Re: Japan, where to begin? The government restricted the 4th shot to people over 60, blatantly lying that those were the only people who could be harmed by Omicron. Now that the Omicron shot is out, people aren’t bothering to get it because they believed that. Gov’t has been quite open about choosing the economy over people’s health. Everybody’s going back to restaurants and social gatherings. Most citizens are still uninformed about the fact that you can catch Omicron every 4-6 weeks, and about things like long Covid and high-filtration masks. There are tons of people who don’t know about the importance of ventilation. Lots of them even still think that kids can’t get sick, or that it’s not dangerous if they do. Fully half the time I’ve known someone to show up with symptoms, they say it’s just allergies or “a cold.” Almost nobody gets tested anymore unless they have a fever that doesn’t go down for several days (actually that’s pretty much been the case since 2020, but at least the threat was taken more seriously then). A lot of cities don’t even publicize case numbers anymore. Most people are expected to test at home and self-report results now using a bunch of paperwork and several steps, which of course isn’t happening much. So we’ve basically been in one long wave since January of this year, with a few minor dips. [edit: I forgot that over the summer the government conducted a misleading campaign that made people think masks caused heatstroke. Before scientists could debunk it, we were having record numbers.]