＜prologue＞
I started a blog called “The Baby Boomer Generation’s Miscellaneous Blog”（Dankai-sedai no garakutatyou:団塊世代の我楽多（がらくた）帳） in July 2018, about a year before I fully retired. More than six years have passed since then, and the number of articles has increased considerably.
So, in order to make them accessible to people who don’t understand Japanese, I decided to translate my past articles into English and publish them.
It may sound a bit exaggerated, but I would like to make this my life’s work.
It should be noted that haiku and waka （Japanese short fixed form poems） are quite difficult to translate into English, so some parts are written in Japanese.
If you are interested in haiku or waka and would like to know more, please read introductory or specialized books on haiku or waka written in English.
I also write many articles about the Japanese language. I would be happy if these inspire more people to want to learn Japanese.
my blog’s URL:https://skawa68.com/
my X’s URL:団塊世代の我楽多帳（@historia49）さん / X
From the end of last year to January and February of this year, influenza has been raging across Japan more than usual. This winter season is shaping up to be the worst in history.
Regarding “influenza,” a colleague at work said the other day that “influenza has an incubation period and is a legal infectious infectious disease, so we have to be careful,” which got me a bit concerned.
Regarding “legal infectious diseases,” I have a memory. When I was in the third year of junior high school, in a “health and physical education” class, our teacher said, “There are 11 legal infectious diseases in Japan, as written in the textbook. Your homework is to memorize them. There will be a test on them tomorrow.”
The legal infectious diseases are as follows:
“Cholera, dysentery, typhoid, paratyphoid, smallpox, typhus, scarlet fever, diphtheria, epidemic cerebrospinal meningitis, plague, Japanese encephalitis.”
『コレラ、赤痢、腸チフス、パラチフス、痘瘡、発疹チフス、猩紅熱、ジフテリア、流行性脳脊髄膜炎、ペスト、日本脳炎』
After pondering how to memorize it, I decided to memorize just the first part: “Kore Seki Cho Para Tou Hatsu Sho Jifu Ryuko Pesu Nippon.（「コレ・赤・腸・パラ、痘・発・猩・ジフ、流行・ペス・日本」）” It’s not a mnemonic, but it somehow has a nice ryme to it, so I was able to memorize it in a relatively short amount of time.
The next day, as expected, there was a “test” and the first classmate called on got stuck after about five of the names of diseases. I was called on next, and thanks to the memorization technique I had learned the night before, I was able to recite them fluently. The teacher ended the test by saying, “See? Those who can remember properly will remember them,” as if he had expected me to be able to recite them all.
I learned that if I concentrate for a short time, I can actually remember things. And even now, 55 years later, I can still recite all the “legal infectious diseases” fluently, so I think my memory at the age of 15 was impressive.
１．What is a “legal infectious disease”?
“Legal infectious diseases（「法定伝染病」）” are “malignant infectious diseases (contagious infectious diseases)” defined in the Infectious Disease Prevention Law（「伝染病予防法」） (enacted in 1897). The law stipulated the obligation for doctors to report, the isolation and compulsory hospitalization of patients, disinfection, etc.
However, with the abolition of the Infectious Diseases Prevention Law in 1999 and the enforcement of the Infectious Diseases Prevention Law（「感染症予防法」）, the term “legal infectious disease” is no longer used in the case of humans. (Unfortunately…)
Currently, the term “legal infectious disease” is the common name for “livestock infectious diseases（「家畜伝染病」）” designated in the Livestock Infectious Disease Prevention Act（「家畜伝染病予防法」）.
“Livestock infectious diseases” are designated as “infectious diseases that affect livestock such as cows, horses, and pigs, and include particularly highly contagious and devastating diseases such as rinderpest, hog cholera, anthrax, and rabies.”
Recently, pigs infected with hog cholera, which is thought to have been transmitted from wild boars, have been found, and many pigs have been killed. This hog cholera does not infect humans, but there is concern that eating the pigs may cause health problems. However, there have been reports that some piglets infected with hog cholera have been shipped. We hope that the relevant authorities will be careful to prevent such things from happening in the future. There is no guarantee that piglets infected with hog cholera do not also have harmful diseases that can be transmitted to other humans.
The Consumer Affairs Agency states the following on its website:
“Hog cholera is a disease of pigs and wild boars, and does not infect humans. Therefore, even if you eat meat from an infected pig, it is thought that there will be no effect on humans. Please do not get confused by unfounded rumors, but act calmly based on accurate information.”
２．What is the Infectious Disease Prevention Act?
In today’s world, where new infectious diseases are occurring frequently, the Infectious Diseases Prevention Law was enacted more than 100 years ago and no longer reflects the current situation, so it was abolished along with the AIDS Prevention Law and the Venereal Disease Prevention Law and integrated into the Infectious Disease Prevention Law.
