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97% of surveyed major Japanese firms plan workplace COVID vaccinations

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When the government fails miserably, it’s good to ignore them and just get it done. Actually what does the government really do? I can’t think of a single thing.

4 ( +9 / -5 )

When the government fails miserably

That's not really the case. The large majority of Japan's medical institutions and personnel are in the private sector, which mostly can't or doesn't want to take part in the inoculation programs.

The government did its part by securing and storing massive amounts of vaccines early on. But it must work with a healthcare supply chain that is fractured, unnecessarily complex and riven by competing interests.

1 ( +10 / -9 )

The fact that we are almost in July and the vast majority of us are still unvaccinated is proof enough to me that the government has failed miserably. My entire extended family in North America has been fully vaccinated months ago. It’s pathetic that we are still waiting on the govt to get its act together.

4 ( +9 / -5 )

The survey covered 127 major companies, of which 116 responded. Currently, entities planning to vaccinate more than 1,000 people are allowed to give on-site inoculations in Japan, where 99.7 percent of firms are small or medium-sized and one of the biggest challenges would be to address immunization disparities.

This kind of innoculation will use Moderna vaccine, however what likely to happen is these company "force" their employee to do innoculation Moderna vaccines. It will limit freedom to choose which vaccine people can get, like Pfizer or Moderna. Even if it will voluntarily their peers or manager will give them pressure to do inoculation in their company.

-5 ( +4 / -9 )

I dont get it, the vaccine is hard to administer (according to the government who won't allow dentists, paramedics, nurses etc to administer it) needs to be stored very cold and all that, but now your boss can buy a box on amazon and store it in the fridge with peoples bento's?

3 ( +10 / -7 )

When the government fails miserably

That's not really the case. The large majority of Japan's medical institutions and personnel are in the private sector, which mostly can't or doesn't want to take part in the inoculation programs.

‘And I pay National Health insurance, and in a pandemic where is the Government National help that I payed for? It’s definitely on the government. A nation wide pandemic? Isn’t that worthy of a national response?

6 ( +10 / -4 )

VAERS data released today by the CDC showed a total of 358,379 reports of adverse events from all age groups following COVID vaccines, including 5,993 deaths and 29,871 serious injuries between Dec. 14, 2020 and June 11, 2021.

0 ( +9 / -9 )

Sakurasuki just tell your employer you are already vaccinated if it’s such a big deal as you make it out to be. They can’t force you to produce documentation. But Anyone who works at a company that offers it should consider themselves extremely lucky. Getting it through the govt is a nightmare.

0 ( +3 / -3 )

Over 40% work as paato,haken and keiyaku shain.Greedy companies will cut their already meager peanuts when or if they take time off to go for the vaccinations.

0 ( +3 / -3 )

I dont get it, the vaccine is hard to administer (according to the government who won't allow dentists, paramedics, nurses etc to administer it) needs to be stored very cold and all that, but now your boss can buy a box on amazon and store it in the fridge with peoples bento's?

The headquarters of many major corporations in Japan have on-site, well-staffed and fully equipped medical clinics. My former employer has an entire floor of its Otemachi headquarters that serves as the employee hospital. Properly storing and administering vaccines poses no challenge whatsoever to these operations.

6 ( +6 / -0 )

VAERS data released today by the CDC showed

You have half of the information you need, now see the comparison between vaccinated and unvaccinated people and see if there is any excess, VAERS do not means the reports are due to vaccines, it just means vaccinated people do not become immortal and invulnerable to all kinds of diseases.

1 ( +7 / -6 )

Someone tell me why my 75 year old mother in-law can't get her vaccination until July 13th in Japan. And my wife and me have had both of our shots in Canada. Why is it taking so long in Japan?

2 ( +4 / -2 )

stickman1760Today  07:05 am JST

The fact that we are almost in July and the vast majority of us are still unvaccinated is proof enough to me that the government has failed miserably. My entire extended family in North America has been fully vaccinated months ago. It’s pathetic that we are still waiting on the govt to get its act together.

Not one country (with over 20M doses administered) has more than 50% of its population FULLY vaccinated.

Most are in the 10-25% range with the USA, UK, and Chile nearing 50%

Source: Vaccinations by location From Our World in Data · Last updated: 1 day ago

0 ( +2 / -2 )

It is good news that the vaccination program is accelerating, but.......it is way, way past due. The Olympics could have been held in safety, with large crowds, if the vaccination program had been done responsibly, and by that I mean many months ago.

1 ( +3 / -2 )

Someone tell me why my 75 year old mother in-law can't get her vaccination until July 13th in Japan. And my wife and me have had both of our shots in Canada. Why is it taking so long in Japan?

