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Japan's PM to ask all schools to temporarily close

378 points by jdshaffer 7y ago

jdshaffer 7y ago
Announced just about an hour ago, taking the country here (Japan) by surprise. Most JHS and HS are in the middle of final exams, and public High School entrance exams are next week. (Most university entrance exams are just finishing, though). A hopefully good move, but might have been nicer to have given teachers and students more time to prepare (i.e., announce it a week earlier, perhaps?). shrug Just my $0.02
- pbhjpbhj 7y ago
  >Officials say 2 of the 15 new cases are children under 10 years of age. >The latest cases bring the number of confirmed infections in Hokkaido to 54, the most in Japan. How were they supposed to know last week that this would happen? Or are you proposing be can stop the spread of the virus for a week to give people chance to get ready??
  - jdshaffer 7y ago
    No, I simply mean it would have been nice last week to let the schools know he's considering cancelling schools. By making this a sudden announcement he's caught all the schools on the hop, you might say. Today (Friday) is the one and only day left to wrap up the school year (school years end in March and start in April here). So final exams will be cancelled, maybe graduation ceremonies will be cancelled, students have to empty out their desks (they don't have lockers here). Basically, teachers and students have to finish up the school year TODAY, with no advanced warning or time to plan. So, I completely agree with Abe-san's desire to curb the spread of the virus, but being in the education system myself (and having 3 kids affected by his decision), a bit of an advanced warning would have GREATLY helped the schools, the kids, and the parents. shrug But as I said, it's just my thoughts and hopes and desires as a father being affected by it! :-)
- Iv 7y ago
  I have the opposite opinion. As long as you know it is the good decision, do it. Even preventing one class contamination could be crucial for preventing the epidemic to spread. He announced it late in the afternoon but I even consider irresponsible to make that from next week and let the schools open tomorrow if you consider the situation so dangerous as to warrant school closures.
jdshaffer 7y ago
Japanese Source: https://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/html/20200227/k10012304751000.html https://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/html/20200227/k10012304751000.ht...
elicash 7y ago
This is surprising given this epidemic seems to mostly affect people over 30. Not saying it's wrong, I'm not a public health expert. Just surprised. Is it because they might be likely to carry and spread it without ever showing any symptoms?
- darren0 7y ago
  2 of the 15 new cases in Japan are children. Seems like a reasonable precaution as children have a lot more physical contact than adults (example, lice spreads in children more easily).
- m3kw9 7y ago
  Children can spread to adults that’s why
  - agumonkey 7y ago
    are elders still living with children and grandchildren ? or is it a cliché .
- pingyong 7y ago
  Over ~60 really, but schools are still amazing in terms of spread (to everyone), even if most of the kids would be fine after 2 weeks at home.
  - anonsivalley652 7y ago
    70-90. And the DJIA just dropped 500 pts.
    - jacquesm 7y ago
      Closed at down 1190.
- onetimemanytime 7y ago
  Quarantines apparently are a way to stop spreading it. Now imagine a school with 800 kids, with parents and siblings from all kinds of backgrounds. One kids with the virus can spread to a lot of people who can then do the same...
patio11 7y ago
n.b. This is being described domestically as 要請, which is “ask” in the sense of “The IRS asks that you not lie on your tax return.”
- mszkoda 7y ago
  Are all the schools in Japan controlled or funded in some way by the government? I'm guessing this is an "ask" to private school and the public schools have it as a direct order.
  - Waterluvian 7y ago
    In many parts of the world, the government still has regulatory power over private schools in many ways. I wouldn't be surprised if Japan can pretty much shut down all schools for health emergency reasons.
    - buckminster 7y ago
      In most parts of the world the government has authority over everything once they declare an emergency.
- anonsivalley652 7y ago
  Does that really mean voluntary, strong suggestion or mostly mandatory?
  - Iv 7y ago
    Yes. (source: I live in Japan)
    - Wowfunhappy 7y ago
      ...the GP didn’t ask a yes or no question. :P
      - 7y ago
psychlops 7y ago
They plan to close them until spring holidays late next month. We can expect much of the US to do the same if the virus comes in during the winter season. This is a big reason why the stock market is dropping.
- vorpalhex 7y ago
  > This is a big reason why the stock market is dropping. That's.. a gross over simplification. The market sees a lot of perceived risk, whether that's school closures or factories shuttering temporarily, disruption in travel or other effects. The move towards investing more in gold bullion is both reactionary and indicates the market perceives a heightened risk of crash. Note that the market perceiving something doesn't make it true or inevitable, anymore than your aunt Jill perceiving she's allergic to bad chakras. > We can expect much of the US to do the same... Maybe. That depends heavily on how any given local body is willing to admit the problem exists, federal pressure on them one way or another, and general population beliefs. I'd expect California to close a few schools if they see more cases, but I wouldn't expect Alabama to.
