Dr. MY is an award-winning molecular geneticist/biologist, and one of the few elite scientists elected as foreign member of the Royal Society. His lab has been going strong in Kyoto then in Okinawa for over 40 years. He was my graduate advisor.
On Sept. 13, 2019, I got an email notifying all his former lab members that there would be a symposium and celebration for his 80 years birthday, which is a distinctive age in Japan (傘寿).
The alumni symposium and celebration was planned to be held in Kyoto Japan, on April 2021. The email was requesting us to mark the calendar and make arrangements. It would be a nice opportunity to visit Japan.
Then 2020. Corona came.
Now is November 2020. I was beginning to wonder if the symposium would take place in zoom or in other ways.
Currently Japan is like a closed country to visit from the USA. Beforehand or on arrival, visitors have to arrange a place to stay for 14 quarantine days and a method to reach there from the airport without using a public transportation like train or bus. On arrival in the airport, visitors need to take a PCR test for SARS-COV2 and wait for negative result. It takes 1-3 hours wait now, they say. Although the PCR wait time is much shortened compared with some months ago, it is still so much trouble.
But currently the USA is in the middle of poorly-controlled COVID19 pandemic. Even in this small state of Oklahoma, over 2000 new patients are reported daily in this past 3 days, and ICU beds are getting full. As I work in the hospital complex, this is occurring in my workplace neighborhood and not in a faraway land. I saw COVID19 patients among Facebook friends, and even report of death. With this "result", Trump's poor virus response seems to be a part of reasons of his defeat.
I cannot complain about Japan's disease control policies being cautious.
On November 9, 2020, I got a follow-up email from the organizers. "Postponed by 1 year".
It is going to be 2022. Sure.
Pfizer's promising COVID 19 vaccine news came only a few days ago, and this morning I watched the vaccine developer talking about distribution plan and timeframe. We are not yet certain if Tokyo Olympic is actually going to be held on 2021. Still so much uncertainties. I'll just live on with caution, though.
[11/12/2020 data of Oklahoma. We did flatten the curve by the lockdown in March-May. But after the reopen, COVID19 has just been going around steadily. Recent surge seems to be due to the ice storm and/or Halloween parties.]
