 Looking to the east, I'm Jay Fidel. This is Think Tech. We have Alan Miner. We have Steve Zurcher. Wow, from Japan. Alan is in Tokyo and Steve is in Osaka today. And we know them both. They've both been on the show before, Steve many times, but Alan, several times are ready for you, two or three times. Anyway, three times, I think. Yeah, we really appreciate that. So let's open with you, Alan. Sure. Well, I'm going to start by saying it's a lot more fun to be on your show there in Hollywood than from my apartment in Tokyo. All right. Well, how is Japan for you, Alan? In the mean way, what is it like these days? You have COVID, now you have floods, but you had that inevitable creativity around the Japanese model. How is it all coming together? Well, it's been kind of interesting because, of course, when they were still trying to find someone to make the Olympics happen, Japan did not go into lockdown. You didn't see any flare ups or any particular issues with it. I think Japan has a history of treating influenza very seriously and colds very seriously and teach their children to wash their hands. I think the 22nd hand wash routine that we saw for the first time in television in the United States here, that's routinely taught to children in elementary schools in Japan that germs can cause sickness and spreading. And if you are sick, you could spread germs and cause people to be sick. And one of the most fundamental ethical values in Japan is to not be a nuisance to other people. And so if you're sick, you wear a mask or you stay at home. And in order to avoid getting sick, you wash your hands. So as the mood here shifted from, we believe the Olympics can still happen, should still happen, I think the early thinking in Japan was much along the lines of Trump that it's more like SARS and mayors than something new and scary that we should panic about. But basically once the decision to make the Olympics was postponed, then the political games around corona, which are part of the whole story, kicked in. And you had battles between the mayor of Tokyo and Abbe, the prime minister, over who cared more about the people living in Tokyo. The lockdown came in and people were told to stay at home. And already being used to doing this for any kind of communicable disease, the Japanese were immediately very cooperative about wearing masks. The government actually mass manufactured a bunch, ordered a bunch of masks. Steve was putting this on just in case. Smile, Steve, smile. I think we're adequately social distant this morning, guys. I'm not worried about getting, I'm not worried about getting corona, although you never know, it's uncertain. Yeah, don't get too close to the screen. But I think what I'm seeing in the United States is a lot of ongoing debate about the necessity of lockdowns, the economic trade-offs we're making, the potential health and social negative impacts of the lockdown versus corona. And there's very little of that debate happening in Japan. So where are you on the continuum? I've been sitting here in my studio room, so to speak. I have a television off the sound and I watch it and they got charts every minute and the charts are all going up and the country is a flame today, a flame. How are things doing in Japan? They're reporting the cases that are identified in Tokyo. The deaths are rarely reported anymore in either country because what you notice is that as the testing increases, the cases identified are going up at a much faster rate than the deaths and there should be a direct correlation. And so I myself, as you probably already detected, I am very much of the point of view that all of the lockdown shutdowns, the behaviors that are being asked, are essentially, in the overall scheme of things, counterproductive. I know what we have going on right now is one issue, politics. It's much easier to make a decision in business, in politics, in life if you only focus on one question. And if the question is, would we be safer and less likely to get sick and less likely to make other people sick if we didn't ever interact with anybody, the answer is absolutely yes. If the only issue you care about is not making other people sick, you should stay at home forever and ever. You might catch the flu and plenty of people die from the flu. So I think what the world we're living in is one that's extremely oversimplified and the trade-offs are not worth it. And that actually we could probably come out of it quicker through the herd approach than waiting for a vaccine. We're 20 years into having SARS, having dealt with SARS, we still have a vaccine for SARS. And the idea that within 18 months we'll have one, that it will be effective. I am absolutely not a fan of Donald Trump, but I think the advice he was getting on this early on was actually much more correct than what most of the governments have done in the States and what most of the governments have done. You're a venture capitalist in Tokyo and Sunbridge is your company and I wonder how COVID as it has unfolded in Japan and is unfolding has affected your company and for that matter venture capitalism and entrepreneurship in Japan. Can you talk about that? Yeah, that's a great question. Early on my managers were concerned about and I think we tended as a company even though I communicated to my employees to not worry, make sure during lockdown they got out, got exercise, got some fresh air. Certainly if everyone else is staying at home, one of the safest you could be is out in the park. But I was encouraging the employees not to worry about it too much, but we did go, we did opt for a work from home regime for about a month and a half. And what we were finding is that business was progressing to some degree. There were increased efficiencies operating over Zoom via home. For example today, we did not have to schedule this call for a time when I happened to be in Honolulu. I know you've had the technology to do this for a long time and you and Steve have been doing it forever. But what I discovered in the company is that the sales team who had always assumed they needed to