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  • Welcome to the new site. Here's a thread about the update where you can post your feedback, ask questions or spot those nasty bugs!

The strange case of Japan.

Jerome Marot

Well-known member
In a previous thread, I explained that for a contamination curve displayed in log scales, the curve becomes a straight line which slope is directly linked to R0, the number of persons one infects. This are the curves for several countries, aligned by the time of 100th infections:

3863

Japan clearly has always had a much lower R0 than anyone else. Studying their containement strategy is interesting. Here: https://medium.com/@shotamiz/how-japan-is-combating-sars-cov-2-covid-19-83b7dd8d3f9 and here as a twitter thread:
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
In a previous thread, I explained that for a contamination curve displayed in log scales, the curve becomes a straight line which slope is directly linked to R0, the number of persons one infects. This are the curves for several countries, aligned by the time of 100th infections:

Japan clearly has always had a much lower R0 than anyone else. Studying their containement strategy is interesting. Here: https://medium.com/@shotamiz/how-japan-is-combating-sars-cov-2-covid-19-83b7dd8d3f9 and here as a twitter thread:
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

3. Unlikely but plausible: Some difference might be with perhaps less efficient virus binding to receptor sites in the respiratory epithelium or some other such factor essential to Virus replication.

So one line of inquiry for this speculation, would be to list all the known ways that a good chunk of the Japanese population differ in antigens, common enzyme deficiencies, gene duplication, epigenetic modeifications, other illness susceptibility differences, histocompatibility markers and the like.

Remember certain Javanese divers can stay under water longer simply because genetic adaptive variance in their hemoglobin’s capacity to bind oxygen.

Athletes trained in high altitudes can similarly more efficiently transport fresh oxygen, but the adaption is temporary, due to simply making more if the hemoglobin and essentially self-doping.

So one can see how simple genetic biological difference can drastically alter our endurance.
 

Jerome Marot

Well-known member
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.
 
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Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Jérôme,

ONG, this is amazing, that unless 3 conditions are met the virus doesn’t explosively slread.

Limited closed air space, packed close contact, conversation face to face!

I believe it because packed trains are not causing explosions!

Asher
 
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