＜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:団塊世代の我楽多（がらくた）帳 | 団塊世代が雑学や面白い話を発信しています
my X’s URL:団塊世代の我楽多帳（@historia49) on X
I previously wrote an article stating that “not reporting the number of critically ill COVID-19 patients and deaths will lead to a misunderstanding of the actual situation.” However, recently, television has increasingly focused on reporting the number of seriously injured and fatal cases.
While I think this is a welcome trend, the news that “as of August 18, the number of critically ill patients in Osaka Prefecture was 65, more than double Tokyo’s 31,” revealed that “the criteria for critically ill patients are actually different.”
1. The issue of discrepancies between the Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare’s criteria and those of prefectures.
The national (Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare) criteria are “intensive care unit,” “artificial ventilator,” and “cardiopulmonary bypass (ECMO).” Tokyo does not count “intensive care unit” cases, while Osaka counts “endotracheal intubation” in addition to the national criteria.
According to FNN’s investigation, Ibaraki, Kyoto, and Fukuoka prefectures use the same criteria as Tokyo, while many other prefectures, including Hokkaido, Kanagawa, and Okinawa, follow the national criteria.
2. Comparisons are meaningless unless they are based on the same criteria.
Naturally, statistical comparisons are meaningless unless they are based on the same standards. It’s unclear whether the Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare’s instructions to local governments were insufficient at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, whether they questioned the national criteria for severe cases, or whether they attempted to understate the number of severe cases, but the inconsistencies among local governments should be corrected for future reference.
Furthermore, if we knew the breakdown of Osaka’s cases for intensive care units, ventilators, extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO), and tracheal intubation, we should be able to compare it with Tokyo for the time being.
In addition to the differences in standards, the sudden increase in severe cases is also said to be due to the occurrence of 12 clusters of cases since late July in elderly care facilities with a high risk of developing severe symptoms.
While this may be a bit off topic, I believe that counting severe cases primarily due to underlying conditions as COVID-19 should be removed, as it could lead to a misinterpretation of the actual situation and lead to incorrect policy decisions. Failure to do so would result in an exaggeration of the severity of the COVID-19 pandemic.
3. Understanding the COVID-19 “effective reproduction number” is also important now.
While trends in the number of severe cases and deaths are important for understanding the current state of COVID-19, I also believe that understanding the “effective reproduction number” is crucial as an indicator of whether the pandemic is currently underway.
While it may be difficult to grasp the “effective reproduction number,” I would appreciate it if television news and information programs would also announce and explain trends in this number in the future.
Toyo Keizai Online began publishing the “effective reproduction number” for COVID-19, emphasizing real-time reporting, on May 20th. This uses a mathematical model devised by Professor Hiroshi Nishiura of Hokkaido University, a member of the government’s expert panel, to calculate the effective reproduction number through simple calculations based on the reporting date.
Please feel free to use this information as a reference.
4. The government’s creation of triage guidelines is also urgently needed.
In addition, the recent heatwaves have led to a sharp increase in heatstroke patients. Some of these patients are also emergency patients with conditions other than COVID-19.
If the number of beds, ventilators, and medical staff becomes limited or insufficient, we will be forced to prioritize between “severely ill, moderately ill, and mildly ill,” and between “elderly, middle-aged, young people, children, and infants.”
In such an emergency, medical professionals will be forced to make difficult decisions about who to prioritize for treatment.
Therefore, I believe it is urgent that the government create triage guidelines to prevent a “medical system collapse” and reduce the burden on medical professionals on the front lines.