Why Japan

We had written columns attempting to explain why COVID-19 had spread like wildfire in unlikely economies few expect have direct linkages to the origins of the disease.

In exploring variables that catalyze infection, we identified factors ranging from direct foreign investments, to debt and cross-migration, to potent factors, such as domestic movement, social practices and the general age of the local population.

Ironically, two in the American continent are unlikely victims of bilateral trade as a catalyst of COVID-19. As the United States scales down dependence on China, the other hotspot, Brazil, cites China as a principal export market. Unfortunately, their notoriety as epicenters is due more to domestic helter-skelter responses than bilateral trade.

While not all infection factors are quantifiable and are thus easily justified, some are esoteric, subjective, even nebulous, and depend on sociology more than socio-economics.

One crusted cliché about the Philippines is where we claim being once second to Japan in economic development. Alluding to our potentials, we wonder what might have been had we not fallen into tyranny and military rule?

We, however, surmise that the difference was far more complex than an attendant absence of democratic checks and balances that led to plunder. Discerning deeper, there are other factors now relevant.

Compared to our failed response to COVID-19, Japan should be just as cursed. Japanese cities are congested. Their testing rate is 0.27 percent. Ours is 0.8 percent.

Japan has more elderly per capita. They’ve been in a contraction since January. Japanese mobility is mostly via packed trains. While we’ve been under a lockdown for nearly half a year, Japan trusted its citizens with responsible freedom. They never locked down officially and thus imposed no penalties.

Our cases are nearly 55,000. Japan with its larger population has less than 20,000. Our morbidity rate is 1.2 per 100,000, with closed borders and moderate testing. Japan’s is 0.8 with open borders. South Korea’s is 0.6 with closed

borders, strict lockdowns and full testing.

So why is Japan’s response touted a success? The answer lies in long-inculcated culture.

Responsibility and respect are cultural traits. They wear masks not as protective gear, but to avoid infecting others. They are hygienic to a fault for the same reason.

Privately, the Japanese believe themselves superior and highly intelligent. This is likewise true of their leader’s attitude towards the public, which explains the trust the state has that the public understands and self-complies for the common good

sans any need for intimidation and threats of martial law. This reciprocative relationship proves how mutual respect between the state and the Japanese creates communal synergies.

From the 1919 flu epidemic when masks were first introduced, they’ve been wearing these ever since to protect one another. In the ’50s, they battled tuberculosis. Since then, they’ve established an efficient tracking system.

Their communal respect and a government that does not treat them like brainless insects produced one of the healthiest nations with the lowest underlying morbidity conditions.

Japan chose the road not taken and that has made all the

difference.

“Responsibility and respect are cultural traits. They wear masks not as protective gear, but to avoid infecting others.

Compared to our failed response to COVID-19, Japan should be just as cursed. Japanese cities are congested.