  - perl4ever 7y ago
    "The move towards investing more in gold bullion is both reactionary" The market seems to be moving towards US Treasuries too.
refurb 7y ago
Vietnam, who has only had 19 cases (and very few new ones lately), closed their schools a few weeks back. Last I heard that may be extended to the end of March.
- anonsivalley652 7y ago
  It's good that they're on top of it. Better to be too cautious than make 2020 another list of pandemics wikipedia entry rounded to hundreds of thousands of dead. This one is especially bad because the carriers are asymptomatic while spreading it, and then suddenly most older men are being admitted to the hospital fighting for their lives.
- NhanH 7y ago
  It was a bit easier for Vietnam, since the schools were closed for Lunar New Year and we just kept it closed. However the government is discussing whether to open it again next week... Potentially bad timing to do so.
tasogare 7y ago
I think next will be universities (we already cancelled a conference in mine). Japan has taken the issue too lightly since the beginning, it's good they finally start acting on it.
- jdshaffer 7y ago
  Not sure if the universities will close, unless things get much worse. The universities here are already on Spring Break -- the semester / year ended at the start of February and the new school year won't start until the beginning of April. So, it's most likely they universities will just stay as they are and wait and see. IF things get worse, I'm not sure what the universities will do here.
  - tasogare 7y ago
    It’s spring vacation for undergrad students only, not researchers, grads students and administrative staff. Also contrary to Europe most service are running at least minimally (libraries, a cafeteria, etc.) so there is still some activity on campus. So, if the virus keep spreading I hope they’ll close or that we can chose to stay at home, which is OK for most of my job anyway.
Mountain_Skies 7y ago
Our county school system has a remote learning platform in place that is used for bad weather days. It keeps the schools from needing to do make up days. I wonder how long it could be effective. It seems like an ok way to handle lessons and coursework for a few days but I wonder if there would be a wide gap in student achievement if it needed to go beyond that limited scope.
- Thlom 7y ago
  Just curious, how extreme weather do you get where you live? We have some rough weather at times, but I've never heard of closed anything due to bad weather.
  - defterGoose 7y ago
    No snow days? I weep for your childhood.
    - Thlom 7y ago
      Most of the winter we skied to school. :-)
  - ghaff 7y ago
    In large swaths of the US, schools (especially grade school and high school) typically close for some number of days each year due to snow. There can be other weather events too but snow's the common one.
    - Loughla 7y ago
      Most schools in the midwest US actually build a school calendar that is 7-8 days (or so) longer than is actually necessary. That way if they have to take snow days, they're not going until July; alternatively, if they don't take snow days, everyone gets excited to be let out early. . . when it's really the legal time to be out of school.
      - 7y ago
acoderhasnoname 7y ago
too late to do that now? it's already in the community
- dredmorbius 7y ago
  The point of epidemiological containment is to reduce the R value such that R<1. Once this is done, eventually, inevitably, the epidemic will burn out. Yes, more people will become infected, yes, some will die. But the level of person-to-person transmission will have fallen below the level necessary for the epidemic to sustain itself, and it will slowly decline and fade out. Perfect containment, 100% effective vaccines, 100% vaccination rates, (neither of which apply here: there is not yet a vaccine), 100% travel and contact curtailment, 100% sanitation, 100% filtration, are not required. Only sufficiently effective methods to reduce transmission. Of which, strong, effective, and widespread gathering and travel restrictions within or from epidemic zones are a very sensible tool.
  - wtdo 7y ago
    I can't find any relevant data, but I wonder what effects previous quarantines (eg during Spanish flu) had on other infectious agents (eg common cold, norovirus, etc). Nobody was being quarantined for those other diseases, but I'd think a general quarantine would have had an effect on them as well. Maybe there ought to be a monthly quarantine every year, kinda like the Jewish year of jubilee.
- JoeAltmaier 7y ago
  One goal is to slow the infection rate, so hospitals are not overburdened. Never too late to do that.
HarryHirsch 7y ago
Good luck with that in the US, where school is often used as an alternative to childcare.
- jp555 7y ago
  often? alternative? I expect that our School ALWAYS care for my child. :P
  - freehunter 7y ago
    Childcare meaning daycare or babysitter, as an alternative to parents watching the children. Parents often can’t take time off work to watch their children.
    - jp555 7y ago
