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Japan just hit 117,840 new cases on November 25th.

I hope for a speedy recovery to S. Korea and Japan!

I just don’t understand how countries like Japan and Korea are getting hit this hard. Especially when hygiene and masks are so popular.

I for one am so excited for a new global pandemic and world war, this year has been so fun already /s

Because Covid-19 is now endemic like the flu and is here to stay.

It’s never going away and this is something that is going to wax and wane in virility for the rest of our existence most likely.

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You can't develop covid can you? You can only catch it from others, how is it like the flu

You can’t just develop the flu either…

Excuse me, please explain what you mean

You can’t possibly believe that you can just magically conjure up the flu. Please tell me I misread this.

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You can’t develop the flu either. You catch it from others.

Uhmmmmmmmmm. I’m gonna have to ask you to elaborate

And here I thought the conspiracy theory was about AIDS? https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4265931/

so please don't pile on me for reporting what happened to us in the last week (I quit Twitter over the anti-vax nut jobs sending me threatening messages for vaccinating my kids)...we are a family of 5 in the US that took Covid seriously, locked down, got fully vaccinated and fully boosted. It's been almost 3 years and none of us got it; until last Sunday. Our oldest was congested and flushed; pulled out a Covid test thinking it would be our hundredth negative...nope. It popped positive immediately. She has tested positive twice since. It was mild and she isolated for 8 days. My point-Covid is not done and I think going into the winter months, it is making a come back. I credit her vaccination status for it being super mild. No cough or respiratory anything. The rest of us continue to be negative and symptom free,

If the world had responded to Covid the way it did to second-hand tobacco smoke this probably wouldn't have been an issue.

>reporting on cases and keep to death rates?

What's more interesting to me is the number of active Long Covid patients. The data isn't updated nearly as often as general cases or Covid-related deaths. And the numbers, just in the U.S. alone, are scary high:

>Overall, 1 in 13 adults in the U.S. (7.5%) have “long COVID” symptoms, defined as symptoms lasting three or more months after first contracting the virus, and that they didn’t have prior to their COVID-19 infection.

>Older adults are less likely to have long COVID than younger adults.

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/nchs_press_releases/2022/20220622.htm

It's not talked about nearly enough. For those that don't know about it:

>Long COVID has been described as having the potential to affect nearly every organ system, causing further conditions (sequelae) including respiratory system disorders, nervous system and neurocognitive disorders, mental health disorders, metabolic disorders, cardiovascular disorders, gastrointestinal disorders, musculoskeletal pain, and anemia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_COVID

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>Covid is a strain of the Flu.

It's a Coronavirus related to SARS; not a flu strain. Its other name is SARS-COV-2. It's in the family Coronaviridae while the flu is in the family Orthomyxoviridae.

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Because they're still testing. Other countries probably have this much as well but they're not doing that much official testing and tracking.

Just left Korea for the UK. It's completely different here. If I get COVID here, and it isn't serious enough for hospitalisation, I don't think anyone is even going to know or record it.

Also population density doesn't help.

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Well, you see, when the four humors are out of balance...

surprise pikachu face

But... I thought....everyone knew.... That you dont develop flu.......

Those places are extremely crowded, subways, apartments, restaurants. Also they have a culture of eating out, so you could get it at lunch/dinner etc.

Than there's the usual places like church and school, where ppl will attend even if they're feeling sick.

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They're also still gathering data for positive test results with a population that is highly likely to self-report if positive.

Should have, and no, it's not a type of influenza. As the other guy said, it's a coronavirus, completely unrelated to the flu.

South Korea lifted its face mask requirement in Sept. The number of people who have contracted COVID is much smaller than that of the US. So, now they are catching up.

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So are you a troll or an idiot? Coronaviruses and influenza viruses are different families of viruses and always have been. That's a scientific thing and not a political thing, and nothing has changed.

