Time wasted? How so? Considering we had our first Covid-19 case confirmed on January 16 and first death confirmed on February 13 (both in Kanagawa Prefecture where Yokohama is located), and we still have yet to experience an explosion in infections or related deaths, I'd say Japan has done a pretty good job so far. That may well change soon though, as we've seen a rise in the number of infections in recent weeks in no small part due to infected people bringing the virus home with them from Europe and the US.
You can only get as much confirmed cases as your testing capacity allows. Prioritizing on the "undertest to protect medical capacity" thing can be a grave mistake. It's pure wishful thinking since it only keeps the statistics at bay (every country can claim "look at how much better we're doing than the US" now), not the virus.
Japan took little containment measures
early on to actually stop the virus from spreading. And since it's not testing enough, the current confirmed cases have little value which in turn rendered health experts and policy makers blindfold on the "real" current scale of the virus spreading - and when they did see that stifled number grow and scramble to change their tactics, it's too late. This is where we're at now.
In contrast, South Korea (now universally recognized as a golden standard) had been aggressively testing
since day 1 to push the confirmed cases as close to the "real number" as possible so that they can have a clear picture on where to put in pinpoint quarantine measures. This enabled them not having to enact a full-on lock down like China did in Wuhan (where there was so much community spread that they basically had to assume everyone's sick).
Containment, mass testing, contact-tracing and treatment - this is by far the only proven protocol in curbing the virus. Dully do them all as early and/or as aggressive as possible (I mean look at Korea and China), and you'll be doing a good job; skip one or procrastinate, you're in for big, huge, gigantic trouble in the near future. I don't think Japan had been particularly aggressive into any of these categories in the past 2 months.
These are just my 2 cents. I suggest Dr. John Campbell's videos on youtube that are professional, pragmatic and well presented for a better understanding on this topic. He had been following this pandemic since late January.
As the saying goes: pray for the best, prepare for the worst. I have many correspondents in Japan, and I genuinely hope my assumption is wrong and everything would be fine in another month or two. But I just can't take my eyes away from the cold, hard curve...