      I pay for pre and post school childcare at my kids school, provide by my municipality. I also think School is a kind of childcare. The care of the kids has always been the priority of great teachers in my experience
- bluGill 7y ago
  I expect if schools get called off most business will tell their people to stay home. They will watch their kids while working. Of course the poorest will be least likely to be told to stay home (grocery stores will still need to be open - and probably need extra staff for sanitation)
- SamBam 7y ago
  What a strange way to phrase it. It sounds like you're suggesting the reason students go to school is because parents don't want to deal with childcare. How is school "used" in other countries, then?
  - magic_beans 7y ago
    It's not that parents don't want to handle childcare. It's that American work culture and lack of social support makes childcare impossible for parents who don't have a stay-at-home partner/employee to rear the children.
jackschultz 7y ago
I don't see comments on this yet but I'll says some of that is because of the Olympics based in Tokyo this summer. I heard the other day about how there's kind of a cutoff point in May determining if it needs to be postponed, pushed, or moved. The Olympics is still huge and if your country is hosting, I can see them wanting to close schools to try anything to stop the possible spread for people to trust and want to still go and compete.
- mirekrusin 7y ago
  You can't move olympics. They can only be cancelled or they can do something without spectators/locals only maybe not to loose trucks of money on broadcasting agreements etc. Travel to Japan is pretty much banned on all orgs/companies so good luck with organising anything in this conditions.
  - saiya-jin 7y ago
    Why it can't be +1 year tentatively? I see no showstopper, all contracts remain. A lot of pain locally, but better for everybody rather than just cancelling.
    - URSpider94 7y ago
      There is a very full worldwide calendar of lower-tier events that take place in the other 3.75 out of four years when the Olympics aren’t happening, some of which would have to be canceled to accommodate. There’s also the issue of clearing all of the massive hotel room blocks needed, and re-working the schedules of all of the Olympic venues. It could probably be done, but it will be very painful.
    - anticensor 7y ago
      Not +1, but +2 is possible.
      - kingosticks 7y ago
        But then you end up delaying the Olympics AND cancelling the World Championships. Better off just canceling IMO.
BurningFrog 7y ago
Somewhere, a demonic Japanese child's spell has finally succeeded.
- anticensor 7y ago
  This is Japan. Parallel schools would appear :)
reustle 7y ago
For those of you curious about the state of COVID-19 in Japan, I created an open source tracker that has gained a lot of momentum. Source Code: https://github.com/reustle/covid19japan/ https://github.com/reustle/covid19japan/ Tracker Itself: https://covid19japan.com https://covid19japan.com Twitter Thread: https://twitter.com/reustle/status/1229313493808992257 https://twitter.com/reustle/status/1229313493808992257 (copied from another thread)
- BookPage 7y ago
  Wow this is awesome, I would love for this to be a global thing. Are you aware of any ports for other countries?
  - reustle 7y ago
    Not aware of any ports, no, but I'm sure there are others working on similar projects. Feel free to fork if you think it would be helpful! Beware, we're removing mapbox because it's costing me big $
  - awa 7y ago
    Here's a global tracker: https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6 https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.h...
  - hiccuphippo 7y ago
    There's a global map and charts at https://outbreak.cc https://outbreak.cc Also the /r/coronavirus subreddit has a daily post with changes per country.
    - paulmd 7y ago
      you should avoid the r/coronavirus subreddit, a pro-china mod has taken over and is actively suppressing China-related news and signal-boosting news on other countries. The head mod recently started an AMA with the stated purpose of banning "troublemakers". It's effectively a pro-china messaging operation at this point. China is very worried about this, it represents a potentially existential threat to CCP's political control of the country. That's why they were jailing doctors who reported the outbreak and so on. Maintaining media control of the narrative is important and in 2020 that of course includes social media like Reddit. https://www.reddit.com/r/Bannedfromcoronavirus/comments/f3uvwo/ive_been_permabanned_from_both_rchina_flu_and/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Bannedfromcoronavirus/comments/f3uv... Or, read it if you want, but be aware that it's going to be downplaying the China situation and playing up the situation in other countries to make China look better. Treat it like reading RT or something. (and on a more general note, Reddit's system for choosing moderation is terrible. They just give control to whoever is first to register some obvious brand-name or whatever, and there's really no system to appeal it, unless you want to try and start your own subreddit using some different name. And like domain names, there's really only so many reasonable permutations of a given name.)
bouncycastle 7y ago
