Japan's Coronavirus Emergency Declaration Was a Mistake

Just when it was time to lead, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe became a follower of irrational panic.

After Japan's more than two months of successful limited testing for the coronavirus, he bowed to polls showing that 80% of respondents wanted a declaration of emergency. Glued to headlines from around the world and hair-on-fire social media feeds, citizens decided that because most of the Western world opted for hysteria despite the virus’s low fatality rate, so should they.

The numbers show that they are not thinking straight.

According to JTB Tourism Research & Consulting Co., Japan welcomed a record number of tourists from virus-hit areas in January: Visitors from “China, with 924,000 travelers (+22.6% from the previous year), together with Taiwan (461,000, +19.0%), and Hong Kong (219,000, +42.2%), increased compared to the previous year and recorded the highest figure for January in history.”

The coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan, China began in December. With hundreds of thousands of Chinese circulating freely in Japan in January, the virus was almost certainly unleashed in Japan on a massive scale.

Japan did not go into lockdown. Instead, the government decided early on that it would run a limited testing program—and it worked.

The number of fatalities from coronavirus remained low. Because the vast majority of infected people exhibited no symptoms, it was fine to wait for people to develop symptoms and manage only the ones who did.

Health ministry official Yasuyuki Sahara said at a news briefing on March 17: “Just because we have [testing] capacity doesn’t mean that we need to use that capacity fully. It isn’t necessary to carry out tests on these people who are just simply worried.”

Hear, hear. If an infected person never develops symptoms, there is little reason to care. They could spread the virus to others but the vast majority of them would never develop symptoms, either.

Following what are by now well-known mitigation techniques, including washing hands, sanitizing surfaces, wearing face masks, and practicing social distancing, Japanese people lived life basically as usual with limited impact from the virus.

The results were impressive. Through April 6, Japan counted less than:

4,000 cases
100 deaths

In other words, the way things had been proceeding was fine.

It was time for Prime Minister Abe to take to the airwaves and tell citizens demanding a declaration of emergency:

“Our approach is working. The time for declaring an emergency, issuing recommendations to shelter at home, and other dramatic measures, is long past. Keep yourself clean and covered. Do not gather in large groups. If you develop symptoms, go to a hospital. Other than that, carry on.”

That would have been leadership.

Instead the leader followed misguided opinion to issue an utterly belated, meaningless declaration of emergency. Rather than raising a victorious fist, he wet himself on the world stage.

— Jason Kelly is the author of “The Neatest Little Guide to Stock Market Investing” and “The 3% Signal,” and writes an investing newsletter called The Kelly Letter. He lives near Tokyo.