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I got covid a couple months ago for the first time. I looked into telling the government - found out theres no way to do it.

H1N1 is not a coronavirus, it's a flu virus. SARS is not considered to be a flu strain, it was suspected very early in to be one because of the symptoms. Once it was studied it was confirmed to be a coronavirus

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Also Halloween

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Does 50k cases sound now alarming to you when your consider some portion of them don't die but have life altering effects develop?

What about all the cardiovascular damage that doesn't have an immediate impact? Should we ignore that too since you don't die acutely?

They're still testing and reporting to the government the test results.

Likely because the places where people are actually catching it are largely in private settings or other places where people would not be wearing masks (meals with friends at restaurants, clubs, bars etc). I highly doubt anywhere near as many people are catching covid walking through the grocery store as are catching it at family gatherings for example (even in western countries with no mask mandates). While masks are effective, far too many people act like they're a cure all when really they just improve the situation to an extent

Eh. I’m an ICU nurse in the US. We’re getting a hospitalization spike, it’s just not bad enough to hit the news yet.

Sounds like you just described NY city.

None of that is true. You're assuming I wasn't around when H1N1 blew up. I was, and it was always referred to as flu. No-one has changed the definition of coronavirus and you're using the standard conspiracy theorist trick of "do your own research" because your have zero evidence to back up your outlandish claims.

Glad to see you giving credit to the vaccine. I have seen so many people say "Yeah, I got the vaccine and i still got covid. I'm not going to bother getting future booster because covid wasnt even that bad for me". It takes a certain level of intellectual failing to come to a conclusion like that.

We lifted all outdoor mask mandates. Still have to wear them indoors in all places outside your home. Thus, lots still wear them outside when they are going in and out a lot (commuting, shopping, etc).

6 million dead would like to have a word with you.

But they're busy being dead.

Complaining about efforts to save lives being attempts to control people - definitely a troll.

I never said you weren't getting a hospitalization spike. But if 100,000 people got covid today and in the US 1000 went to the hospital, then the US might only think they've got 1000 new cases because that's all they track. In Korea they still track positive tests regardless of whether or not you went to the hospital. That's why certain countries are still showing large numbers like this because they're tracking all cases, not just the ones that wind up in hospital.

Not so much intellectual failing as straight dishonesty.

Everyone around me and in the office is getting covid. But I think the government stopped keeping numbers so Google shows that numbers are way down but in reality I think they're going up a lot higher right now

Must be a troll. Nobody is actually this dumb.

Wife and I both got it last week. (U.S.) We're retired and rarely go anywhere with crowds. Well, we're old folks, have all our shots, and it still kicked our butts. I don't want to think about what it would have been like without the vaccination. We had to seek medical assistance. I'm pretty sure, for this reason, it got reported as positive cases. Otherwise, who would have known, aside from ourselves? Bonus point: If you get it and they put you on Paxlovid, you'll really wish you had lost your taste.

>My point-Covid is not done and I think going into the winter months, it is making a come back.

They kind of spelled it out for you.

Not a troll. Been on Reddit for way too long. Thanks for staying Im “dumb”.

That’s what a troll would say. Spelling mistakes included.

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Not my best attribute. I do much better with math. Thanks for pointing that out!

That's not what he's saying though. The tracking mechanisms have been greatly diminished.

Lol what? I live in S Korea and there's a million avenues for reporting covid. My local city hall has a direct line specifically for reporting personal cases if you tested at home.

Not true. You don't have to wear them while dining inside. It's also extremely lax, most people take off their mask as soon as they walk into a restaurant or don't even bother putting it on to begin with. Bars are also packed and nobody masks in them.

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Considering how many young healthy people died before vaccines, or people that refused vaccines, it’s astounding how short peoples memories are.

Correct.. We also don't have to wear a mask eating. (Have we ever??)

We still have the indoor mask mandate. That was my only point. It did not go away in September.

Tourists bring a lot of surprises.