meet face to face with customers were able to move sales projects forward, close business, even though there were some unexpected delays and certain aspects of it, business continued as usual in the two software companies that I ran. And we engaged from the beginning in terms of what are we learning about operating over Zoom, about working from home versus in the office, what are the pros and cons of each approach, whether or not we come out of this back to the old normal or if we really are living in a new world. At the very least, we should be thinking about the optimum mix of technology based interactions internally and with customers and face to face interactions. What things are better face to face, what things are more are equally effective and more efficient online. So there's been a lot of that kind of conversation. And for me personally, there was a tremendous silver lining in this. My father is at the late stages of his life and he's dealing with brain cancer right now. And when the company went into work from home mode, it occurred to me that I could work with my employees from Utah in the United States just as easily as I could work for my department in Tokyo. So I had the chance to spend six months with my dad in the earlier stages of his disease while he could still get up and go on a morning walk and get around the house on his own and got to spend six weeks of really great quality time with my parents as a blessing in disguise from what we're going through right now. So forcing my siblings and I, we all had a family conversation about what if one of us happens to get corona and that accelerates his demise, how would we feel about that? How do we want him to be in a facility where there's 24-hour medical care for him and our decision as a family was we'd much rather spend time together as a family interacting as a family if nothing is going on outside. And if as a consequence of that corona happened to accelerate his demise, that we were okay with that. We would rather be together as a family than have an uncertain period of time when we felt like we had to stay apart, couldn't hug, couldn't interact, couldn't talk. I'm really lucky that I have six siblings who and parents who were all very comfortable that that was the choice we wanted to make. It's good that you had the conversation. I think that's what people have to have that conversation now. You have to figure out what the contingent plan is. So Steve, let's talk to you about education. You mentioned before the show began that you're now actively or about to actively teach classes at the Scheidler Business School. This is great and you're doing it all virtually. Tell me how that works and you know Alan suggested it's more efficient that way and I agree. Is it more efficient for you? Yeah, before I get to that I just to illustrate Alan's earlier point about the efficiencies of using Zoom. My wife is a high-level manager for a major pharmaceutical company and of course when the lockdown occurred in Japan the pharmaceutical reps could not visit the doctor's office and this is sacrosanct. It's like religious. You have to go every week even if you don't meet the doctor and what she discovered that after the lockdown was in place the sales held steady. So by not having the sales reps visit the sales didn't go down. That's kind of what they expected and in some cases the sales actually went up without the visits by the sales reps. So a lot of interesting discoveries are being made by companies now looking at the way business patterns customs have developed over decades and how in this period of time when all of that was forced to stop new efficiencies are being discovered. Regarding education all I have to say is that it's a mess. It's just a mess at a pro level and Trump has announced now that schools have to conduct face-to-face education which affects us because we have exchange students. So if the school is only teaching online for safety reasons they decide to do that then technically the students have to return back to Japan. I've been in education for 10 years and this is definitely the worst period that I've ever experienced including 311 when we had the nuclear breakdown here in Japan. That was horrible of course but nothing like this. Then to ask your question on a personal level yes I'm teaching two courses now one in Shidler and one in West Oahu. I have 34 students in total between the two classes and this is the first time I'm ever going to be teaching where I'm not going to meet my students. I am doing Zoom sessions for the Minoa students. I'm doing a hybrid model which is I'm sure you've seen that term in the paper quite a bit. So mostly asynchronous they do their work on their own. Four classes I'm doing live. I'm actually trying to get Alan to be a guest lecturer for one of my courses. I want the students to meet real entrepreneurs even if they can't do it in person. And then the West Oahu course by mandate is all asynchronous so I have no interaction with them whatsoever. They prefer asynchronous. So it's been about a week or so now so far so good. There are some efficiencies of course in that I don't have to go to the classroom and neither do the students but the preparation work strictly looking at it as a teacher and the management of the class is much more intense online than it is in person. I'm printing so much more. I have to be way more organized than I normally am. It's more difficult at least for me to transition from face to face to online. Maybe after a couple years of doing this I'll say online's easier to manage but right now it's harder for me. Is the educational product as good for the students or better? You know we've done lots of surveys and of course the Chronicle of Higher Education which I religiously follow has surveyed their institutions as well. I say in general students feel that the quality of the course online is lower than face to face. It's pretty consistent feedback. They do see some efficiencies and some benefits like they can study when they want and so forth but I don't think you would have anybody really make a