Month: April 2024

Categories
Wellness

The Covid-19 Pandemic: An Update

Japan’s two largest “Covid-19 cases” waves were autumn 2022 and late 2022 to early 2023.

The same pattern applies to Japan’s daily new deaths.

For charts, please click here.

In summary, Japan’s relatively good 2020 and 2021 experience deteriorated during 2022 into 2023.

It is important therefore to update the data that appeared in our book: Wellness Topics: insights from Japan, section two, chapter one: “Why Japan has had relatively low Covid-19 deaths”.

G7 Countries plus South Korea. Covid-19-related Deaths per One Million Population

USA3,642
UK3,389
Italy3,261
France2,556
Germany2,182
Canada1,538
Japan595
S. Korea700

In terms of policy and people’s behaviors in Japan, a recent research study concluded that the intervention effects e.g. the requirements of the State of Emergencies (SOE) and quasi-SOEs, had positive effects on the adoption of preventive behaviors among individuals, including handwashing, working from home, avoiding traveling and social events.

However, the contribution of information effects, alerting people to the virus threat, was much larger than that of intervention effects, suggesting the importance of how and when information should be communicated to the public to prevent the spread of infection. (1, 2, 3, 4, 5)

We await studies examining the importance of the pre-pandemic health of the respective populations, e.g., with respect to the prevalence of obesity, diabetes, kidney disease, and so on.

References:

  1. Intervention and information effects at the individual level during the COVID-19 pandemic in Japan, by Mateus Silva Chang, Isamu Yamamoto, November 2023
  2. Japan’s voluntary lockdown, by Watanabe T, Yabu T., June 2021
  3. Japan’s voluntary lockdown: further evidence based on age-specific mobile location data, by Watanabe T, Yabu T., 2021
  4. Covid-19 Lockdown Cost/Benefits: A Critical Assessment of the Literature, by Allen DW, 2022
  5. The Immediate Effect of COVID-19 Policies on Social-Distancing Behavior in the United States, by Abouk R, Heydari B, 2021