Japan completely misses the mark regarding Corona. Thank you Abe!
Japan went from being one of the quicker-to-react nations, by shutting down public schools and advising private ones to do the same, to one of the slower acting nations by doing little else since then.
Starting with the whole Diamond Princess debacle, the government decided to shut down public schools. I first though this was an over reaction. Skip ahead a month or so and now the virus is spreading world-wide, shutting down parts of Europe and making headway into N.America.
Looking at the map provided by google, https://www.google.com/covid19-map/ You can see where Corona is hitting worst. These are of course reported cases. Japan is seemingly safer than most, and appears to be containing it... but recently the confirmed cases have started to increase dramatically. There is a good chance that Japan has just been lack when it comes to testing (https://www.businessinsider.com/why-japan-cases-of-coronavirus-are-so-low-2020-3). It's unfortunate, as there continues to be large and frequent gatherings of people.
Now the economy of Japan is likely doing better at the moment.. but I wouldn't be surprised if that changes in the not so distant future. Tokyo has (for a whole weekend) advised people to stay in. Osaka is also advising the same this weekend.
So why hasn't Japan followed the rest of the world and started to lockdown large urban centers? Because Abe is afraid it'll have a huge economic impact. Yes, of course it will. It has everywhere else. Locking down now and providing stimulus packages is simply trading the problem now for a problem later. Locking down now also, provided everyone puts the effort in, slows the spread of the virus and hopefully reduce the overall impact of it. That means a faster recover after the fact.
So what is my beef? This government has no apparent interest in protecting those it supposedly represents. Those in charge seem to only be concerned with their own well being, their own money and those of their friends. Not that it's surprising at all -- this is how the country seems to work at all levels of government.