination; we've increased IC beds; we've learned how to identify the disease earlier rather than just consider it a flu; and many other things.

Everyone is still at risk but the risk today is lower than 5 months ago.

Worst approaches? In what way? Certainly not in outcome. Just in your mind?