Germany also has super low numbers of death so far, 94 atm and 20 or 25 stem from a cluster where someone decided to bring the bug to an elderly home full of 80+ year olds in poor physical condition.
In Italy on the other hand you have almost 1 in 10 of the infected cases ending up dead.
The death rate in Germany atm is about 0.3%, while Japan, UK, France, Spain hover around 4-6%. Even Korea, who very widely tested, are at about 1.2%. Germany has about the same number as Spain btw, which is about half of Italy's infections.
Japan's health system is very well equipped with intensive care beds, from what I read. So is Germany, which definitely helps in reducing the numbers, but a big junk of those huge numbers especially in Italy is due to patients not receiving proper medical care.
When the outbreak was in Wuhan, the Chinese government just randomly picked up medical staff all over the country and sent them to Wuhan and they built a few huge hospitals in no time to create that capacity for Corona patients. None of that is happening in Europe, even though in Italy it is similarly locally confined.
How well Japan is really prepared, we will only see, when numbers go through the roof. Even with those families going to IKEA, most of my Japanese friends refrain from going out atm.
Japan probably empirically proves that commutes are not a main way of transmission. Otherwise it would be hard to understand that there is so little so far with all those packed trains.
