From the recent melodrama of Japan’s coronavirus response has emerged a grim forecast, one in which the country — unable to prevent or contain subsequent waves of the pandemic — has no choice in the coming months but to repeat different permutations of the same countermeasures and hope to stave off catastrophe until the population is sufficiently inoculated.
All the while, the economy will keep bleeding and the public will continue to grow tired, frustrated and less compliant.
But there may be a remedy — several, even — for the side effects of this bleak prognosis, and a more optimistic viewpoint begins with the expansion and acceleration of the country’s vaccine rollout.