Thread by @mpjme

Pretty interesting. The more I read about success countries, I am getting the impression that more controlled efforts based on education and understanding are much more effective than carpet-bombing with draconian initiatives.
economist.com/asia/2020/12/1…

1. Unified population that trusts the authorities. Japan is problematically homogenous but it played in their favour in this case. Pakistan achieved the same thing by having a cricket champion as their leader (cricket is huge in Pakistan and everyone likes him a lot)

2. Good understanding of how a particular virus ACTUALLY spreads so that law can be more surgically applied, instead of opting for a strategy that is a simple narrative that is politically powerful.

3. Well-thought out narrative around the more complex strategy to communicate it (Diamond Princess and the 3CS in Japans case)

For covid in particular, instead of telling people to was hands, keep distance and lockdown, Japan urged people to avoid 1) Closed Spaces, 2) Crowded Places and 3) Close contact settings.

3Cs were promoted HEAVILY and generally adhered to, because people in Japan listen, but I also think because this is much easier to comply with. They also had a cluster-busting task force.

In addition, given that we knew early on that it was airborne, they thought a lot about air quality and concluded that subways are not really a problem if people wear masks and the windows are open - that environment is simply not very good for the virus.

They found this our by mapping actual spread using a supercomputer. Data analysis and actionable learning is an amazing thing.

This paragraph really highlights how much more granular the recommendations from the Japanese authorities were than what most of us are hearing from our governments: