[shoguning]

According to a study in PNAS, shelter-in-place policies in the US did not work: https://www.pnas.org/content/118/15/e2019706118

Another study in Eur J Clin Inv had similar findings comparing countries: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/eci.13484

COVID went wild basically everywhere. There were a few strong exceptions: China (apparently), Australia, New Zealand and some others. What these had in common was very strict police enforcement, which led to some dramatic scenes like people getting welded into their houses in China, or houses in Australia getting broken into by police on suspicion of too many people gathering.

In my _opinion_, lockdowns didn't work elsewhere because most cases are not from casual public transmission in places like stores, restaurants etc. Rather, events like kickbacks, dinner parties, and practices like in-home workers (nannies, cleaners etc) continued throughout the pandemic, or resumed shortly after the original March 2020 shockwave. While strident police enforcement of physical distancing could eliminate cases, and seemed to in a few places, the half measures used by most of the world did little-to-nothing positive while being an economic and cultural disaster.

Personally, I never caught COVID and rarely socialized during the pandemic. All the cases I heard of stemmed from the kind of thing I mention above: private dinner parties, nannies and so forth, rather than casual public transmission.

You, or any individual may have taken social distancing seriously but it's clear many or most did not, including people on both political "sides", up to and including governors, members of congress etc.

[greggman3]

Here in Japan they've never really had lockdown. Restaurants have remained open the entire time, just asked to close at 8pm. I could/can walk by them at 7pm and see them full of people talking and eating without masks. I was invited by Japanese friends the entire time (didn't go) and would see them posting pictures of their restaurant dinner gatherings on Facebook.

Further, as a comparison, Tokyo Metro has 38 million people, California has 38 million people. Tokyo Metro has ~6500 people per square mile, California has 240 per square mile. Tokyo Metro had and still has people commuting in very crowded trains every weekday. California mostly people drive cars. California closed restaurants. Tokyo Metro never closed restaurants.

Yes, Tokyo is going through a "spike" right now but compared to California it's still tiny. Compare Tokyo Metro's current "spike" (~2k people per day) with any of California's spikes at 40k per day, 20x more.

Some people will claim testing but that doesn't fit the facts either. Deaths from COVID in Tokyo Metro. California 62k death, Tokyo Metro, 2k dead. And, if you believe the attribution of death by COVID is bad then all you have to do is look at the death rate from all causes and see that Japan is doing much better than the USA

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess-mortality-raw-deat...

I have no idea what Japan did right or got lucky with. Various speculations abound. Japanese don't shake hands, hug and kiss friends. Japanese may be commonly taking some medicine for unrelated things that happens to provide protection. Japanese might have more people with genetic immunity. Japanese mask compliance might be higher. Japanese aren't obese (I'm sure there's some other non-obese country they can be compared to). Japanese have a different diet (not sure what other countries have similar diets)

I recognize that even with restaurants open it's possible just the various other factors are/were enough to keep R low enough.... I really have no clue. Personally I mostly stayed locked up. I live alone. Saw less than 1 person a month in person, usually an outdoor walk with masks on.

[mattnewton]

This is super interesting. My entirely unqualified gut reaction is that this is cultural- that Japanese people take infectious disease seriously and test+quarantine after experiencing symptoms or traveling at all, having already handled SARS outbreaks before, and many Americans are still debating whether the pandemic is real, and that behavioral difference is enough. I don’t know how to test that. But it could also just be as simple as Americans being less healthy.

[nradov]

On the other hand Japan has an older median age than most other countries. We know that age is a crucial risk factor for COVID-19 so on that basis they should have had a higher death toll, but didn't.

My guess is that the low obesity rate is the critical factor, but that remains somewhat speculative.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7430889/

[dv_dt]

People discuss the range of social <-> lockdown techniques as if they're generically effective or not, when really I think think the effectiveness of the same strategies varies vs how high the current community state of infection is, as well as a hysteresis of what level of infection you're coming from.

If you can act earlier, maintain a external boundary, and maintain a low enough level to trace then I think you can stay in a very good state with minimal inconveniences. But once the infection rate has passed a certain level, more stringent strategies are needed to get back to the same low state.

[shoguning]

What you're saying is consistent with my hypothesis. Ie that casual public transmission on subways and in restaurants is low. Rather, it's "behind closed doors", at extended private gatherings, via domestic workers and so on. Those are the only such cases I have direct knowledge of (California USA). It could be that Japanese don't gather as much, or have chosen to skip it during pandemic.

[greggman3]

You might be right. I don't think that fits with seeing restaurants open and unmasked (since you need it off to eat and drink) but maybe the sum total of meeting in person is still much lower than "behind closed doors". The news (when I used to watch it) certainly highlighted that going to hostess club had a few spreader events like where 80% of the people in the club got COVID. I don't know how common that was, I just know it was in the news last may/june (don't watch the news much)

[wunderforce]

A lot of your observations make sense. My speculation would be:

A) Japan has a more temperate climate

B) Japan is an island and was pretty strict about locking down travel and forcing everyone entering the country to quarantine for 14 days

C) Japanese culture seems to promote very rigid adherence to rules and proper social etiquette.

[nimbleal]

The strictness of the enforcement in China has been overstated in the media. Strict, but not that strict. Source: here during the Chinese lockdown, have compared notes with those in other cities.

[pharmakom]

In the UK (which has pretty good test capacity) the infection rate slightly lags the lockdown restrictions as you would expect from a working policy, so I think it can be successful.