serious case that online education is as good as face to face. I think it's very troublesome that Trump said he was going to withdraw federal funding from institutions of higher education in this country if they didn't abide by his requirement of reopening schools for face to face. I don't know that really creates a conundrum for that. Whatever any local government or independent body decides that he doesn't like. Unfortunately we build a society where so many local operations are dependent on federal subsidies. So that's true. So there's that, there's that but that's certain that's just part for the course for Trump. Yeah well we're seeing that now. It's like as the swamp is being drained so to speak. I'm not talking about his swamp. I'm talking about our swamp. As the swamp is being drained we see all these flaws and one of the flaws we've seen is that everybody is dependent on federal funding. So the chief executive can really turn you around any day of the week on so many points where they threaten to withdraw federal funding and I didn't know that that the president could do that. I thought Congress was the one who did that but apparently he can make that threat and it sticks. There'll be some schools in in the U.S. that suffer over this. I mean if you go through with the threat. Who knows what that you know the higher education is at such great duress anyway because think about the immigration side of it right. You got all these these students who now they're either they're either left in Asia or they have to go to Asia and that means the cash flow to these universities is seriously curtailed and they're in trouble anyway. They can't they can't really make a living. So on top of that you have this requirement or this withdrawal of federal funding gee whiz the pressure is extraordinary. So Steve if you want to come back and be part of an American school think twice. Yeah I've got my headaches here. The little bit that I'm seeing and hearing about how the education system is reacting in the United States or being told to react versus how it is in Japan. My sense is that within Japan giving children and young adults the education that is provided for them in the society is being prioritized over preventing them from getting sick on the grand schemes of things. There was a month or so shutdown of elementary schools. There's a lot of discuss about how to incorporate online training and and adjust classroom layouts and things but my my sense is that the Japanese education whether it's from preschools through universities is not going into all online shutdown that the kind of that the overall the policy on education is being pursued in a more balanced and prioritizing the the right of kids to get a good education at essentially the same levels protecting the society's health that they're evaluating trade-offs. Well let me let me throw this one at you. We first started talking about reopening and Trump started it. This is what is this March maybe March. You know it struck me and I would guess it struck you guys too that wait a minute let's let's not go to reopening until we have a plan on containing the virus because then reopening is much more comfortable predictable less risky. We never had that we don't have that now but for example testing you know we need to have tests available two is we have to have you know tests that lead to tracing and we have to have tracing that works at at two o'clock kawaii time that's right after this show is over. We're having our chief scientist come on his name is Mike DeWerter and he's really tremendous guy and he's made an analysis of how you would make a plan using testing and then tracing to determine exactly where the virus was going that means getting data I'm sure you'll appreciate data is so central than all of that getting data from everybody who is tested and then tracking the data to make sure you know that what happened before the test you know can be traced and so that's the kind of plan that we have needed it may be out of the box by now but maybe it's not too late to implement a plan like that where you could have all the education you want you could have face-to-face but you just have to implement certain control steps and then you can have both but you know of course the desired result is to have both right. Have you had a PCR test yet Jay? No I think there's a very serious flaw with that approach to the problem and here's what it is the equipment to do the RNA analysis is quite is fairly expensive and I did I did one test in California my wife when I came from Utah California my wife was very concerned about you know maybe I picked up the disease in Japan maybe in Utah I don't have symptoms I felt just final time but maybe I have it and maybe I would spread it and looking at the WHO documents by the research I did early on and the CDC if you read the documents as opposed to listening to the pronouncements of Jay Fauci or the head of WHO on television what you see is essentially zero very so close to zero that is not worth thinking about probability of asymptomatic spread two or three cases identified by late March of pre-sales one day before showing symptoms the the virus was spread that has to incubate enough that it actually is enough volume in the the what you expel from your body in a cough or speaking loud voice that it's the the A and there's been a little bit of television coverage during the Black Lives Matters riots pointing out that the asymptomatic spread is not a serious risk as we've thought at the beginning but WHO has been saying from the beginning that it's not a serious threat so the problem with the testing is that the equipment's very expensive in Japan it took take three days because they have to get sent to a lab when I returned to Japan from my visit states it took three days before I knew whether I had the virus or not and if you buy into if you don't buy into the asymptomatic spread a very effective tool which I'm seeing in lots of restaurants in Japan now is a temperature check before you enter the restaurant are you running a temperature if you are