With just 11 weeks until the Tokyo Olympics, Japan announced an extended state of emergency in the capital city and an expanded reach of those impacted by the mandates.
The Associated Press reported that Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga is walking a “political tightrope.” The country appears to be growing frustrated with the closures of restaurants and bars, especially the young who have resorted to drinking in the streets.
The country’s decision to go forward with the Olympics has been another source of tension.
On Saturday, Japan’s daily caseload topped 7,000 for the first time since mid-January, The Japan Times reported. The country of about 127 million has about 1,131 COVID patients in intensive care with a total of 10,796 deaths.
“Vaccines are the key to fighting the ongoing infections,” Suga said on Friday. “It will be crucial to accelerate vaccinations.”
Part of the emergency order is seen as an effort to get vaccination sites up and running by 24 May. The report said the prefectures impacted by the mandates will not allow restaurants and bars that serve alcohol to open their doors. All restaurants must close by 8 PM, and all concerts and sporting events must be concluded by 9 PM and operate at half capacity or 5,000 people, whichever is fewer.
Suga said his goal is to inoculate a million people per day. He said Pfizer offered to donate vaccines to athletes participating in the games, according to Nikkei Asia.
TREND FORECAST: The coastal town of Noto, Japan, was criticized last week after spending $230,000 in COVID-19 relief money on a statue of a flying squid to attract tourists. On 23 June 2020, we reported that Japan’s central bank pledged the equivalent of an additional $1 trillion in yen to keep the nation’s economy functioning, about a 45-percent increase in the size of the bank’s bailout fund due to “severe cash flow stress.” (See our 23 June article here.)
These lockdowns will continue to crush the economy, and frustrations will continue to drive people to drink in the streets.
TRENDPOST: The country of 126,146,227 has recorded 10,876 COVID deaths or just 0.00862 percent of the population.
It should be noted (which the mainstream media, health officials, and politicians never do) that of those alleged COVID deaths, over half were 80 years of age and older, and only 175 were people under 60 years of age, according to statista.com.
As we have been reporting in the Trends Journal, the suicide rate in Japan has sharply escalated as a result of the COVID War draconian rules. Last October, more people died of suicide in just one month than from COVID in all of 2020. Among women, unable to take the psychological and physical stress of fighting in the COVID War, some 7,000 women took their lives last year… a 15-percent spike from 2019.
