November 2019. A pharmaceutical trader I knew flew to China on business and did not come back — caught what everyone called a bad cold, ended up in a mainland hospital, died there. We sighed at dinner and moved on. I missed the first domino without knowing it was a domino. By April 2020 my office in Hakata was as quiet as an empty classroom, and the work of cross-border medicine had been replaced by something stranger: chasing meltblown fabric across three time zones, learning supply-chain panic in real time, watching the Fukuoka night street stay weirdly normal as the world stopped.

In this episode: COVID-19, the early pandemic in Japan, mask supply chain, what a medical coordinator does when the borders close.

Contact: medicalsupporter.org | shingihou.com | [email protected]

⚠️ Personal reflections only. Not medical practice, diagnosis, or treatment advice. Please consult your physician. Names have been changed.