Yep, and I'm also 100% in support of legislation aiming at reducing tobacco consumption, such as plain packaging laws and advertising bans. I'm not sure if Japan are already doing those or not though.

Someone else smoking largely doesn't affect me, and I would hope Japan has also aggressively (like the US) curtailed smoking in public places like restaurants and other public accommodations.

Someone else defying lockdown, test & trace, mask, or vaccine mandates can affect me, especially prior to when I was able to get the vaccine.

That's the difference.

Were all the frequent ads and articles about second-hand smoke over the last 2 decades or so being alarmist?

If someone smokes close to you, it does affect you in about the same way as someone with COVID. Likewise, someone with COVID far away affects you about as much as someone smoking far from you.

Cigarettes are available to every adult. Imagine if every adult in Japan was exposed to covid before vaccinations. Use that number of estimated deaths, not 17k. Why do people always use real death numbers after all the lockdowns, masking and social distancing is applied, for comparison to other death causes, including flu? It's extremely misleading.

Death toll would be way higher than 17k especially with the more older population in Japan compared to other countries. Not to mention hospital overcrowding leading to higher fatality rates compared to now and even highet non covid deaths due to lack of emergency medical care.