Because Japan didn't start the rollout until later than Canada. But they have administered more doses than Canada since then. July 13 would be only 2 months after the general public vaccine roll-out began which is very reasonable. IF Japan had started vaccines in January, a July 13 vaccination date would be considered slow.

-1 ( +3 / -4 )

@Crickey

I pay National Health insurance, and in a pandemic where is the Government National help that I payed for

I think you're confused. The insurance system financially covers costs of treatment, services etc., by reimbursing healthcare providers, a large majority of which are owned and managed by the private sector. The people putting jabs in your arms for the most part are not govt employees.

So if you've got a problem, take it to your healthcare provider, which is most likely a private sector entity, and tell them to get with the game.

6 ( +6 / -0 )

As Japan looks to speed up the pace of its daily COVID-19 shots and expand eligibility to younger people, the government unveiled a plan earlier this month to allow companies and universities to start launching their own inoculation programs from Monday.

It is not stated that the companies need to provide paperwork and apply and seek approval from the government.

2 ( +2 / -0 )

The people putting jabs in your arms for the most part are not govt employees.

So if you've got a problem, take it to your healthcare provider, which is most likely a private sector entity, and tell them to get with the game.

No, i think you have got it wrong, the pandemic as well as rare diseases is classified differently to normal deseases covered by the insurance scheme, the funding in comes from the national government, there is a scramble recently to secure doctors to administer the jab by localities fully funded by national government and the going rate for a doctor which is climbing is 170,000yen per day.

The disparity has been created by the government. Throwing money around to interest groups to reward them rather than to solve a problem.

-2 ( +0 / -2 )

What will the companies do when someone has an adverse reaction that leads to disability or death? My friend who is a nurse (and very healthy, physically active) eagerly got the vaccine. Two weeks later, she started having numbness in her extremities, and now is effectively paralyzed.

-1 ( +6 / -7 )

The Japanese government is bungling the company vaccination rollout as well.

My company was able to secure vaccination bookings for 50 people, so they held a lottery for all interested employees. The vaccinations were scheduled to start on June 28, but on Friday the clinic told my company’s HR that the Ministry of Health was unable to stick to its schedule, and now it’s unclear when they’ll begin to give us vaccinations. 

As I wrote yesterday, the level of incompetence with the vaccinations in Japan is ridiculous. It honestly feels intentional at this point.

3 ( +4 / -1 )

Really wish the journos who write the same copy-pasted updates about case numbers on this news site would include the daily number of vaccinations as well. It's probably the number we are more interested in since we can't really trust the significance of the reported case numbers anyway. The OurWorldInData site is great but it'd be nice if it was all in one place. Also notice a lot of negativity among the comments on the daily despite vaccination rates ramping up significantly every day. For comparison, the rate of inoculation per 100 people is now higher than the highest ever rate recorded in Singapore. Currently, it's also higher than UK, US, or Israel. Maybe it's time we start taking a step back and see how things are actually improving a lot. 

Also, where is this frustration about the slow commencement of vaccine roll outs coming from? Do people seriously not know how hamstrung the government is after implementing the need for domestic trials following the MMR saga after public outrage? And now that the government took the approach of doing domestic trials (note the opposition party in the early days also called for caution in rushing to implement "gaikoku-sei wakuchin") before rolling it out, people are angry they didn't dish the vaccines out sooner? You can bet that many Japanese would have pounced on the first reported adverse effect denouncing the recklessness of distribution a vaccine untested on the Yamato. The coupling of vaccine distribution by central governments and regional municipalities and their respective clinics is also a pretty standard approach by other countries like Australia. What's unique though is the initiative of allowing private companies to utilise their own health professionals to vaccinate their employees. This creates another pathway to getting vaccinated which to my knowledge isn't reciprocated in other countries. Of course things won't go smoothly but clearly things are all moving in the right direction. Isn't this a good thing? Shouldn't we be cheering our country on? Or have we all metamorphosed into the pessimistic oyajis of the post-bubble era?

0 ( +1 / -1 )

A friend directed me to one review of VAERS data by three US doctors. The VAERS data will alarm many, but what had to be considered (and wasn't mentioned there) is that all coronaviruses mess with our bodies and have been doing so throughout history. There is focus on the hook protein of this virus, on the (still) lacking 3-year and 7-years later data of the effect of having the hook or spike protein in our bloodstream from the mRNA vaccines -- but of course contracting the disease also results in the same phenomenon in our bloodstreams. We are living laboratories and must get through pandemics as best we can, making the best vaccines and decisions, end of story.

