A Workshop on Exploring Current and Post COVID-19 Societies
3rd Crosstalk Report
“How We Understand COVID-19 Deaths”
“How We Understand COVID-19 Deaths”
| Date: | March 8th (Wed), 2023 18：00—20：30 |
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Topic ① “The Current State of COVID-19 Deaths and Challenges”
Hitoshi Oshitani (Professor from the Department of Virology, Tohoku University Graduate School of Medicine)
Currently, Japan is easing their COVID-19 countermeasures, and the government is planning to classify COVID-19 under Category 5 of the Infectious Disease Control Law on May 8th. However, the issue of COVID-19 deaths is becoming increasingly serious; measures adopted at the government-level and people's disease awareness are not congruent with the increase in number of COVID-19 deaths.
During the first wave of COVID-19, the fatality rate was high and nearly 900 people died because there were no approved treatments for COVID-19. After the introduction of vaccines and emergence of the less-lethal Omicron variant, the fatality rate itself dropped. However, with the emergence of the Omicron variant, the total number of infected people substantially increased, resulting in far more deaths than in the first wave of cases. In fact, 983 people died from COVID-19 in just two days: January 13 and 14, 2023.
Until now, when the number of daily COVID-19 deaths exceeded a hundred in Japan, public awareness and governmental response towards the virus changed. This curbed COVID-19 deaths. However, since the Omicron variant outbreak, even a daily COVID-19 death toll of 300 or 500 has not changed people's behavior. When WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom spoke of the COVID-19 deaths, he said, "We must remember that these are people, not numbers." However, the Japanese people do not even pay attention to the 'numbers' anymore; is this really a reality we should tolerate?
Topic ➁ “How We Have Come to Terms with Deaths Due to Pandemics”
Toshiaki Kimura (Professor from the Department of Religious Studies, Graduate School Faculty of Arts and Letters, Tohoku University)
When we examine from an ethical perspective the contradiction between restrictions on individual freedom and the easing of those restrictions for economic revitalization, we find that the those who die are the ones most disadvantaged by easing restrictions. This is because they cannot benefit from social revitalization. Can we justify deaths that will most likely increase by lowering social shields? Or should we ignore the resulting deaths under the belief that "the dead have no say"?
Regarding the relationship between the dead and the living, Emanuelis Levinas put forth "the responsibility of the living for the dead" as a post-Auschwitz ethic. He expounded on the danger of discussing the current state of society without considering those who lived in the past. Given his argument, it is impossible to discuss the state of society today without considering those who died because of easing restrictions.
From ancient times in Japan, it was believed that infectious diseases were due to some kind of deity, and people have culturally believed in such deities. However, this deity did not only cause disease but also healed the sick and the dead. The worshipping of this deity involved many aspects, including memorial services for the dead. Here again, we can see the relationship between the dead and the living.
Inherently, people recognize themselves, others, and the world through language and other symbols. As such, humans have the unique characteristic of treating death as a special event separate from biological death and expressing it in a cultural form. To come to terms with death and to socially acknowledge the dead over time, people have developed a funeral culture.
However, some people have been pointing out for some time that funeral culture is gradually diminishing. In the words of historian Philippe Ariès, " society has banished death," i.e., death is something "ugly and hidden" from society. This is not only due to the privatization of death, but also the decrease in opportunities to see the dead due to medicalization and sanitization and the disappearance of a social tacit understanding referred to as the "code."
As mentioned earlier, funerals are a process of socially acknowledging and accepting death over time. For this reason, funerals in Japan were public affairs involving villages and towns. The main event of funerals was the funeral procession in which everyone in the village or town sent the deceased to their grave. However, after the war, with the start of the New Life Movement and industrialization, the "old" culture of funerals was questioned. This led to the simplification and industrialization of funerals. Thus, the funerals shifted from a communal, cooperative form to an outsourcing form. Even family members became "customers" of a professional funeral service provider. Recent simplification has seen the popularization of direct funerals and “soukotsu (送骨)” that do not involve rituals.
On the other hand, a survey showed that about half of respondents regretted that they could not mourn properly through simplified funerals. There is room to consider whether simplifying funerals is the best option in the long run. In addition, 90% of respondents said they would like to hold funerals involving rituals for their relatives, indicating that there is a strong need for funeral services to send close people off.
Given the need to reduce the scale of funerals due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the percentage of family funerals, one-day funerals, and direct funerals increased. The number of funeral attendees decreased as well, and it is reported that many bereaved families regret that they could not hold a fulfilling funeral. However, while this "simplification due to COVID-19" was seen in the Tokyo metropolitan area, it was not seen in the Keihanshin area. This difference may be due to the varying awareness of traditional customs between the two regions. As a result, tree burials surpassed regular graves in 2020, which impacted the funeral service industry and its gross sales. Reasons for the popularity of tree burials include reduction in labor, price, and burden on children (which may be due to economic reasons rather than the impact of the pandemic). However, the idea of "returning to nature" may resonate more with people today than the idea of "becoming an ancestor," which was popular in ancient Japan.
The number of deaths due to the COVID-19 pandemic has greatly exceeded the number of victims of the Great East Japan Earthquake. However, no attention has been paid to the deaths caused by the pandemic. While there is a growing emphasis within the religious community to address the fatalities resulting from this pandemic, there are currently no national or local memorial ceremonies. Should we, "the living who are responsible for the dead," really continue to act this way?