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Zero remote work

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>they're not doing that much official testing and tracking.

This is true with at-home testing. People are more likely to pop over to their local pharmacy than to go to a doctor. The USPS has sent over 270M free at-home Covid tests to Americans.

Congress discontinued the program, but you can find out more about at-home testing here: https://www.covid.gov/tests

..... but that's not what you wrote

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>found out theres no way to do it.

For US:

You just call/message your primary care provider and they'll either order additional testing for you at your doctor's office if you're sick or you can get lab testing at nearby pharmacies.

>The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention “strongly encourages” everyone who self-tests to report their positive results to a health care provider, who may order a P.C.R. test or otherwise report the data to state authorities. But only a few state health departments, including those in Colorado and Washington, collect data from home tests. Others, like in Massachusetts and New York, allow individual county health departments to decide whether they want to collect home test results.

https://archive.ph/bj0Rk

But yes, doctors are only required to report lab tests to the CDC.

>CDC strongly encourages everyone who uses a self-test to report any positive results to their healthcare provider. Healthcare providers can ensure that those who have tested positive for COVID-19 receive the most appropriate medical care, including specific treatments if necessary.

>In most jurisdictions, healthcare providers who diagnose COVID-19 are required to report those cases to public health.

>The US Government does not want to construct any barriers that would deter the use of self-tests.  COVID-19 surveillance continues to be based on results from laboratory testing. The primary role of case reporting is to allow public health agencies to take actions to mitigate disease spread. The public health community, including CDC, is confident that situational awareness remains strong without receiving self-test results.

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/testing/self-testing.html

In Massachusetts, for example, you can use the state's app to share your test anonymously, but it won't be counted towards official numbers.

https://www.mass.gov/info-details/share-your-positive-covid-test-anonymously-with-massnotify

I was just in Korea for a few weeks, I hate how emergency mobile alert broadcasts were abused daily or every few hours just to tell people how many local cases there were.

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If you haven't done so yet, it's probably a good idea to check around for COVID booster and flu vaccine.

That doesn't make it okay. That doesn't mean we don't need mitigation efforts. It doesn't mean we don't need to track it. We track the flu even though it is also endemic. How is any of that relevant? We already know that repeat exposure to COVID damages the immune system.

No they're not...

We don't know that. You can't use speculation as evidence. 😂

That sounds like every city ever in the US. It has nothing to do with location everything to do with testing.

Especially when COVID damages the immune system so every time you get it you're risking damaging your immune system.

My parents live in a rural red county. They got COVID (verified by at home testing) about a month ago. They were planning on just toughing it out, but I bullied them into at least contacting their primary care physician to inform them and under the assumption the PCP would report the result. The PCP requested no lab testing or anything though, and I have no idea if they reported the cases or not.

>it’s just not bad enough to hit the news yet.

Here's the official data from the HHS data hub in the US:

You can also search capacity for specific hospitals on this site:

https://public-data-hub-dhhs.hub.arcgis.com/pages/f498500804b3412fa096e8d6e0c8f0d4

And don't forget the beds are also getting filled up now with RSV and flu cases.

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That thought process is dangerous. I work with a few of these people. It’s embarrassing to listen to them spew that nonsense.

If you tested positive for PCR and provided your home address, then your info & test results will go directly to your local health department & state health department through electronic lab reporting. There’s no need to call them because most of them will not take at-home results.

Ontario, canada. We have a trump-light premier of our province, doug ford. You might have heard of his brother, rob ford, the crack smoking mayor of toronto who died a few years ago, Rob Ford.

Ontario canada.

We dont have any states in canada.

Pretty sure Canada has electronic lab reportings because it has a more advanced epi system than the US. We envy your universal healthcare.

Its not as great as its crcked up to be, but i never think about going to my doctor, as it costs nothing.

If i test positive with a takehome test, they say to stay home, and only certain groups of the population have ever been eligible to get lab tests.