-1 ( +2 / -3 )

Hopefully people do their homework and don’t just follow the herd. The elderly with comorbidities should get vaccinated. If you are not in this group you have little risk of being seriously ill from COVID.

1 ( +5 / -4 )

I sense a lot of 'vaccination-harassment' incoming:

Workers being 'forced' by their senpai or threatened with a demotion...

That's absolutely a good thing. Let them face the so called 'vaccination-harassment'. My office will promote it as well.

-3 ( +0 / -3 )

VAERS data released today by the CDC showed a total of 358,379 reports of adverse events from all age groups following COVID vaccines, including 5,993 deaths and 29,871 serious injuries between Dec. 14, 2020 and June 11, 2021.

One problem with VAERS is that traditionally only about 1% of adverse reactions are ever reported; i.e., the actual numbers are likely much higher.

Anyone still considering getting any of these vaccines should watch these clips from the Dark Horse podcast (one of the guests is Robert Malone, who created this mRNA technology):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tb_7E12VDE4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMxuNvVgxlU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXApSn7t4yg

-2 ( +3 / -5 )

Because Japan didn't start the rollout until later than Canada. But they have administered more doses than Canada since then. July 13 would be only 2 months after the general public vaccine roll-out began which is very reasonable. IF Japan had started vaccines in January, a July 13 vaccination date would be considered slow.

objective,

Your response makes no sense. First Canada has the highest % first vaccination on the planet. Second my question was why is Japan taking so long to vaccinate their citizens? Being slow to get started isn't a good thing and it definitely shouldn't be your excuse for Japan to be so far behind.

1 ( +2 / -1 )

Sounds fantastic doesn't it, well the vaccine of choice by these major corporations is the Chinese variant, and who wants that sucker?

0 ( +2 / -2 )

@runner3Today  03:44 pm JST

Hi, I thought you asked why it was taking so long for citizens to get vaccinated NOT why did they start vaccinating so late. Those are two very different questions.

Based on official data, Japan has administered only 2M doses less than Canada, and they have done it in a much shorter time. Within a week, Japan will surpass Canada for number of people vaccinated with their first shot. Remember, Japan has a population 5x greater than Canada. Also, only 60% of the adult population here want to be vaccinated.

0 ( +1 / -1 )

I asked my student today if his company will vaccinate him.

He said that they have received only 2,000 doses for their 10,000 employees.

What's up with that?

0 ( +1 / -1 )

One problem with VAERS is that traditionally only about 1% of adverse reactions are ever reported; i.e., the actual numbers are likely much higher.

That is not a real problem, because the adverse reactions that are not reported are the mildest ones, it is obviously much less likely to have a small headache reported than a death. This applies also to the non-vaccinated population only to a greater degree, because the only thing that is less likely to be reported than a short headache after vaccination is a short headache without any vaccine previous to it.

Something much more useful than videos and podcast that refrain from discussing contradictory information is going to the primary source of information, which mean scientific papers and reports. That is much less likely to be biased and require from the authors to at least recognize the information that appears to prove their reports mistaken so they have to make an effort to explain why it is so, not just ignore it and pretend it does not exist.

-1 ( +2 / -3 )

objective , of course Japan will "eventually " pass Canada in shots in arms. Japan has a much higher population, but let's see how long Japan takes to get 75% of their people vaccinated like Canada has!

Remember Canada is a huge country with thousands of small communities, they have done a fantastic job of protecting their citizens.

-2 ( +0 / -2 )

Pretty much only the well connected large companies can do it. When my company applied for this program, the government made up multiple hurdles and rejected the request.

Government never sent out vouchers to most people to get their own vaccines either, so even they "opened" the facilities, we have no way of making appointments. The JP government have zero intention of actually providing vaccines to most people.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

We have enough space to vaccinate (see the half-empty vaccination sites), we have a surplus of staff to handle it (not just doctors per se, but medical staff, JSDF, private health sector). What we don't have, however, is any strategy. So instead we start vaccinating depending on the age and wait to see if anyone comes. And even if maybe no one comes, we continue to wait until the time comes and then other age range comes.

We are not able to adapt to the actual situation here, and so instead we rely on an assumption, but it only assumes an ideal situation. And so the employers themselves have taken it up because they don't want to rely on a totally incompetent government and they don't want to risk their health. I could understand this situation in developing countries - "our government has no money, can't get anything done, so the multinational companies take care of it". But in a developed country like Japan? It's a disgrace. On the one hand we present ourselves as a modern and developed country and on the other hand this. And on top of that, everyone has to put hanko on everything.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

Lot of surveys these last few weeks or months.

Where are the actual movements and accomplishments?

0 ( +0 / -0 )

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