that's a that's a you know it's a sign of any number of possible diseases and that would be in my mind a very fair and reasonable reason to not be sat sat in a restaurant or not to be able to attend school that day if you're running a fever you're you're certainly sick with something and it could be corona so the fact that the fact that no one is talking about dispersing forehead temperature checkers or using them at airports or using them in schools we've had conversations about gun control security booths in schools those are pretty expensive solution to avoid a different social problem in America but I've not heard a conversation anywhere in the media about supplying all the schools with a forehead temperature checker and just taking the temperature systems where they enter the classroom and say are you running a fever if not if so please go home today if not the the risk that you have the disease are going to spread it to someone during the class the one hour classes today is low enough that we're okay with that so that another difference I'm seeing I'm seeing those temperature checkers all over in Japan we have we have one in both of the offices now it's optional for the employees to use it just to self test but most restaurants now are requiring patrons to have a temperature check before they sit down easy enough you know I went on Amazon and priced one I wanted to see what it cost to get one I mean a commercial one when you could use it in a restaurant 60 bucks 60 bucks on yeah but that's a lot that's a lot less than several tens of thousands of dollars for medical equipment to do our night testing so it's so cheap that's so cheap the protection it offers yeah to get to have one for every teacher to test to check the temperature of every child that comes into a classroom or one one in each restaurant meet you go we're on one air there's a mysterious moving chair behind me that's my wife yeah we're having an experience here so Steve what is happening at Kansai Gadae are you testing the temperature so yeah let me illustrate Alan's point a bit more I I belong to a gym which was you know locked down for two and a half months I think I gained a couple kilos as a result of that and they've opened now very limited activities any kind of a strong physical exertion is banned my favorite classes are all banned now so they have yoga and aromatherapy you know things I'm not so interested in but anyway when I go in they take my temperature it's automatic and if I'm above a certain level I don't know what it is then I can't go in so that is being deployed in retail outlets in Japan and I don't know seems seems to be working we Japan's going through a somewhat of a bump here I mean by by relative standards it's nothing compared to what's going on in like Florida and so forth but those precautions are in place in gyms and other places where theoretically the risk is higher regarding gydyne we did decide as a institution for this spring semester it was delayed by about five or six weeks because of the lockdown and then went 100 online so the campus over here is completely empty all students are engaging with their professors through zoom right now but in the fall which will start in early September we're moving to 100 face to face and they haven't announced the protocols yet for that but I'm I wouldn't be surprised if they take the temperature of all 12,000 students when they come to the campus as a way of trying to protect the school and the students from further infection so that's what we're looking at right now so but nothing about distancing and every other seat and have to you know class and all that they talk about that and they're going to give guidance on that but that is impossible to do the people the students take the buses to get to the campus they get on the I wrote on the train for the first time in three months yesterday the trains are packed here you cannot social distance on certain train lines it's impossible so they will talk about that but that will not be something that they can accomplish and I don't know if they'll be able to have the two meter or one meter distance with the students in the classrooms because we may not have enough classrooms if students are spread out that way they're thinking about all of that in the in the US more and more the news includes news stories about how people don't want to wear masks given retail will say you can't come in without a mask and they'll get into a physical argument over it violence there are a lot of people that firmly believe that they that they're liberty under the constitution includes the right to say no to a mask even though you know as the Japanese fully know that it's more for that it's more for the community than it is for the individual yeah so yesterday I'm sorry yesterday on the train even though it was crowded 100% there was not a single person on the train that wasn't wearing a mask it's remarkable how Japanese people have endorsed that as Alan mentioned it's part of our culture anyway for influenza and also for allergies so during certain times of the year 40% of the people would be wearing masks now 100% it's incredible so it's unpleasant we can't get the good masks what is it N95 masks in this country there's a lot of people that sort of impersonate masks they make masks out of t-shirts that are obviously not effective in this country you know the supply lines for this sort of thing are jeopardized right now there's a big thing about the testing equipment the certain elements is involved testing and and it's made in china and it stopped my roche roche is a pharmaceutical that was anyway it stopped and now now you can't have so much testing anymore so you know I'm asking you this Alan because to me it's a venture capital issue we we interviewed a guy in the University of Michigan who was working on a speed test where you know if you had COVID in like five minutes yeah but he can't get money a friend of mine is associated with a company in Singapore that what do they have it's likewise it's a test testing very important and it's part of that test trace