The Infectious Diseases Prevention Law reflected the times when the only way to prevent the spread of infection was to “isolate” patients from society, and it also led to prejudice and discrimination against infectious diseases, as it made all infectious diseases subject to “quarantine” uniformly.
Learning from this, the Infectious Disease Prevention Act does not uniformly require quarantine for all infectious diseases covered by the law, but instead ranks infectious diseases on a five-level scale, in order of increasing danger, such as “compulsory isolation,” “restrictions on behavior including isolation,” “restrictions on work,” and “no legal restrictions on behavior,” in order to balance “preventing the spread of infection” and “protecting the human rights of patients.”
The seven “Class 1 infectious diseases” that are closest to the category covered by the Infectious Diseases Prevention Act are Ebola hemorrhagic fever, Lassa fever, Marburg disease, Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever, South American hemorrhagic fever, plague, and smallpox.
Category 2 infectious diseases are the second most dangerous after Category 1 infectious diseases, and include six types: diphtheria, SARS, polio (acute poliomyelitis), tuberculosis, and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS)/Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS).
There are five types of “Class 3 infectious diseases” for which hospitalization can be recommended or ordered depending on the situation: cholera, bacterial dysentery, typhoid fever, paratyphoid fever, and O-157 (enterohemorrhagic Escherichia coli).
“New influenza” has been added as a new category separate from the infectious diseases listed above in categories 1 to 5.
<Added 2020/1/27>
Prime Minister Abe has announced his intention to designate the “new coronavirus pneumonia,” which is spreading mainly in China, as an “infectious disease.”
３．Responding to influenza
The Infectious Disease Prevention Act stipulates that those infected with “new influenza” are subject to “employment restrictions” and that they “may be ordered to be banned from working.”
On the other hand, regular seasonal “influenza” is classified as a “Class 5 infectious disease” under the “Infectious Disease Prevention Act,” and there are no “work restrictions” imposed on those infected with influenza.
Below, I will consider how to respond to regular seasonal “influenza.”
（1）Response at school
If a student at a school (kindergarten, elementary school, junior high school, high school, technical college, special needs school, university, etc.) falls ill with influenza, the School Health and Safety Act stipulates that the student must suspend attendance for five days after the onset of symptoms and two days after the fever has subsided.
（2）Response at the company
Unlike schools, responses vary from company to company.
Examples include “being suspended from work,” “being treated as a normal sick leave,” “being advised to use your paid leave,” and “being paid unemployment benefits.”
However, if a family member (especially a child) has the flu, even if the person themselves does not have any symptoms, there is an “incubation period,” so I think it is our responsibility as members of society to “refrain from going to work for about a week” and “avoid causing trouble to other people in the company by infecting them.”
This is something that you should absolutely adhere to, regardless of how the company responds. If you think that “improvements in the company’s response” are necessary, you should take separate action, such as having the company negotiate with you through a “labor union.”
When I was working as an office worker, we were told that catching a cold was caused by not being on edge enough, and there was an atmosphere that “don’t take time off just because you have a cold or fever,” but that is no longer the case.
On the other hand, I’ve recently been hearing an unfamiliar but concerning term: “influenza harassment.”
“Influenza harassment” refers to cases that occur against the backdrop of labor shortages, such as “being forced to come to work even though your child has the flu and needs care,” “being made to work for free on your days off when you take a few days off with the flu,” and “when a part-time karaoke bar clerk says she wants to take time off because she has the flu, she is told to find a replacement.”
As the saying goes, “turning misfortune into good fortune,” so I recommend that you take the opportunity of contracting the flu to “rest and recuperate” as much as possible.
<Added 3/9/2020> The novel coronavirus pneumonia (COVID-19), which broke out in Wuhan, China in December 2019, is raging around the world, and recently a worrying trend known as “coronavirus harassment” has emerged.
In Europe and elsewhere, racist remarks and slander such as “Corona! Get out!” are being seen against Chinese, Japanese, and others.
Also, in Japan, several stores in Yokohama’s Chinatown received papers stating “Coronavirus! Chinese people get out!”, people were ordered to stay at home simply because they have a Chinese family member, and even if someone takes a day off due to a simple cold or feeling unwell, rumors and suspicions are growing such as “Does he have coronavirus?” Furthermore, even people with hay fever or asthma are being looked at with suspicion of “does he have coronavirus?” when they cough.
I think this trend is happening because while the novel coronavirus pneumonia (COVID-19) is spreading around the world, there is still no vaccine or effective treatment. However, we should be careful not to overreact and be wise in our fears.