I think what Japan really needs to do is to run a campaign to change the culture. One of the problems is that they put too much confidence in face masks. What they need to do is run a message that if you show any symptoms then stay home and avoid contact altogether. Most of these masks are just toys and not air tight at all. One experiment you can do with the mask is go outside in cold weather, so that you can see the steam when you breathe. You will notice that when you breathe, most of air is actually escaping through the edges of the mask and around the nose. Also, there is a culture of not staying home when you're sick. It's normal to continue going to work with a cold / other infection, or school or shop. Sick leave is frowned upon. Just put on a mask and you're all sweet, right? That has to change.
- jesuschroist 7y ago
  And provide soap at sinks in public bathrooms.
  - FreeHugs 7y ago
    Is using the tap and soap of a public bathroom really reducing the chances of virus/bacteria infection? Or is it increasing them because the soap and tap carry viruses and bacteria themselfes?
    - hadtodoit 7y ago
      Not sure if you've been to Japan but they have some of the cleanest public facilities I've seen in spite of all the traffic. I'm sure people are coming through multiple times a day to wipe down all fomites.
      - FreeHugs 7y ago
        Maybe. But does that answer my question? If you touch the soap and the tap, that will surely transfer germs to your hands that the person before you left there?
girlgeekinjapan 7y ago
Sorry to change the topic but I'm really struggling with a decision to fly from Tokyo (where I live) to the USA tomorrow for a wedding. One of my closest friends is getting married. She says to come! Wedding is Saturday. Day after I'd fly to another state to see mom. A few days after that I'd fly to another state to see brother and dad. After that was supposed to be GDC. May still go to SF or just stay with dad but current flight back is after GDC. I don't really want to miss my friends wedding and was really looking forward to seeing family as I only get to seem them once every other year or so and parents are healthy but ~80 so no so many chances left. So, what do I do? Go and cross my fingers I don't catch it? Pray that I'm not a carrier? No symptoms ATM. I currently work from home so haven't been commuting in typical Tokyo rush hour trains but have been out at non-rush hour 2 out of 3 days a week. Is it selfish to want to go? Is it selfish to not want to go? Is it irresponsible to go? Is it stupid to be worried?
- tinza123 7y ago
  I'm from a non-Hubei Chinese province. I won't go if I were you. Although the chances are small, but there are several cases in my home town, where people came back from Hubei province (where the outbreak initiated), without any symptoms, turned out to be carriers. One graduate student infected > 10 family members while maintaining normal body temporature, made local news right away.
  - charliemil4 7y ago
    Based on your experience, are people fully recovering from Coronavirus? How long does that take usually?
    - tinza123 7y ago
      My dad works for the local CDC so I was following the development pretty closely. It really depends on the person themselves, most people do recover without obvious squelae. It can take up to 21 days, tho most people show symptoms within 14 days.
nestlequ1k 7y ago
More than 900 cases of infection have been confirmed. Damn, that's alarming.
- kingosticks 7y ago
  But, as the rest of the sentence mentions, more than 700 of those were from the cruise ship. I think you really need to keep that in mind when considering the Japanese infection count.
durpleDrank 7y ago
Seriously though. That guy who comes into work sick to show us all he is 100% committed is completely bonkers. WORK REMOTELY if you need to flex how big your dedication is. Maybe throw a Calvin and Hobbes sticker on your car windshield while you're being so insecure and putting peoples health at risk.
- jdshaffer 7y ago
  Actually the pressure is a bit on the reverse... if you call off sick for anything less that super-ill, it looks like you're not committed, and your boss and co-workers will not think that favorably of you. Even at the university I work at, as a teacher, there's a subtle pressure not to call in sick or miss meetings or take a day off. I can only imagine how much STRONGER that peer-pressure is in an office setting.
- perl4ever 7y ago
  Remote work hasn't been a thing all my life, but now that (and where) it is, I've never seen people act like that, so I don't know why you're declaiming against it.
pavon 7y ago
In Japan who would typically take care of children in a situation like this? In the US, because of the difficulty for parents to get off of work, I would expect most of the children to be in large group settings anyway (day care, staying with friends, large extended families, etc). It might limit spread a little bit compared to school, but not a lot.
- usaar333 7y ago
  Mothers. Japan is actually known for having very poor child support options outside of family. The percent of married woman with children that work is quite low.
  - fogetti 7y ago
    According to a government survey from 2017 or so, the number of single parent families was hovering around 1.2 million. This is almost exactly 1 percent of the population which doesn't seem much until you compare it to the number of children under the age of 14 which is 15.53 million people. Now their ratio gets closer to 8 percent. That doesn't seem very low to me.