combination yeah but they they haven't gotten FDA approval and this guy by the way in Michigan he hasn't gotten FDA approval either so in each case they believe they have a worthy test but in neither case has the FDA approved it that could be corruption I don't know if it is or not you know it wouldn't surprise me but as a venture capitalist don't you think this is a an ideal situation for the establishment of startups who have valid who have valid technology who can offer something to the marketplace yeah of course it is if if the tests being developed are a little more in general purpose than the current iteration of the SARS virus which is SARS-2 COVID-19 if it if and if in if for example if that test could also detect the different varieties of influenza could detect rhinovirus versus current so if if it was a test to identify what virus is causing you to be sick that would be a very useful general purpose tool and I think there there is a habit within the startup community and the venture company which I would call flavor of the day and so it would not surprise me if this person gets funding for his idea from somebody because corona is so top of mind right now and and I think the likelihood that a legitimate useful test would be accelerated through the FDA process is higher now than any other time and usually usually something something in the medical field there's a very long drawn out process and it takes a very special kind of venture capitalist to get excited about investing in those deals where you're dealing with a 10-year lifetime on a fund but it would it would seem to me that if if out of these solutions have a little more general application than the specific current genome of this the current SARS virus then yeah certainly it certainly seems like it would be a good time to maximize that because it's likely to get FDA fast-tracked if it's a legitimate solution even for COVID that being able to help with COVID would get fast-tracked and if it's then also useful for other detecting and identifying other diseases that would be a very powerful thing and I saw an article yesterday about a guy who I guess he's acquainted with Trump and he's not in the biomedical space at all he was in some kind of information technology space but he had the bright idea of a of an injection device it's made out of plastic and it's a thrown way so as and when there is a vaccine this injection device which has a plastic bulb filled with the vaccine you inject somebody you push the bulb then you throw away the device and Trump has is causing the federal government to back this guy's company even though they they've made a few hundred what do you call it pilot pilot devices they have not manufactured nor do they have a manufacturing facility and it strikes me that there's going to be a huge opportunity when you start doing the math on the number of people who have to be injected story is the injection would be two injections and it would be around the world and would probably have to be repeated like like flu vaccination you know in months or years and so the amount of money to be made is extraordinary and I think that's that's going to be something else that comes down the pipe as and when he's this guy is smart because he's assuming there'll be a vaccine that which is not a certainty and if you can get into a business where you you know you're able to manufacture what eight or nine billion units or more you can make a buck that way yeah yeah I and I wonder though in Japan my recollection about Japan is Japan is it's not anti-vax but it's also like it's not comfortable with invasive procedures are people going to take a vaccine are they going to take an injection or would there be resistance I think there will be resistance everywhere I I think the traceability uh the you know proliferation as far as the so there are all kinds of things man where I suspect uh it will be mandated and what we will be restricted from doing or finding in too inconvenient to do if we're not vaccinated will be so such a nuisance that only a handful of very very avid hardcore you're not putting anything in my body sir people will will fight it and in general in general I think the Japanese kind of tend to like to go along with the herd in general they trust their government more than we trust ours and so I I think it's highly likely that there will be there will be people who despite all the inconveniences that are imposed on those that don't vaccinate will choose not to vaccinate yeah but I think there's there's an over there's there's certainly a storyline there is money to be made and I think I think we'll be facing all kinds of restrictions on our activities if we don't vaccinate it's the way the storyline agenda seems to be playing out yeah another element to this is societal pressure beyond what the government says yeah if you go out and you're not wearing a mask like if I go onto the campus right now and I'm not wearing a mask people will tell me to wear a mask so once a vaccine is developed or some kind of injection to reduce the incidence of of the virus uh the pressure from your peers will be so strong in this country to adhere to that that that will drive people's behavior as well so beyond what the government says yeah that's all things being equal um you know I think that Japan will be way ahead of uh you know the state of mind in the US there are a lot of anti-vaxxers in the US and they believe that the you know the constitution gives them the freedom to say no and they will say no uh even though it you know it injures all the community around them this is very troublesome. The other thing about Japan is you know recently the World Health Organization announced that um you know the coronavirus can be uh it can can be spread um by aerosol by aerosol right and they announced that and that seems to be the the current thinking but I'll tell you the truth I remember a piece I saw on television probably in March about Japanese researchers who were using infrared cameras to check out this to spread of um you know vaporized particles aerosol particles in a