Masks Work, Right? Question: What Happened to Japan?

In this video, I’m not stating my opinion. I’m just making a couple of observations about mask use and asking one important question.

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Recently in Australia, there are calls by the government and the mass media for people to start wearing face masks again. They haven’t gone as far as mandating them, but lots of people are calling for mandates. Despite calls from the state premiers for people to mask up, the public are mostly not listening. At my children’s school in Queensland, I would say that only about 10% or less of students and staff wear masks. The same is probably true out in public. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese wants MPs to wear masks in parliament but won’t support mandates. One of the reasons for this is concerns for mental health, “There are two things at play. One is mental health considerations. The imposition of controls on people’s behaviours has an impact of people’s health, that’s just a reality. Particularly young people, we’re seeing an increasing problematic increase in incidents of severe consequence when it comes to young people’s health”. The second reason was due to the large take up of vaccinations, as well as the introduction of anti-viral treatments. He even noted that not a single state premier backed mask mandates at national cabinet. But the howl from the media continues. The reason is always the same – If only everyone wore masks, then we’d be able to limit the spread and everything would be hunky-dory. But I’d just to make one observation in the form of a question: What happened to Japan?

Japan is currently experiencing a record surge in case numbers. I’ve visited Japan many times, and have lived and worked there for a number of years. Mask use was always a common sighting well before this pandemic. People wore them when they had colds, or even when they had hay fever. Throughout this pandemic, I would estimate that close to 100% of Japanese have been wearing masks. Even when the government last month asked them not to wear masks outside, they continued to wear them. There have been multiple cases of children who wore masks during gym classes being sent to hospital due to heat exhaustion or heatstroke. People have been passing out because of continued mask use during intense exercise. The point is, Japan is a fully-masked society.

And here’s my question: Why then are Japan currently experiencing the biggest rise in cases ever? In Australia, the general consensus is that if we just all wore masks, everything would go back to normal. But Japan statistics seem to indicate the opposite. Essentially 100% mask usage, but record case numbers. But it’s not just Japan, it’s Singapore too.

Here’s Australia’s recent spike in cases. And here’s Singapore, noting that these are in cases per million people. Singapore is notoriously masked-up, I know, I’ve had friends visit their recently. Yes, you could argue that both Singapore and Japan have much higher population densities than Australia, but let’s be fair, more than 85% of Australians live in big cities. Despite it’s mask mandates, New Zealand is experiencing just as much of a surge in cases as Australia, even more so. Even the ABC are questioning what’s going on in today’s news, “New Zealand has mask mandates and isolation, but the Omicron daily death rate is still ‘very concerning’”. But yet, the Australian media are still calling for mask mandates as if masks are some sort of panacea.

What do you think? Masks work, right? So what’s going on in Japan?

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