378 points by jdshaffer 7y ago

Announced just about an hour ago, taking the country here (Japan) by surprise. Most JHS and HS are in the middle of final exams, and public High School entrance exams are next week. (Most university entrance exams are just finishing, though). A hopefully good move, but might have been nicer to have given teachers and students more time to prepare (i.e., announce it a week earlier, perhaps?). shrug Just my $0.02

pbhjpbhj 7y ago
>Officials say 2 of the 15 new cases are children under 10 years of age. >The latest cases bring the number of confirmed infections in Hokkaido to 54, the most in Japan. How were they supposed to know last week that this would happen? Or are you proposing be can stop the spread of the virus for a week to give people chance to get ready??
- jdshaffer 7y ago
  No, I simply mean it would have been nice last week to let the schools know he's considering cancelling schools. By making this a sudden announcement he's caught all the schools on the hop, you might say. Today (Friday) is the one and only day left to wrap up the school year (school years end in March and start in April here). So final exams will be cancelled, maybe graduation ceremonies will be cancelled, students have to empty out their desks (they don't have lockers here). Basically, teachers and students have to finish up the school year TODAY, with no advanced warning or time to plan. So, I completely agree with Abe-san's desire to curb the spread of the virus, but being in the education system myself (and having 3 kids affected by his decision), a bit of an advanced warning would have GREATLY helped the schools, the kids, and the parents. shrug But as I said, it's just my thoughts and hopes and desires as a father being affected by it! :-)
Iv 7y ago
I have the opposite opinion. As long as you know it is the good decision, do it. Even preventing one class contamination could be crucial for preventing the epidemic to spread. He announced it late in the afternoon but I even consider irresponsible to make that from next week and let the schools open tomorrow if you consider the situation so dangerous as to warrant school closures.

jdshaffer 7y ago

Japanese Source: https://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/html/20200227/k10012304751000.html https://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/html/20200227/k10012304751000.ht...

elicash 7y ago

This is surprising given this epidemic seems to mostly affect people over 30. Not saying it's wrong, I'm not a public health expert. Just surprised. Is it because they might be likely to carry and spread it without ever showing any symptoms?

darren0 7y ago
2 of the 15 new cases in Japan are children. Seems like a reasonable precaution as children have a lot more physical contact than adults (example, lice spreads in children more easily).
m3kw9 7y ago
Children can spread to adults that’s why
- agumonkey 7y ago
  are elders still living with children and grandchildren ? or is it a cliché .
pingyong 7y ago
Over ~60 really, but schools are still amazing in terms of spread (to everyone), even if most of the kids would be fine after 2 weeks at home.
- anonsivalley652 7y ago
  70-90. And the DJIA just dropped 500 pts.
  - jacquesm 7y ago
    Closed at down 1190.
onetimemanytime 7y ago
Quarantines apparently are a way to stop spreading it. Now imagine a school with 800 kids, with parents and siblings from all kinds of backgrounds. One kids with the virus can spread to a lot of people who can then do the same...

patio11 7y ago

n.b. This is being described domestically as 要請, which is “ask” in the sense of “The IRS asks that you not lie on your tax return.”

mszkoda 7y ago
Are all the schools in Japan controlled or funded in some way by the government? I'm guessing this is an "ask" to private school and the public schools have it as a direct order.
- Waterluvian 7y ago
  In many parts of the world, the government still has regulatory power over private schools in many ways. I wouldn't be surprised if Japan can pretty much shut down all schools for health emergency reasons.
  - buckminster 7y ago
    In most parts of the world the government has authority over everything once they declare an emergency.
anonsivalley652 7y ago
Does that really mean voluntary, strong suggestion or mostly mandatory?
- Iv 7y ago
  Yes. (source: I live in Japan)
  - Wowfunhappy 7y ago
    ...the GP didn’t ask a yes or no question. :P
    - 7y ago

psychlops 7y ago

They plan to close them until spring holidays late next month. We can expect much of the US to do the same if the virus comes in during the winter season. This is a big reason why the stock market is dropping.

