"Emergency" procedures

Jen let me know some people were asking about subscriptions or notifications to the blog so they would know when I've posted something new.  The company that runs the "gadget" that allows email push notifications will stop supporting it in June or July of this year.  As such, if you didn't have it active at the start of 2021, you cannot activate it now.  What I'll do is create a single post each day after midnight in Michigan.  That should add some consistency and make it easier for those who want to follow along.

Several prefectures are under emergency orders as of today.  Covid cases are surging in and around Tokyo.  According to The Japan Times (an English language Japanese newspaper) Tokyo Prefecture currently has 6,759 active covid cases with a near record 876 new cases Friday.  For scale, Tokyo's population is a little over 13 million on a land area of 2,200 sq miles.  As I was perusing newspapers for my upcoming Intercultural Communication class I saw that recently the state of Indiana registered something like 1,100 new cases.  That's in a population of just under 7 million on a land area of 36,400 sq miles.

This development means restaurants and shops are asked to close by 8 pm every day, and bars (both karaoke and non-karaoke), large commercial shopping areas, and movie theaters are asked to close entirely until May 11.  Since I'm at an airport hotel, two of the TV channels show departure gates, times, and statuses of the various flights.  All international departures were cancelled this morning.  My assumption is all international arrivals are also cancelled, but those were not shown.  Domestic flights, like the one I'll need on May 8, were operating.  I saw a flight to Tokushima listed as "Boarding."  So, that's encouraging.

 

A major obstacle Japan faces is vaccine reluctance.  It seems in the 1970's a small number of infant deaths were attributed to whooping cough vaccines.  Then, in the 1980's there was a problem with MMR vaccines leading to some bad side effects.  This history caused the government to halt a push for the HPV vaccine in 2013.  (Link to story.)  Fewer than 600,000 doses of covid vaccine have been administered in the entire country.  That's out of 126 million people.

The other pressures are nearly identical to those in the States.  Business organizations are worried about the loss of revenue and the impact the state of emergency will have on the economy.  Prefecture Governors want the Prime Minister to enforce more stringent conditions and provide financial assistance to the population and businesses.  Next week (starting May 3 or thereabouts) is Golden Week, which is a significant, national holiday.  Many people usually travel, but surveys suggest this is going to be curtailed by choice.  I think the fact that some feel like a 2 day visit to a large city is safer than a week long trip will lead to trouble.  Events in the U.S. suggest those types of trips become seeders for more widespread outbreaks.  One thing that seems different, though, is there does not seem to be a huge anti-mask campaign.

I'll continue to mask and distance just as I have for the past 13 months.  Just as I know all of you have.  Looking out the window (my view is below), I don't see many people foregoing masks, but I have a very small sample.  Here's to hoping my vaccination is robust enough against whatever variants exist here.

 

Whichever of you wished me an "interesting" trip got your wish.  Still, I'm happy and excited I get to do this.