4 ms·

Those are some very good points, thank you. The lack of paid sick leave makes me both sad and worried. My guess is that changing that situation, even temporaril

Those are some very good points, thank you. The lack of paid sick leave makes me both sad and worried. My guess is that changing that situation, even temporarily, could make a big difference in containing the pandemic. I could not find a reliable source that ascribes Japan's relative success to masks. Some ideas are discussed in https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-53188847 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-53188847 . The advice from Japan's ministry of health on masks is not a ringing endorsement, either: https://www.mhlw.go.jp/stf/seisakunitsuite/bunya/kenkou_iryou/dengue_fever_qa_00014.html#Q6 https://www.mhlw.go.jp/stf/seisakunitsuite/bunya/kenkou_iryo... .

int_19h 6y ago
In Japan, it's not that the government forced everybody to wear masks - it's that people just did that, with nearly 100% conformance. We aren't certain that it's masks. But they did little else (e.g. no lockdowns or travel restrictions); so it's either masks, or something unknown. Occam's Razor says masks are more likely. There are other anecdotal cases about mask efficiency. E.g. there is a hair salon in US where two hairdressers got COVID, and they served 139 clients in 8 days, before testing positive; one was symptomatic for the entire period, the other one for 5 days. Per company policy, they wore mask consistently while working with clients. During that time period, they infected 4 people - but all of these were their family or roommates. None of the clients they serviced developed symptoms then or within a month, and of the half who consented to testing, none tested positive. Besides, we do have good reasons to believe that masks are efficient just based on physics and biology alone. We do know that masks are definitely effective at stopping saliva droplets, and we do know that droplets definitely spread COVID. So even if it has other vectors (e.g. aerosols), masks would still reduce the overall viral load, and thus chances of infection.

int_19h 6y ago

In Japan, it's not that the government forced everybody to wear masks - it's that people just did that, with nearly 100% conformance. We aren't certain that it's masks. But they did little else (e.g. no lockdowns or travel restrictions); so it's either masks, or something unknown. Occam's Razor says masks are more likely. There are other anecdotal cases about mask efficiency. E.g. there is a hair salon in US where two hairdressers got COVID, and they served 139 clients in 8 days, before testing positive; one was symptomatic for the entire period, the other one for 5 days. Per company policy, they wore mask consistently while working with clients. During that time period, they infected 4 people - but all of these were their family or roommates. None of the clients they serviced developed symptoms then or within a month, and of the half who consented to testing, none tested positive. Besides, we do have good reasons to believe that masks are efficient just based on physics and biology alone. We do know that masks are definitely effective at stopping saliva droplets, and we do know that droplets definitely spread COVID. So even if it has other vectors (e.g. aerosols), masks would still reduce the overall viral load, and thus chances of infection.