Hitoshi Oshitani (Professor from the Department of Virology, Tohoku University Graduate School of Medicine)
Currently, Japan is easing their COVID-19 countermeasures, and the government is planning to classify COVID-19 under Category 5 of the Infectious Disease Control Law on May 8th. However, the issue of COVID-19 deaths is becoming increasingly serious; measures adopted at the government-level and people's disease awareness are not congruent with the increase in number of COVID-19 deaths.
During the first wave of COVID-19, the fatality rate was high and nearly 900 people died because there were no approved treatments for COVID-19. After the introduction of vaccines and emergence of the less-lethal Omicron variant, the fatality rate itself dropped. However, with the emergence of the Omicron variant, the total number of infected people substantially increased, resulting in far more deaths than in the first wave of cases. In fact, 983 people died from COVID-19 in just two days: January 13 and 14, 2023.
Until now, when the number of daily COVID-19 deaths exceeded a hundred in Japan, public awareness and governmental response towards the virus changed. This curbed COVID-19 deaths. However, since the Omicron variant outbreak, even a daily COVID-19 death toll of 300 or 500 has not changed people's behavior. When WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom spoke of the COVID-19 deaths, he said, "We must remember that these are people, not numbers." However, the Japanese people do not even pay attention to the 'numbers' anymore; is this really a reality we should tolerate?
Topic ➁ “How We Have Come to Terms with Deaths Due to Pandemics”
Toshiaki Kimura (Professor from the Department of Religious Studies, Graduate School Faculty of Arts and Letters, Tohoku University)
When we examine from an ethical perspective the contradiction between restrictions on individual freedom and the easing of those restrictions for economic revitalization, we find that the those who die are the ones most disadvantaged by easing restrictions. This is because they cannot benefit from social revitalization. Can we justify deaths that will most likely increase by lowering social shields? Or should we ignore the resulting deaths under the belief that "the dead have no say"?
Regarding the relationship between the dead and the living, Emanuelis Levinas put forth "the responsibility of the living for the dead" as a post-Auschwitz ethic. He expounded on the danger of discussing the current state of society without considering those who lived in the past. Given his argument, it is impossible to discuss the state of society today without considering those who died because of easing restrictions.
From ancient times in Japan, it was believed that infectious diseases were due to some kind of deity, and people have culturally believed in such deities. However, this deity did not only cause disease but also healed the sick and the dead. The worshipping of this deity involved many aspects, including memorial services for the dead. Here again, we can see the relationship between the dead and the living.
Inherently, people recognize themselves, others, and the world through language and other symbols. As such, humans have the unique characteristic of treating death as a special event separate from biological death and expressing it in a cultural form. To come to terms with death and to socially acknowledge the dead over time, people have developed a funeral culture.
However, some people have been pointing out for some time that funeral culture is gradually diminishing. In the words of historian Philippe Ariès, " society has banished death," i.e., death is something "ugly and hidden" from society. This is not only due to the privatization of death, but also the decrease in opportunities to see the dead due to medicalization and sanitization and the disappearance of a social tacit understanding referred to as the "code."
As mentioned earlier, funerals are a process of socially acknowledging and accepting death over time. For this reason, funerals in Japan were public affairs involving villages and towns. The main event of funerals was the funeral procession in which everyone in the village or town sent the deceased to their grave. However, after the war, with the start of the New Life Movement and industrialization, the "old" culture of funerals was questioned. This led to the simplification and industrialization of funerals. Thus, the funerals shifted from a communal, cooperative form to an outsourcing form. Even family members became "customers" of a professional funeral service provider. Recent simplification has seen the popularization of direct funerals and “soukotsu (送骨)” that do not involve rituals.
On the other hand, a survey showed that about half of respondents regretted that they could not mourn properly through simplified funerals. There is room to consider whether simplifying funerals is the best option in the long run. In addition, 90% of respondents said they would like to hold funerals involving rituals for their relatives, indicating that there is a strong need for funeral services to send close people off.
Given the need to reduce the scale of funerals due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the percentage of family funerals, one-day funerals, and direct funerals increased. The number of funeral attendees decreased as well, and it is reported that many bereaved families regret that they could not hold a fulfilling funeral. However, while this "simplification due to COVID-19" was seen in the Tokyo metropolitan area, it was not seen in the Keihanshin area. This difference may be due to the varying awareness of traditional customs between the two regions. As a result, tree burials surpassed regular graves in 2020, which impacted the funeral service industry and its gross sales. Reasons for the popularity of tree burials include reduction in labor, price, and burden on children (which may be due to economic reasons rather than the impact of the pandemic). However, the idea of "returning to nature" may resonate more with people today than the idea of "becoming an ancestor," which was popular in ancient Japan.
The number of deaths due to the COVID-19 pandemic has greatly exceeded the number of victims of the Great East Japan Earthquake. However, no attention has been paid to the deaths caused by the pandemic. While there is a growing emphasis within the religious community to address the fatalities resulting from this pandemic, there are currently no national or local memorial ceremonies. Should we, "the living who are responsible for the dead," really continue to act this way?