The postmortem of that debacle deemed it to be a man-made disaster because sensible safety measures were not enforced or implemented, oversight was lax and the crisis response was a fiasco. In particular, the cruise ship Diamond Princess has gained international notoriety because Japanese health officials bungled the quarantine and transformed the luxury vessel into a massive floating petri dish. Having botched that initial response, health officials appear to have gotten it wrong again by letting people return home without placing them in proper quarantine facilities. It seems the planned spring summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping might have influenced the Abe government’s response. One can forgive those Japanese who might be wondering whether public health concerns were overtaken by political and economic calculations.

Source: Washington Post February 21, 2020 15:11 UTC