vorpalhex 7y ago
> This is a big reason why the stock market is dropping. That's.. a gross over simplification. The market sees a lot of perceived risk, whether that's school closures or factories shuttering temporarily, disruption in travel or other effects. The move towards investing more in gold bullion is both reactionary and indicates the market perceives a heightened risk of crash. Note that the market perceiving something doesn't make it true or inevitable, anymore than your aunt Jill perceiving she's allergic to bad chakras. > We can expect much of the US to do the same... Maybe. That depends heavily on how any given local body is willing to admit the problem exists, federal pressure on them one way or another, and general population beliefs. I'd expect California to close a few schools if they see more cases, but I wouldn't expect Alabama to.
- perl4ever 7y ago
  "The move towards investing more in gold bullion is both reactionary" The market seems to be moving towards US Treasuries too.

refurb 7y ago

Vietnam, who has only had 19 cases (and very few new ones lately), closed their schools a few weeks back. Last I heard that may be extended to the end of March.

anonsivalley652 7y ago
It's good that they're on top of it. Better to be too cautious than make 2020 another list of pandemics wikipedia entry rounded to hundreds of thousands of dead. This one is especially bad because the carriers are asymptomatic while spreading it, and then suddenly most older men are being admitted to the hospital fighting for their lives.
NhanH 7y ago
It was a bit easier for Vietnam, since the schools were closed for Lunar New Year and we just kept it closed. However the government is discussing whether to open it again next week... Potentially bad timing to do so.

tasogare 7y ago

I think next will be universities (we already cancelled a conference in mine). Japan has taken the issue too lightly since the beginning, it's good they finally start acting on it.

jdshaffer 7y ago
Not sure if the universities will close, unless things get much worse. The universities here are already on Spring Break -- the semester / year ended at the start of February and the new school year won't start until the beginning of April. So, it's most likely they universities will just stay as they are and wait and see. IF things get worse, I'm not sure what the universities will do here.
- tasogare 7y ago
  It’s spring vacation for undergrad students only, not researchers, grads students and administrative staff. Also contrary to Europe most service are running at least minimally (libraries, a cafeteria, etc.) so there is still some activity on campus. So, if the virus keep spreading I hope they’ll close or that we can chose to stay at home, which is OK for most of my job anyway.

Mountain_Skies 7y ago

Our county school system has a remote learning platform in place that is used for bad weather days. It keeps the schools from needing to do make up days. I wonder how long it could be effective. It seems like an ok way to handle lessons and coursework for a few days but I wonder if there would be a wide gap in student achievement if it needed to go beyond that limited scope.

Thlom 7y ago
Just curious, how extreme weather do you get where you live? We have some rough weather at times, but I've never heard of closed anything due to bad weather.
- defterGoose 7y ago
  No snow days? I weep for your childhood.
  - Thlom 7y ago
    Most of the winter we skied to school. :-)
- ghaff 7y ago
  In large swaths of the US, schools (especially grade school and high school) typically close for some number of days each year due to snow. There can be other weather events too but snow's the common one.
  - Loughla 7y ago
    Most schools in the midwest US actually build a school calendar that is 7-8 days (or so) longer than is actually necessary. That way if they have to take snow days, they're not going until July; alternatively, if they don't take snow days, everyone gets excited to be let out early. . . when it's really the legal time to be out of school.
    - 7y ago

acoderhasnoname 7y ago

too late to do that now? it's already in the community

dredmorbius 7y ago
The point of epidemiological containment is to reduce the R value such that R<1. Once this is done, eventually, inevitably, the epidemic will burn out. Yes, more people will become infected, yes, some will die. But the level of person-to-person transmission will have fallen below the level necessary for the epidemic to sustain itself, and it will slowly decline and fade out. Perfect containment, 100% effective vaccines, 100% vaccination rates, (neither of which apply here: there is not yet a vaccine), 100% travel and contact curtailment, 100% sanitation, 100% filtration, are not required. Only sufficiently effective methods to reduce transmission. Of which, strong, effective, and widespread gathering and travel restrictions within or from epidemic zones are a very sensible tool.
- wtdo 7y ago
  I can't find any relevant data, but I wonder what effects previous quarantines (eg during Spanish flu) had on other infectious agents (eg common cold, norovirus, etc). Nobody was being quarantined for those other diseases, but I'd think a general quarantine would have had an effect on them as well. Maybe there ought to be a monthly quarantine every year, kinda like the Jewish year of jubilee.
JoeAltmaier 7y ago
One goal is to slow the infection rate, so hospitals are not overburdened. Never too late to do that.