room where somebody had coughed uh you know an hour before or two or five hours and they were still in the air if you looked at the aerosol the the infrared and I'm and I'm thinking the Japanese knew this months before the World Health Organization knew this uh so I think that at some level Japanese medical and science are really ahead and I would put my money on a Japanese pharmaceutical company coming up with something I haven't heard that they have but I wonder if you guys know whether they are working on it and whether Japan is determined to come up with a vaccine. One thing I one thing it's a category of product in Japan that you hear about all the time it's been around for a while but it's being promoted and purchased a lot more now than in the past I have never run across a product like this in the United States and it's air conditioners that filter the air take out and it's specific it's designed I think originally around the annual spring um hay fever issue that Japan deals with to basically remove problematic particles from the air in homes and so there's been a wave of purchases of air cleansing air conditioners in Japan I have one Ellen yeah and there's there's quite a there's quite there's quite a bit one of the things I really admire about Japanese television whether it's the public channel NHK or the private channels they do really good educational video that that it does it doesn't tend to have a strong angle other than sharing information from experts on how to live a healthier life so there are all kinds of programs whether it's humorous variety shows that have bits about healthy eating or you know I I've seen a couple of programs that showed how breath particle spread when you're running walking singing uh how what rate do they have your products dropped to the ground with kind of computer simulations of maybe how far is it better to jog beside a person or behind her but and the outcome was you're better jogging side to side and separated through separated a meter or two front to back you separate further uh if you're going forward but side to side's okay based on how the particles spread and drop so I've said both this kind of product that's sort of a health conscious variation on a traditional consumer product and and the kind of programming that's presented on television that you know there there is the the sort of the scary news bit of it but there's there's a lot of really good balanced editorial material and educational material on all the channels in japan and I really respect the media here for that yeah and there's so many other things I know that you know I know they're going to come up with some kind of home version of the ultraviolet light which which has been you know a big point of discussion around here but Steve we're out of time and I wanted to ask you if you could speculate as to what we could talk about next time where where do you think the trail will take us in two weeks oh um for Japan specifically you're talking about um I mentioned that there's been a slight uptick in especially in Tokyo in terms of the numbers and again the numbers relative to the United States are insignificant um you know the infection rates in some states are what Japan's experienced throughout the whole period of corona um but I imagine things are pretty much going to proceed in in the ways that it has been over the last couple weeks or so for the most part businesses will remain open and engaged schools will remain open and engaged the economy in Japan is still suffering because of the lockdown and it's very clear but at least at the we haven't got the official numbers yet since things have reopened but the sense that I have just being out and about the traffic patterns and the the vibe of the of the community is that things are back maybe not at 100 but probably 80 to 90 of what we were at prior to when this occurred so I suspect that more or less we'll continue along that same path Allen do you agree with that or you see my impression is the same that the you know when we when we have our all hands meetings the the chairs are being separated you've picked up enough on my attic on this that I think it's silly but the employees are more comfortable when we do that and and the employees are being allowed to participate in the all hands meeting from their desk via zoom or to come into the room with the with the other employees that that are in the separated chairs rooms and my sense is that overall the Japanese feel that if they're wearing their masks washing their hands avoiding aggressively foolish behavior that that will be okay we'll get through this okay and and that it's not life as usual in any stretch of the imagination but I think the Japanese are comfortable that just following the basic guidelines of not spending too much time too close to a large people avoiding large crowds although the trains are an exception but I think even even riding the trains the Japanese remain in the decision that if I'm wearing the mask and people are wearing a mask and I'm conscious if if I am feeling ill or and stay out of those places if I'm feeling ill if I don't host large parties and restaurants that will be okay there will be cases no people get sick and they're they'll even occasionally be someone who dies from it but my sense is that the masks are making the Japanese feel safe enough the mask the masks and measures and just being reasonably wise are enough for them to feel like we should we should be you know getting on with things in society in that context yeah doing the right thing doing the right thing well thank you Ellen Ellen minor and Steve searcher thank you so much you guys it's it's great having you on the show uh Ellen and Steve I look forward to seeing you in in two weeks and Ellen I hope to come back to us soon so we can we can well as soon as Hawaii as soon as Hawaii will let me come in and Japan will let me come back as soon as as soon as visiting with you on your program is considered urgent and necessary I'll be I'll be there in a flash okay thank you Ellen thank you Steve allow you guys stay safe