The simplest explanation of Japan’s infection spread rate bring so different could lie in
1. inaccurate reporting so as not frighten the World to stop the Olympics!
2. Too few tests done due to government incompetence as shown previously in the Fukushima disaster
This is the beauty of exponential growth: it cannot be hidden for long. It has been over a month. If Japan had just tried to cover up a crisis without success, we would see piles of coffins. Yet we don't, please read the study for the explanations and what they think about virus transmission, it is interesting.
Their explanation, in a nutshell, is about super-spreaders and locations.
Let us say that the R0 is 2. That means that each person infects 2, in average. Take a group of 10 infected people, they will infect 20. But that can be achieved in various ways:
- each of the 10 infects 2 person or
- 9 of them only infect a few, say 9, and 1 infects 21.
It seems that COVID-19 infection corresponds to the second case. Now the question arises as to why does that single person infects 19? What is the statistical link with the super spreaders? Japan hypothesis is that the spread is linked to social practices and to places with
- poor ventilation
- lots of people
- close contacts, e.g. close conversations.
Therefore Japan concentrates on such places: bars, mah-jong parlours, etc... Since it seems to work, they are probably onto something. There is no general shutdown in Japan.
