＜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
(Reference) Original article in Japanese
・最近の「コロナ報道」は「フレーミング効果」理論から見ても問題・弊害が多い！
Yesterday (June 5, 2021), psychiatrist Hideki Wada (born 1960) appeared on the program “Tell Me! News Live: Ally of Justice,” and spoke about how recent COVID-19 reporting has many problems and drawbacks from the perspective of the “framing effect” theory. I agree with him, so I’d like to share my own opinion along with his points.
1. Specific Examples of How the Presentation of a Problem and the Way Information is Presented Can Differently Influence Answers and Perceptions
(1) Questions posed to doctors hesitant about performing surgery
① Survival rate after surgery is 90%… 85% of doctors decide to perform surgery
② Mortality rate after surgery is 10%… 15% of doctors decide against performing surgery
(2) How information about COVID-19 is presented
① The number of deaths from COVID-19 has reached 10,000 per year… This leads to excessive fear of COVID-19
② The death rate is similar to that of seasonal influenza, about one-tenth that of pneumonia… This leads to a healthy fear of COVID-19
What these examples demonstrate is that even with the exact same facts, the presentation of a problem and the way information is presented can lead to different answers and perceptions.
Example (2) in particular highlights the problems and harmful effects of the daily COVID-19 coverage by the current mass media (mainly television news and information programs). While information ① is disseminated, fueling public anxiety, fact ② is almost completely ignored on television.
Mr. Wada expressed concern that, in this situation, the number of suicides and people suffering from mental health problems was increasing, and that half of the children were experiencing depression.
If the mass media, such as television, as well as government subcommittees, the Japan Medical Association, and governors, are intentionally using this “framing effect” to “brainwash” the public, then I believe this is a problem. This is no different from the pre-war Japanese “Imperial Headquarters announcements” and the “GHQ’s brainwashing program for the Japanese people (WGIP)” that deceived the Japanese people.
2. Other problems and harmful effects regarding COVID-19 reporting (my personal opinion)
(1) The term “COVID-19 infected person”
Most television news reports use the term “COVID-19 infected person,” but more accurately, it refers to “people who tested positive for COVID-19 via PCR testing.” This includes “asymptomatic individuals” and “people with mild symptoms.”
Furthermore, the sensitivity of PCR tests using nasopharyngeal or saliva samples is said to be 60% to 70%.
(2) Definition of “COVID-19 deaths”
Even if the primary cause of death is unclear, people with “underlying medical conditions” or “people who have developed other illnesses” who “tested positive for COVID-19 via PCR testing” are all included in the “COVID-19 death count.”
(3) Comparisons with “seasonal influenza” and “conventional pneumonia” are ignored
The “comparisons with seasonal influenza and conventional pneumonia” mentioned above are rarely reported.
Professor Yasushi Takahashi’s “new COVID-19 hypothesis” and Associate Professor Takayuki Miyazawa’s “fried egg model theory” are largely ignored by the mass media.
(4) Lack of a calm comparison with the infection situation overseas
Yoichi Takahashi, former advisor to the Cabinet Office, also made a “calm comparison with the infection situation overseas” on Twitter, but it was subjected to criticism that focused on the wording.
Neither Prime Minister Suga nor the government provided an accurate explanation of the content of the tweet, nor did they defend Mr. Takahashi.
(5) Efforts to prevent infection in restaurants, commercial facilities, and event venues are being ignored.
Many restaurants, commercial facilities, and event venues have spent significant amounts of money to create “COVID-19 infection prevention equipment,” but due to the declaration of a “state of emergency” and the resulting requests for business closures and reduced operating hours, their efforts to prevent the spread of infection and the equipment they have installed have been rendered useless.
(6) There are many “excessive and mysterious measures” such as “restricting people’s movement,” and the effectiveness of these measures is not being verified or reviewed.
The “measures to restrict people’s movement” loudly advocated by Chairman Omi of the government’s expert panel, Chairman Nakagawa of the Japan Medical Association, and governors seem to be aimed at reducing the number of “PCR test positive cases,” but there is absolutely no “verification or review of the effectiveness of these measures” as “COVID-19 infection prevention measures.”
(7) Measures to address the economic disadvantages and psychological damage are not being discussed.
This is discussed in detail in “The third state of emergency has greater economic disadvantages than advantages for COVID-19 countermeasures!”
No consideration has been given to the best possible solution to alleviate the strain and collapse of the medical system: the “change from Category 2 to Category 5.”
3. “Framing Effect”
At first, I thought I heard “frame theory,” but I might have misheard. It seems Mr. Wada was referring to the “framing effect.”
The “framing effect” is the phenomenon where changing the “framework” (or “frame”) used to express something changes the impression it gives.
The term “framing effect” originates from the word “frame,” meaning structure or picture frame. It was published in 1981 in the prestigious American academic journal “Science” by Daniel Kahneman (1934- ), a Nobel laureate in economics and professor emeritus at Princeton University (see image below), and psychologist Amos Tversky.
Kahneman explains the “framing effect” as “a phenomenon in which the way a problem is presented can irrationally influence thoughts and preferences.”
The “framing effect” is like the frame of a painting; it’s a psychological phenomenon where “what is emphasized changes the impression given and influences decision-making.”
This “framing effect” is frequently used in corporate marketing activities.
For example, “two half-price” versus “one free,” “point rewards” versus “cash discount,” and “10% dissatisfaction” versus “90% satisfaction.”
4. What are “frame theory” and “frame problems”? (Aside)
Yesterday’s talk by Mr. Wada was about the “framing effect,” so it’s not directly related, but I’d like to introduce the similar terms “frame theory” and “frame problem.”
“Frame theory” is a knowledge representation method proposed in 1975 by artificial intelligence researcher Marvin Minsky (1927-2016) (image below).
This refers to “identifying and defining general information that should be programmed into a computer before giving it specific instructions.”
A similar concept is the “frame problem.”
This is a crucial problem in artificial intelligence, demonstrating that robots with finite information processing capabilities cannot handle all real-world problems. It was first described in a 1969 paper by artificial intelligence researchers John McCarthy (1927-2011) (pictured below) and Patrick Hayes.
If artificial intelligence (AI) were asked to solve the real-world problem of “buy a hamburger at McDonald’s,” it would filter and extract only those events related to “buying a hamburger at McDonald’s” from among all possible events, ignoring everything else for the time being. This is because considering everything would take an infinite amount of time. In other words, it “creates a ‘framework’ and thinks only within that framework.”
However, even with the fastest computer evaluation, there are countless possibilities that need to be filtered, leading to the problem of infinite time spent during the extraction stage.
While it might seem possible to solve this by pre-defining multiple frames and selecting the appropriate one depending on the situation, the same problem arises when evaluating which frame to apply to the current situation.