77% of Japan's COVID-19 oral drugs set to be destroyed: estimate

That money was not a loss for some.

We are talking of the equivalent of billions of dollars !

665.3 billion yen.....

I would like to see some real journalist follow this money, Who ordered the drugs? Who benefited? What if any are the connections?

I'm still thinking of taking my first vaccination, considering pros and cons...

a huge profit for a few-i big loss for a tens of millions.

I didn't even know there were any oral Covid drugs.

Vaccinated 7 times. I should get a medal of honor. lol

NakaNasuToday  07:59 am JST

I'm still thinking of taking my first vaccination, considering pros and cons...

You should have made up your mind while it was still free.

Infuriating that the world’s gold standard, Paxlovid which has been proven to decrease long COVID has been impossible to have prescribed at most clinics and hospitals in Tokyo. For family and friends who are elderly or immunocompromised I’ve called countless clinics, if they prescribe it and 99% don’t. I called pharmacies to see which physicians are prescribing it and there aren’t any. One international clinic in Minato did and only one nearby pharmacy had it.

In the U.S. and Europe physicians prescribe medications after discussing the options and side effects with patients. Patients then fill prescription at a pharmacy and the pharmacy will order the medication if they’re out. In Japan Paxlovid has never been an option here. Japan pushed Lagevrio which in other countries is given to those who can’t take Paxlovid. A friend’s Japanese MIL collapsed yesterday The ambulance driver called a well known university hospital and was rejected. the second hospital took her but its Google reviews are horrible. She has COVID. She’s is a healthy, two time cancer survivor. . She is currently not on any medications but Paxlovid was not an option. What a travesty.

Such a waste. In the US, there are organizations that accept expired medications, as most are still safe and effective. I wonder if there is anything like that here?

Or, perhaps, they can be used by the SDF, or donated to poorer countries, Doctors Without Borders, Red Cross, etc.

Is expired meds still effective after my 9th vax? Got a case of the sniffles.

But oh so many died, Why the disconnect?

At no time in Japan did I hear of anyone being prescribed an oral medication for COVID-19.

Vaccinations were reported to be the gold standard.

It seems very strange that people are vaccinated multiple times and yet millions of people also died.

When the next scamdemic comes around,

I won’t be taking any vaccinations; that’s for sure

@NakaNasu Why? You've survived up to now without it!

It seems very strange that people are vaccinated multiple times and yet millions of people also died.

Does it? To you, perhaps, but maybe, with a little more medical knowledge you would see these are not mutually incompatible. I think this seems to be the problem with people who talk of "scamdemic": maybe they are not quite as knowledgeable about medical matters as they imagine. But they keep beating their drum.

Maria

Infuriating that the world’s gold standard, Paxlovid which has been proven to decrease long COVID has been impossible to have prescribed at most clinics and hospitals in Tokyo.

Can you point to a study that "proves" that Paxlovid is effective or "the worlds gold standard"? I thought by now it has pretty much shown that it was not. Meanwhile, Ivermectin, which was smeared during the pandemic, is making a comeback: https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2024/05/08/chris_cuomo_i_am_taking_a_regular_dose_of_ivermectin_we_were_given_bad_information_early_on_in_covid.html

OssanAmerica

I didn't even know there were any oral Covid drugs.

Vaccinated 7 times. I should get a medal of honor. lol

Write to Pfizer and and Moderna, maybe you get one. Meanwhile, Astra-Zenica has been taken off the market now, since Astra-Zenica admitted in UK court that they knew about horrible side effects of their vaccine (including thrombosis) and ignored them. I hope the other 2 shoes will also drop.

Those are not just unnecessary surplus. Shortage of Covid 19 drugs were repeated at medical fields whenever Covid 19 cases surge in Japan, and treatments were late.

If Japanese government wasn't reluctant to supply Covid-drugs, tens thousands patients could be avoided deaths.

Insanely wasteful fiscal policy. The more time goes by, the more we can ascertain that the government managed this whole situation in an utterly abysmal fashion. It seems like they expected and planned for like a decade's worth of Covid provisions. Like they really thought this thing would go on forever.

They had to print money to pay for all of this, and in doing so, they have essentially destroyed their currency. Now their people are all poor. Who could have seen this coming?

It's time for the people to demand accountability. The LDP absolutely must be ousted from power. Letting them run the country any longer is reckless and irresponsible.

Vaccinations were reported to be the gold standard.

Vaccination and antiviral therapy are not mutually exclusive, the experts recommended both to be used, specially for patients at a higher risk from the infection.

It seems very strange that people are vaccinated multiple times and yet millions of people also died.

That depends on not knowing what is the value of a vaccine or the risks of covid, antivaxxer propaganda that try to mislead people into thinking in hard absolutes can be blamed for this mistaken understanding.

Can you point to a study that "proves" that Paxlovid is effective 

There are many to choose from

https://www.yalemedicine.org/news/13-things-to-know-paxlovid-covid-19

In November 2022, the CDC reported on a real-world study that showed adults who took Paxlovid within five days of a COVID diagnosis had a 51% lower hospitalization rate within the next 30 days than those who were not given the drug.