And now you’re reading headlines about a surge in cases. Almost as if they saw an emergency coming.

How dare they use an emergency system to portray a coming emergency. Shame on them.

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Re: Japan, where to begin? The government restricted the 4th shot to people over 60, blatantly lying that those were the only people who could be harmed by Omicron. Now that the Omicron shot is out, people aren’t bothering to get it because they believed that. Gov’t has been quite open about choosing the economy over people’s health. Everybody’s going back to restaurants and social gatherings. Most citizens are still uninformed about the fact that you can catch Omicron every 4-6 weeks, and about things like long Covid and high-filtration masks. There are tons of people who don’t know about the importance of ventilation. Lots of them even still think that kids can’t get sick, or that it’s not dangerous if they do. Fully half the time I’ve known someone to show up with symptoms, they say it’s just allergies or “a cold.” Almost nobody gets tested anymore unless they have a fever that doesn’t go down for several days (actually that’s pretty much been the case since 2020, but at least the threat was taken more seriously then). A lot of cities don’t even publicize case numbers anymore. Most people are expected to test at home and self-report results now using a bunch of paperwork and several steps, which of course isn’t happening much. So we’ve basically been in one long wave since January of this year, with a few minor dips. [edit: I forgot that over the summer the government conducted a misleading campaign that made people think masks caused heatstroke. Before scientists could debunk it, we were having record numbers.]

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I hate to say it, but the milder-every-variant thing has been debunked.

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School and church similar but restaurant, apartments, subways much less crowded in USA. Only NYC comes close, but you're right we should still see similar hotspots.

Even with no testing the hospitals should still show the same critical cases as Asia.

I wish there was more contact tracing to understand how this virus spread. Maybe the papers are still under peer review, love to understand this.

that's what most of the world is doing though, UK for example, most of the year we've had all restrictions removed, nobody masks, only vulnerable or over 50s are allowed the 4th shot. life is back to normal here, for better or worse.

A surge in cases is no longer an emergency as in 2020. Is using an emergency system to basically broadcast regular news, causing some to turn off the alerts entirely, in a locality where storms and tsunamis matter, not counter to the point of having an emergency system? The broadcasts weren't even large numbers, more like "there were 8 cases in your neighbourhood yesterday" and "here is your nearest vaccination center", as 2 separate alerts.

I didn’t say that it is okay or that it shouldn’t be treated. And nor did I say that it isn’t dangerous or health hazardous. 🤷‍♂️

>Do I have long covid?

No. The symptoms are only counted after getting a bad case of Covid. Nothing before Covid is counted. Even so, there needs to be a correlation to the virus.

I see COVID and the US response to this as the reality of just how much of a failure our society has become.

We really cannot do big things anymore as a society. We cannot depend on people to fix big problems together. It's utterly disappointing.

No but we're allowed to speculate on the internet 🤷‍♂️. A lot of countries got hit really hard with omicron and covid in general despite mask mandates and high compliance so clearly masks either aren't that effective at stopping spread (I doubt this) or most people are catching covid where they aren't wearing masks. Ontario, Canada had by far its largest wave despite a mask mandate that had well over 90% compliance.

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I'm young and had my shots and got it back in July. My friend gave it to his wife, and they gave it to me and my gf before they knew they were positive.

We also had to move that weekend with only the four of us sickly people. Chills, headache, cough, fever shot up to 102, etc.

Thankfully I got it when I did, because if I would have gotten covid without being vaxxed 2 years ago, my asthma would have probably sent me to the hospital, or worse.

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This article should be a template for all reporting. Clear and concise.

They are just putting those numbers out to impact an election that was held two years ago.

Unless you are perhaps suggesting a WORLDWIDE PANDEMIC isn't fake and wasn't just created to change the election result (the same people that say the election was rigged) in one country.

What a turn of events.

