[nl]

I agree with this entirely. I've been to Japan and can confirm it isn't noticeably more clean than most rich cities and certainly not as clean as Singapore (for example)

I've dug into this in some depth and there is no convincing explanation. Even "luck" (which is a much underestimated factor in initial breakout dynamics) doesn't seem to explain it - unless they are persistently lucky somehow.

There's something else going on and no one really knows what it is. There is plenty of speculation, but nothing that is even close to an accepted explanation.

[perl4ever]

I happened to see a chart showing that among wealthy countries, the US is at the top for obesity and Japan is at the bottom. Just a correlated random fact that nobody knows the cause of either. Maybe something about fish consumption?

[nl]

There are huge numbers of significant demographic differences between Japan and the US.

It's true that obesity is a factor in COVID death dates (as it is for most things) but there are plenty of places with lower levels of obesity with significantly higher death rates. Singapore and South Korea are better comparisons here and the death rate is significantly higher.

As for fish consumption - it's difficult to think of a reason why that would be significant for a respiritory disease like COVID. It wasn't for SARS.

[perl4ever]

I mean perhaps seafood is linked to less obesity.