Japan did aggressive contact tracing (which people actually respect) and there is already a mask wearing culture - people already wore facemasks when feeling ill. In the US there was a plan to send free cloth facemasks to every household that was stopped because it could "cause too much panic".
Americans bring up examples of countries with 10X the discipline, like America would have an infection rate closer to Japan if we _had not_ locked down.
It's fucking ridiculous.
Re:The Covid Science Wars
by mattigames on Tuesday December 01, 2020 @01:22AM
(#25262908)
Until we know what Japan did right [0] (or any non-behavioral advantage they may have had) is completely pointless to try to frame them as an example or anything alike.
The government even has programs trying to encourage people to go out eating and to travel within the country.
Numbers are very low compared to similar populations elsewhere including deaths so we're not killing people here. At least not yet. They are at their highest rate yet but it's still 1/100th of similar populations in the west.