HarryHirsch 7y ago

Good luck with that in the US, where school is often used as an alternative to childcare.

jp555 7y ago
often? alternative? I expect that our School ALWAYS care for my child. :P
- freehunter 7y ago
  Childcare meaning daycare or babysitter, as an alternative to parents watching the children. Parents often can’t take time off work to watch their children.
  - jp555 7y ago
    I pay for pre and post school childcare at my kids school, provide by my municipality. I also think School is a kind of childcare. The care of the kids has always been the priority of great teachers in my experience
bluGill 7y ago
I expect if schools get called off most business will tell their people to stay home. They will watch their kids while working. Of course the poorest will be least likely to be told to stay home (grocery stores will still need to be open - and probably need extra staff for sanitation)
SamBam 7y ago
What a strange way to phrase it. It sounds like you're suggesting the reason students go to school is because parents don't want to deal with childcare. How is school "used" in other countries, then?
- magic_beans 7y ago
  It's not that parents don't want to handle childcare. It's that American work culture and lack of social support makes childcare impossible for parents who don't have a stay-at-home partner/employee to rear the children.

jackschultz 7y ago

I don't see comments on this yet but I'll says some of that is because of the Olympics based in Tokyo this summer. I heard the other day about how there's kind of a cutoff point in May determining if it needs to be postponed, pushed, or moved. The Olympics is still huge and if your country is hosting, I can see them wanting to close schools to try anything to stop the possible spread for people to trust and want to still go and compete.

mirekrusin 7y ago
You can't move olympics. They can only be cancelled or they can do something without spectators/locals only maybe not to loose trucks of money on broadcasting agreements etc. Travel to Japan is pretty much banned on all orgs/companies so good luck with organising anything in this conditions.
- saiya-jin 7y ago
  Why it can't be +1 year tentatively? I see no showstopper, all contracts remain. A lot of pain locally, but better for everybody rather than just cancelling.
  - URSpider94 7y ago
    There is a very full worldwide calendar of lower-tier events that take place in the other 3.75 out of four years when the Olympics aren’t happening, some of which would have to be canceled to accommodate. There’s also the issue of clearing all of the massive hotel room blocks needed, and re-working the schedules of all of the Olympic venues. It could probably be done, but it will be very painful.
  - anticensor 7y ago
    Not +1, but +2 is possible.
    - kingosticks 7y ago
      But then you end up delaying the Olympics AND cancelling the World Championships. Better off just canceling IMO.

BurningFrog 7y ago

Somewhere, a demonic Japanese child's spell has finally succeeded.

anticensor 7y ago
This is Japan. Parallel schools would appear :)

reustle 7y ago

For those of you curious about the state of COVID-19 in Japan, I created an open source tracker that has gained a lot of momentum. Source Code: https://github.com/reustle/covid19japan/ https://github.com/reustle/covid19japan/ Tracker Itself: https://covid19japan.com https://covid19japan.com Twitter Thread: https://twitter.com/reustle/status/1229313493808992257 https://twitter.com/reustle/status/1229313493808992257 (copied from another thread)

BookPage 7y ago
Wow this is awesome, I would love for this to be a global thing. Are you aware of any ports for other countries?
- reustle 7y ago
  Not aware of any ports, no, but I'm sure there are others working on similar projects. Feel free to fork if you think it would be helpful! Beware, we're removing mapbox because it's costing me big $
- awa 7y ago
  Here's a global tracker: https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6 https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.h...
- hiccuphippo 7y ago
  There's a global map and charts at https://outbreak.cc https://outbreak.cc Also the /r/coronavirus subreddit has a daily post with changes per country.
  - paulmd 7y ago
    you should avoid the r/coronavirus subreddit, a pro-china mod has taken over and is actively suppressing China-related news and signal-boosting news on other countries. The head mod recently started an AMA with the stated purpose of banning "troublemakers". It's effectively a pro-china messaging operation at this point. China is very worried about this, it represents a potentially existential threat to CCP's political control of the country. That's why they were jailing doctors who reported the outbreak and so on. Maintaining media control of the narrative is important and in 2020 that of course includes social media like Reddit. https://www.reddit.com/r/Bannedfromcoronavirus/comments/f3uvwo/ive_been_permabanned_from_both_rchina_flu_and/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Bannedfromcoronavirus/comments/f3uv... Or, read it if you want, but be aware that it's going to be downplaying the China situation and playing up the situation in other countries to make China look better. Treat it like reading RT or something. (and on a more general note, Reddit's system for choosing moderation is terrible. They just give control to whoever is first to register some obvious brand-name or whatever, and there's really no system to appeal it, unless you want to try and start your own subreddit using some different name. And like domain names, there's really only so many reasonable permutations of a given name.)

