日本のコロナ対策に晴れない疑問（今さらですが）
新型コロナが５類に格下げされて、社会は漸く平常に戻りつつあるようだ。しかしながら、コロナが社会に残した痕跡は深く大きい。日本人は相当恐い思いをしたのだろう、未だにマスクを取れない人が多い。
新型コロナは、ウィルスの恐怖を人の心に焼き付けたし、パソコンを使ったリモート会議が一気に普及し、非接触というキーワードがビジネスの世界で飛び交った。
感染力が凄まじいコロナウィルスから更に強い感染力を持つ変異株が出て、３年かけて漸く収まりつつある。この間、死者も多数出て、行動制限がかけられて旅行や外食関係の業界は大変な思いをしただろう。営業不振や失職等で苦労された方も多いに違いない。
この新型コロナへの日本の対処は、今さらではあるが正しかったのかどうか。このウィルスのリスクは、医療的側面と経済的側面がある。感染者数と死者数等を減らすと同時に行動制限による経済的ダメージも極力少なくする方策にどれだけ接近していたかが問題である。
新型コロナは、流行の当初から感染力は強いが毒性は強くない、しかし高齢者や基礎疾患がある人にとっては要注意だと言われていた。毒性はインフルエンザよりも弱いが、感染力が桁違いに強いので、致死率は低くても実際の死者数は多くなるということであろう。
ここで私の疑問の中心にある事は、実際の感染者数である。日本が行ったのは、自覚症状があってPCR検査を受けた感染が確認された人数であって、実際の感染数ではないという事である。報道機関も感染確認者を感染者数としていたが、正確ではない。
本来であれば、感染確認者ではなくて実際の感染者数の地域毎の分布や推移を把握して対策を練るべきではなかったか。もちろん、細かく正確に把握するには時間も費用もかかるが、全数把握でなくてもサンプリングという方法により、近似的に把握する方法で良いだろう。
実際の感染者数はどうだったのか？マスメディアで、実際の感染者数は感染確認者数よりも数倍多いという推計が何度か報道された事があった。しかし、実際の感染者数を把握しようという流れにはならなかった。
飽くまで推測でしかないが、実際の感染者数は感染確認者数よりも数倍であり、感染しても無自覚のまま完治した人が殆どであったのかも知れない。
もしそうだとしたら、新型コロナを恐れすぎて行動制限を行い、結果、経済的ダメージを受けてしまったのかも知れない。
私が言いたい事は、コロナの勢力を充分に把握しないまま、対策を打っていたのではないかという事である。
doubts not to clear about Japan's corona measures (but past event and too late)
With the novel coronavirus downgraded to Category 5, society seems to be finally returning to normal. However, the traces that corona has left on society are deep and large. The Japanese must have been quite frightened, and there are still many people who cannot remove their masks.
The new corona has burned the fear of the virus into people's minds, remote meetings using personal computers have spread at once, and the keyword "contactless" has been flying around in the business world.
A mutated strain with even stronger contagiousness has emerged from the highly contagious coronavirus, and it is finally subsiding over the course of three years. During this time, there were many deaths, and the travel and restaurant industries must have had a hard time due to restrictions on movement. There must be a lot of people who have had a hard time due to business slump or job loss.
Whether Japan's handling of this new corona was correct, although it is late. The risks of this virus have medical and economic aspects. The problem is how close we were to achieving measures to reduce the number of infected people and deaths, as well as minimize the economic damage caused by movement restrictions.
From the beginning of the pandemic, it was said that the new corona was highly contagious but not highly toxic, but that elderly people and those with underlying diseases should be careful. Although it is less toxic than influenza, it is much more infectious, so even if the fatality rate is low, the actual number of deaths will be high.
At the heart of my suspicion here is the actual number of infected people. What Japan has done is that grasped the number of people who had subjective symptoms and were confirmed to be infected by PCR testing and that was not the actual number of infections. The media also used the number of confirmed cases as the number of infected people, but this is not accurate.
Shouldn't it be better to figure out the distribution and transition of the actual number of infected people by region instead of checking the number of confirmed cases and formulate countermeasures? Of course, it takes time and money to get a detailed and accurate understanding, but even if it is not a complete grasp, it would be better to use a method of sampling to obtain an approximate grasp.
What was the actual number of infected people? The mass media reported several times that the actual number of infected people was several times higher than the number of confirmed cases. However, it did not lead to a trend to grasp the actual number of infected people.
It's just a guess, but the actual number of infected people is several times higher than the number of confirmed infections, and most people who were infected may have completely recovered without realizing it.
If so, it may be that they were afraid of the new corona to restrict their many activities, and as a result, they suffered economic damage.
What I want to say is that measures maybe were taken without fully grasping the power of corona.
