Yes, it sure is confusing why say NYC had a times 5000-6000 new cases a day and yet Tokyo, a city with 2-3x more people and way more crowded trains and offices and stores never had more than 200 a day.

https://www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/covid/covid-19-data.page

https://stopcovid19.metro.tokyo.lg.jp/en

People come up with all kinds of theories but none of them seem to fit. One theory, Japanese wear masks. They didn't until the lockdown which was late. They've mostly unlocked now and restaurants seem relatively busy. Of course (almost) everyone is still wearing a mask and lots of precautions are in place but at a glance seeing the still crowded trains and now crowded restaurants it's hard to figure out why the numbers stay so low.

Some people claim not enough testing but if that's all it was there would still be a death rate climb and arguably an ICU overflow and that hasn't happened either.

One thing to remember is that we are still early in the pandemic, as long as it feels like it has already gone on.

It is hard to say for many localities whether they had a good response or just haven't been hit hard yet. A lot of states, and States, congratulated themselves early on for their low infection rates, only to spiral quickly or slowly out of control.

The current hypothesis on New York (and New England in general) is that it was hit so much earlier than the rest of the US because the flood of people returning all at once from Europe due to the travel lockdowns created a super-spreader event at the airports.

Which isn't to say New England didn't drop the ball early on; I'm saying instead the difference between places hit hard and places not might not be "good response/hygiene/culture" versus "bad", it might be "bad and lucky" versus "bad and unlucky".

Time and analysis will tell; I would wait a year or two to start naming the winners and losers.

> One theory, Japanese wear masks. They didn't until the lockdown which was late

This is untrue. People in East Asia wear masks a lot more than any place else even without a pandemic. I started seeing a lot of masks in Tokyo in January itself. Softbank tested all their employees and the ones who were working in shops had less infections than the ones who worked at home, even though the number of people WFH were much lower than ones who worked in shops. Which gives a very solid backing to the theory that masks + personal hygiene is enough to keep this pandemic under control.

Source for the softbank tests - https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Coronavirus/SoftBank-condu...

It's not untrue. I've lived in Japan 14 years. I have pictures from late March of people out and about without masks. Sure, it was not uncommon to see a few people wearing masks in Asia (and Japan) before the epidemic but it was not remotely everyone at any time until the lockdown in April. Usually an average train of 200 people might have 10-20 people with masks on (before the lockdown)

Here's pictures March 24th (and one in late Jan which shows zero masks)

https://photos.app.goo.gl/aUWB5YB6vBnjZk8j6

So no, it's not because Japanese wear masks. I'm not saying that doesn't help but it's clearly not enough given how crowded the trains are and how late it was until everyone started wearing them

So how else do you explain SoftBank's testing results? The testing pool is large enough to not be an outlier, everything else was exactly the same for all their employees - their genetic pool, healthcare system, their cultural habits. The only difference was their level of alertness to personal hygiene. People working in stores were extra cautious of everything while who WFH were laid back and might have ended up slipping up more often, hence the higher cases.

The fraction of positives has also been very low in Japan. Considering they have largely stuck with their restrictions on test access, this means people with fever and such symptoms are still mostly due to other reasons, despite being deep in summer now when such things are uncommon.

I have been puzzling over the Japan situation from the beginning. They go against a lot of narrative about why the US got so bad. People would wave them off with conspiracy theories about the Olympics. We definitely need some much better survey data.

They are a healthier (%3 obese vs %30 obese), quieter, less touchy (ex: bow vs handshake, no hugs, etc) & cleaner (ex: no shoes in the house) base population with mask wearing that probably don't meet up in large groups nowadays other than school.

While the poorer population of America is probably not that fit compared to the richer, which is why your seeing more of them dying probably.

Stereotypes don't really help as we don't know which of them matter if any, and to what degree. Japan also had mask shortages as they got most of their supply from China. They also depend much more on public transit and have smaller housing and public places. I want stats. For all we know it could be the amount of plosives and spitting in different languages that's the key.

By the way I don't know about you but I can't remember the last time I hugged someone outside my immediate family, and I may have shaken four hands in the last 12 months. I have a hard time believing that's very relevant, despite the high profile of such customs.

> base population with mask wearing that probably don't meet up in large groups nowadays

You haven't been to Nomikais I believe.

When I say large group, I mean hundreds of people in a church levels of large group singing church hymns loudly. Not a few dozen inside a room.

Loud singing/talking has been shown to increase coronavirus / droplet transmissions.

You mean Karaoke? A tradition so popular there are million dollar companies providing it as a service?

Again, a small group of people of a dozen people max, all separated in small rooms. Not a church with hundreds all crammed together on pews singing hymns with their masks off.