bouncycastle 7y ago

I think what Japan really needs to do is to run a campaign to change the culture. One of the problems is that they put too much confidence in face masks. What they need to do is run a message that if you show any symptoms then stay home and avoid contact altogether. Most of these masks are just toys and not air tight at all. One experiment you can do with the mask is go outside in cold weather, so that you can see the steam when you breathe. You will notice that when you breathe, most of air is actually escaping through the edges of the mask and around the nose. Also, there is a culture of not staying home when you're sick. It's normal to continue going to work with a cold / other infection, or school or shop. Sick leave is frowned upon. Just put on a mask and you're all sweet, right? That has to change.

jesuschroist 7y ago
And provide soap at sinks in public bathrooms.
- FreeHugs 7y ago
  Is using the tap and soap of a public bathroom really reducing the chances of virus/bacteria infection? Or is it increasing them because the soap and tap carry viruses and bacteria themselfes?
  - hadtodoit 7y ago
    Not sure if you've been to Japan but they have some of the cleanest public facilities I've seen in spite of all the traffic. I'm sure people are coming through multiple times a day to wipe down all fomites.
    - FreeHugs 7y ago
      Maybe. But does that answer my question? If you touch the soap and the tap, that will surely transfer germs to your hands that the person before you left there?

girlgeekinjapan 7y ago

Sorry to change the topic but I'm really struggling with a decision to fly from Tokyo (where I live) to the USA tomorrow for a wedding. One of my closest friends is getting married. She says to come! Wedding is Saturday. Day after I'd fly to another state to see mom. A few days after that I'd fly to another state to see brother and dad. After that was supposed to be GDC. May still go to SF or just stay with dad but current flight back is after GDC. I don't really want to miss my friends wedding and was really looking forward to seeing family as I only get to seem them once every other year or so and parents are healthy but ~80 so no so many chances left. So, what do I do? Go and cross my fingers I don't catch it? Pray that I'm not a carrier? No symptoms ATM. I currently work from home so haven't been commuting in typical Tokyo rush hour trains but have been out at non-rush hour 2 out of 3 days a week. Is it selfish to want to go? Is it selfish to not want to go? Is it irresponsible to go? Is it stupid to be worried?

tinza123 7y ago
I'm from a non-Hubei Chinese province. I won't go if I were you. Although the chances are small, but there are several cases in my home town, where people came back from Hubei province (where the outbreak initiated), without any symptoms, turned out to be carriers. One graduate student infected > 10 family members while maintaining normal body temporature, made local news right away.
- charliemil4 7y ago
  Based on your experience, are people fully recovering from Coronavirus? How long does that take usually?
  - tinza123 7y ago
    My dad works for the local CDC so I was following the development pretty closely. It really depends on the person themselves, most people do recover without obvious squelae. It can take up to 21 days, tho most people show symptoms within 14 days.

nestlequ1k 7y ago

More than 900 cases of infection have been confirmed. Damn, that's alarming.

kingosticks 7y ago
But, as the rest of the sentence mentions, more than 700 of those were from the cruise ship. I think you really need to keep that in mind when considering the Japanese infection count.

durpleDrank 7y ago

Seriously though. That guy who comes into work sick to show us all he is 100% committed is completely bonkers. WORK REMOTELY if you need to flex how big your dedication is. Maybe throw a Calvin and Hobbes sticker on your car windshield while you're being so insecure and putting peoples health at risk.

jdshaffer 7y ago
Actually the pressure is a bit on the reverse... if you call off sick for anything less that super-ill, it looks like you're not committed, and your boss and co-workers will not think that favorably of you. Even at the university I work at, as a teacher, there's a subtle pressure not to call in sick or miss meetings or take a day off. I can only imagine how much STRONGER that peer-pressure is in an office setting.
perl4ever 7y ago
Remote work hasn't been a thing all my life, but now that (and where) it is, I've never seen people act like that, so I don't know why you're declaiming against it.

pavon 7y ago

In Japan who would typically take care of children in a situation like this? In the US, because of the difficulty for parents to get off of work, I would expect most of the children to be in large group settings anyway (day care, staying with friends, large extended families, etc). It might limit spread a little bit compared to school, but not a lot.

usaar333 7y ago
Mothers. Japan is actually known for having very poor child support options outside of family. The percent of married woman with children that work is quite low.
- fogetti 7y ago
  According to a government survey from 2017 or so, the number of single parent families was hovering around 1.2 million. This is almost exactly 1 percent of the population which doesn't seem much until you compare it to the number of children under the age of 14 which is 15.53 million people. Now their ratio gets closer to 8 percent. That doesn't seem very low to me.