New Edition of Creating a Super Free Society 2: Super Coronavirus Strategy

■ New Edition of Creating a Super Free Society 2: Super Coronavirus Strategy

　My recent book "New Edition of Creating a Super Free society: After Coronavirus is the Era of Cats." An excerpt is below.

From Chapter 1: “Super Coronavirus Strategy.”

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○ Will 20% of us die?

Bang. The earth is trapped in germs. People die, they can't have funerals, they cry. There is no one on whom to vent anger. Economy collapses. Rely on God. Sing. It spreads over an area surpassing that of the plague of the 14th century and the cholera of the 19th century. More areas will be affected than World War II. The Koshien summer has been canceled twice: the rice riot and the Pacific War. World War I and World War II. This is the next incident. War.

The virus, identified in Wuhan, China in January 2020, had infected 80 million people worldwide in early 2021. After World War II, there was the threat of nuclear weapons, regional conflicts, terrorism, earthquakes and typhoons, but nothing like this.

How do you fight an invisible enemy? No, it might not be the opponent to fight. Like a cold or the flu, it may be someone you come to terms with and live with. The plague epidemic killed 20% of the world's population at the time. I pray that this will not happen.

The World Bank predicts that the global economy will grow by minus 4.3% in 2020. The 2020 GDP of the United States has shrunk to the size of 2017. France is expected to drop to 2010 levels and Japan to that of 2012. It's hard. But guess what? Even if 20% of the population is not lost like the plague, if the situation worsens and 20% of the economy is killed, then, do 20% of us die?

No way. The current GDP is 550 trillion yen, and 450 trillion yen, which is 20% less, was in 1990, the bubble period. It was the beginning of the Heisei era. At that time, weren't we unexpectedly happy? Weren't you rich? When the bubble burst, I wasn't too depressed. At the beginning of the Reiwa era, it's okay to have the guts to say that you're depressed. Let's just calm down.

But was the world still so disjointed? Consider each country's system. China's dictatorship boasts that the virus has been suppressed by a thorough blockade and a pursuit that introduced facial recognition technology. France, which has a presidential system, also has strict restrictions on going out and lockdowns. Even with the same presidential system, the United States of the United States has a wide range of regional differences, and the number of infected people has become the world's highest. “Top of the World” (Carpenters)

The United Kingdom, which has the same parliamentary system as Japan, tried its own route to acquire herd immunity, but Prime Minister Johnson was hospitalized for infection and was forced to lock down. In India, where police force people to do push-ups when they go out, the number of infected people in India is second only to the United States. Russia doesn't know what's going on.

Which mechanism works for Coronavirus? No conclusion yet. But this is a global experiment in politics and crisis management. Many success/failure tests are running at the same time. There is no time to wait and respond to the results of other countries. What will be the legacy of this multidimensional experiment in the face of the simultaneous global crisis that will come again?

For Japan, this is the first nationwide crisis that surpasses 3.11 since Japan lost the war. It's still too early to evaluate, but I'm sticking with it for now. As of January 2021, the number of deaths due to Coronavirus is 350,000 in the United States, 150,000 in India, and 75,000 in Italy. Japan has 3,700 deaths. 1/100th that of America. The number of deaths in Japan after Daiichi Coronavirus has decreased overall due to the decrease in deaths from influenza and other diseases.

Whether it's social turmoil or economic depression, it's better than the West. This country, which was defeated in the war and did not give much power to politics, could not even lock down, fortunately or unfortunately. Just declare an emergency and ask for help. Schools, convenience stores, and movie theaters are open. Good for shopping and jogging. Tokyo is very different from what New York, Paris, and London look like.

How much we can suppress the Coronavirus depends on self-restraint and speculation. The effectiveness of the "request" of the national and local governments, which is like air, depends on how much the people who receive it read the atmosphere and respond. Self-restraint self- restraint. Conjecture, conjecture. There is no choice but to rely on these two habits of reading the atmosphere, which are the main culprits that have made Japan shrink in the Heisei period.

There is also a theory that the popular culture was more effective than the measures taken by the government and local governments. Keep your distance even if you don't say no. Don't go to crowds unnecessarily. We don't shake hands in the first place. Greet from a distance. No kisses or hugs. Few things are eaten with hands like bread. Do not enter the house with shoes on. Take a bath. Infrastructure such as the medical system is also an important factor, but culture and customs may have held back the Coronavirus.

On the other hand, there are also scary data. According to a survey conducted by Osaka University and others, 1% of Americans, 1.5% of British people, 4.8% of Chinese people and 11.5% of Japanese people think that they are self-inflicted with the Coronavirus. They think it is their fault that they are sick. Peer-to-peer mutual monitoring puts pressure on conformity and suppresses it. It shouldn’t matter, but people read the atmosphere with the invisible gaze of other people.

Japan's response to the Coronavirus may leave a legacy of success. It may become a new material for Cool Japan. Or it may be recognized as an example of suppressing the atmosphere of society, which is heavier than China's high-pressure power.

Now the problem is digital. The fact that we have managed to hold on to the system without hitting the bottom of the world is probably the result of training in sharing information on SNS and the Internet. Both 9/11 and 3/11 were local events. This is the first global crisis since the spread of smartphones and social media.

There are many fakes and hoaxes in the information space, but it is surpassed by the number of anti-Coronavirus strategies. Digital wants to be useful for anti-virus. Digital techniques are also effective in reading the atmosphere and applying pressure. On the other hand, in Japan, the digital defeat is called out, and the Coronavirus countermeasures by the national and local governments are not progressing as expected. Digital holds the key to getting beyond Coronavirus.