#JapanPolitics - the degree of similarity between the Abe Administration's fight against #Covid_19 and the Johnson Administration's fight in Vietnam is approaching 1:1 https://twitter.com/HirokoTabuchi/status/1245678017957036033

At the beginning of this year Abe and Koike were trying to navigate a major international event, an Olympics, through a narrow channel. Orthodox quarantine protocols - closing borders, stay-at-home orders -- would have sunk that enterprise. 2/

To the rescue came a team of the best and the brightest, with an unorthodox "put out the fires when they start" approach to fighting the epidemic that conserved resources and kept the country the borders and businesses open. 3/

And it worked! Or at least it seemed to be working: numbers of infected and dead remained small. Soon the world was wondering what it was that the Japanese were doing to achieve success. 4/

For some, the answer was simple, "They're cooking the numbers." And, yes there were several ways the true numbers of the infected and the dead could be reduced or never established. 5/

For others, the low numbers were a lucky coincidence -- that blockage of the main pathways of viral transmission conformed withb personal of habits of many Japanese -- whether it was handwashing, mask wearing or speaking calmly. 6/

For others still, there was skepticism. The numbers might not have been intentionally manipulated. Hygiene could be important. But the expert-led approach lacked rigor and sustainability. What Japan was doing was fire fighting, not fire prevention. 7/

And over to the past two weeks, the skeptical view seems to been justified. Infections are breaking out too rapidly and in too many places for the thin response methods to be effective. 8/

Rather than accept that the strategy was flawed, however, the political leadership and its defenders have chosen to blame the inhabitants - the people did not follow isolation protocols sufficiently or they did not understand the strategy. All true but also largely irrelevant. 9/

As the numbers of breakouts and cases of unexplained origins increased, Abe should have brought in additional, critical voices to expand the discussion of the policy and either a) build upon the expert consensus or b) junk parts of it. 10/

Abe, however, is not capable at this stage of leading a direction change on his own. He has relied his entire life on wealthy older men to give him directions on what to do. No such person exists for the non-drug aspects of #Covid_19
11/

And the absurdity is that all the "must saves" that guided the initial policy course -- the Olympics, open borders, an appearance of business-as-usual -- are all gone. 12/

And without a leader at the top who can go to his experts and say, "You all have done a great job but this is not working. We have to make changes" -- the march toward failure only continues. 13/