[ysw0]

I think this is the case. Japanese (and other East Asians) already have a pre-existing mask culture. Wearing a mask is normal over there and is encouraged. They also do not hug, shake hands and have body contact with does that are not family or close friends. Another big factor is that they tend to follow the rules unlike in Italy or America where social distancing suggestions were not taken seriously by a large chunk of the population.

Even with these explanation, I'm still perplexed as trains in Japan are always packed and it's impossible to stay 6-feet away from others when you're travelling in dense cities in Tokyo. You're also constantly touching poles/handles in the train or pushing elevator buttons.

[inciampati]

The social distancing suggestions (laws) in Italy have been taken extremely seriously. It is effectively voluntary, so there are some people who flaunt the rules. But people went from kissing everyone to never getting <2m from a non-household member in a matter of days. I went from passing many thousands of other people on my daily movements to 4-5.

I think people in Italy feel that the quarantine isn't working because it's not strong enough. And people around the world kind of expect Italians not to take it seriously. Actually, it doesn't work except to decrease the exponent on the growth of the epidemic. In China, with a much stronger lockdown, they had the same R0 as we have in Italy now ~1.25 until they started moving people who were symptomatic or had contact with positive COVID cases to hotels and, if serious, field hospitals and ICUs. We have to do the same or it will sweep through the entire population.

[lbeltrame]

> I think people in Italy feel that the quarantine isn't working because it's not strong enough.

That's also because, in my view, those in power have no idea how to read the curves and the scale, and the fact that you have at least 10-14 days in lag before seeing any effect. Also, this is about growth, so the number of cases (and, unfortunately, deaths) will keep on increasing even with a perfect containment until it "burns out". Again, the powers that be, at least in their public statements, seem to have little to no understanding of this fact.

But they also prefer cherry picking those who don't follow the rules (or go with statements that can't be traced to the data itself).

What is needed most now is field hospitals, staff and protection equipment, because the system, again even assuming a perfect containment, will take at least a month to get relief from the pressure. But those, as opposed to quarantine measures, still go through bureaucracy (note for the non-Italian HN crowd: it's really hard to explain because it is something very peculiar of highly burocratized governments, and in some aspects, unique to my country).

Also this won't be able to go perfectly for more than a couple months at best, IMO. Let's not mention economy, for now, but isolation (despite the "reassuring" messages from the media) will start taking its toll sooner or later. We're at week 3 and for me (in Lombardia) I'm already starting to feel that. Not that I'm going to break quarantine, but if the period extends for too long, some may tempted to do so, with potentially bad effects.

[hkmurakami]

Also generally speaking the culture doesn't have too much "family style" eating habits which helps at the margins.

[aikinai]

There’s way more family style eating in Japan than the US at least.