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And yet we still have over 30,000 new daily cases and at least 300 deaths per day here in the US.

And that's just the reported numbers.

What are the vaccination rates? And are people having boosters? I live in UK and had my 4th covid vaccination in October.

I'm a 30-something in the US (New England) and just self-tested positive this morning... I've been pretty cautious so far, except for not getting my Omicron booster yet. I was hoping to do so soon, to get a sustained immunity boost through the winter, but alas... I should've just gotten it before Thanksgiving.

My sister had a mild cough and nasal congestion (she works in schools), so... I expect I was exposed on Wednesday, when she spent a single night passing through. Starting yesterday, I had a fever and splitting headache. Even a little heart flutter, which was weird, but no respiratory symptoms and fever under control with Tylenol. Daily tests now for my partner who works in a hospital - thankfully she's Omicron boosted, and has been testing neg with no symptoms.

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They should implement a mask program, everyone knows masks will stop this spread.

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The new strains are much more infectious and masks hardly help.

Thats the beauty of the push for rapid test kits.

Our country would be screwed if everyone was still PcRing. The numbers would be insane.

That’s what China is doing and look at how things are going there.

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Well….the reason i know is i used a home rapid test

Hope Japan doesn’t close their borders again. Was hoping to return to visit soon

Isn't that true of all pathogens, from an evolutionary perspective? It's better for the virus to evolve to kill fewer hosts, as that means more hosts to spread and reproduce from.

We also only track lab proven instances of the flu. If i catch the flu and it’s not bad enough to at least send me to doctors nobody knows I have it.

I had covid twice in 2022. I was masked up, etc. and boosted. That OMI doesn't like to take no for an answer.

Correct. You still have to wear masks in all indoor settings.

Source: I live in Korea.

No, they haven't. It's why they're having the same problem as everyone else.

Don't conflate lockdowns for preventative measures - they aren't the same.

I went to a PCR test ran by Miami-Dade County in September. Was positive, got a call from the Florida Dept. of Health the next day.

The numbers are a lot higher, but with vaccinations, and prior infections, serious illness is not showing as much, and tons of people just never test, or just test at home. People are more worried about the FLU and RSV right now.

Well, somebody asked about Japan, so I answered about Japan.

That’s the common thinking, but apparently not really? I was bummed when I found out too.

There's also ppl with no PCP or health insurance who don't bother getting lab tests

> just how much of a failure our society has become.

Failing from keeping a virus that is many times more contangious than the FLU or common cold from being endemic is not a failure of socieity.

We basically shut down the world for a few months, and that did not work. It would have had to be a complete martial law, lock down, for months, no flights, no shopping, no school, no work, nothing. Not even take out dinner.

The virus was always coming for us. Lockdowns were just to keep numbers down, and not overwhelm healthcare facilities.

The virus will always be around, and has been becoming less and less severe, hopefully that trend continues.

Where is this idea that we don't track it? We just don't see it on TV. I got covid in September and was called and emailed by Fla. Dept. of Health. It is not like everyone with the flu takes a test that goes to the government.

We track what we can, but it is just part of life at this point.

Exactly, which is what is happening with COVID.

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People take off their masks and spend hours eating and drinking in bars and restaurants.

The reporting is really uneven and unreliable these days

Everyone knows how widely accepted masks are in Japan, but unfortunately there are misconceptions that go along with that acceptance. People will wear masks in a large restaurant with high ceilings, then go into a small poorly-ventilated bathroom and take the mask off to cough and blow their noses.

I dunno why you’re getting dved for this. It’s certainly true in a lot of Japan.

So much could have been done with building codes for ventilation.

yeah, in hindsight, i think the lockdown had some pretty good compliance before the vaccine came out, and the lockdown worked pretty decently, and we were able to contain it decently until the vaccine came out.

and the vaccine came out rather rapidly and the sensible people who wanted to get it could get it fairly easily.

I'd dare to say the system worked?