I mean, there is a reason why the experts do recommend the drugs to be made available for frequent use, they know their field of expertise, at least much more than nameless people on the internet.

Meanwhile, Ivermectin, which was smeared during the pandemic, is making a comeback:

There is no evidence that ivermectin has any usefulness against covid, and plenty of evidence that it gives no benefit but instead extra risks, that anybody chooses to use it without this evidence do not mean it is magically being proved useful, it just mean some people are not able to make good decisions about their health.

Meanwhile, Astra-Zenica has been taken off the market now, since Astra-Zenica admitted in UK court that they knew about horrible side effects of their vaccine

Making up imaginary claims means you understand the actual situation disprove your point, AZ was taken off the market because there are better options, but the vaccine

https://www.theguardian.com/business/article/2024/may/08/astrazeneca-withdraws-covid-19-vaccine-worldwide-citing-surplus-of-newer-vaccines

The chair of epidemiology at Deakin University in Australia, Prof Catherine Bennett, said the vaccine had played a pivotal part in the worldwide fight against the virus, particularly in the early days of the pandemic when limited vaccines were available.

“It has saved millions of lives and that should not be forgotten,” she said.

Such a big waste of money. They should have made available from the very start (spring 2020) various repurposed drugs that were already proven to be safe, effective, and very cheap. Instead, they initially offered nothing, and then later stocked up on new, expensive drugs of questionable effectiveness, some of which are very toxic.

I would like to see some real journalist follow this money, Who ordered the drugs? Who benefited? What if any are the connections?

Yes! That is the only way we can prevent the same thing happening again.

I think every developed country ordered 2-3x what was needed of everything. Perhaps that should be a scandal but people were saying, "End the lockdown nao!!!"

various repurposed drugs that were already proven to be safe, effective, and very cheap.

Your favorite "repurposed drug" (whose name you don't dare to say) is only one of those three. Too bad it's the "cheap" part.

I didn't bother mentioning them because there are several, and I've mentioned them already many times. But since you're somewhat new here: ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine + azithromycin, quercetin + zinc, vitamin D...

These should all have been recommended from the very start.

Ivermectin was initially offered (off-label) by some doctors in Japan, with great success, but were soon forbidden to do so. So I ordered it online for me and my family.

And no number of multi-regional, multicenter, placebo-controlled, randomized, double-blind, parallel-group studies will convince them otherwise.

Problem is that such studies need tremendous funds, and those with the funds intentionally carry out those studies in such a way as to fail (low dose, starting treatment too late, and other dirty tricks).

Also, the generic drug makers do not have the same level of influence on regulators and researchers as big pharma does.

Problem is that such studies need tremendous funds, and those with the funds intentionally carry out those studies in such a way as to fail (low dose, starting treatment too late, and other dirty tricks).

That and similar conspiratorial arguments go out the window when even studies bankrolled by ivermectin manufacturers, launched with the goal to get ivermectin approved as a Covid treatment, failed to prove its effectiveness.

You're referring to Merck, right. Thing is, that ivermectin's patent ran out a while ago, and they had a new (expensive!) product in the pipeline, so obviously they "concluded" it was not effective.

But interestingly, Merck's new product (Molnupiravir), was terrible. I actually watched the online FDA discussion that lead to its approval. During that meeting, they described the data, consisting of two equally sized trials, the second one showing that it actually performed slightly worse than placebo! And it's toxic as ....! And yet it received an EUA!

So no, the "conspiratorial arguments" did not go out the window. In fact, at each step, these arguments are strengthened...

Such a big waste of money. They should have made available from the very start (spring 2020) various repurposed drugs that were already proven to be safe, effective, and very cheap. 

Those that were effective were used without any problem, the ones you tried to push on the other hand have been completely demonstrated as useless, or even worse producing higher risks for the patients without offering any benefit. Making up a global conspiracy that includes every single institution of medical science do not make that claim more credible, instead it makes it obviously it requires impossible things to happen for it to be true.

These should all have been recommended from the very start.

The ones that work did, the ones that didn't were studied, demonstrated worse than useless and discarded, that is how scientific progress happens.

Problem is that such studies need tremendous funds, and those with the funds intentionally carry out those studies in such a way as to fail

The people that study medical interventions for a living call the studies that demonstrate ivermecting is useless as appropiate and clear, and you have never been able to make any valid criticism about the best reports available, that clearly shows there is no argument against them.

Also, the generic drug makers do not have the same level of influence on regulators and researchers as big pharma does.

Yet dirt cheap drugs were (and are) used for covid without problem, even if options hundreds of times more profitable are available, there is no need for influence, just evidence of efficacy. The repurposed drugs you try to push do not have any of that evidence.

So no, the "conspiratorial arguments" did not go out the window. In fact, at each step, these arguments are strengthened.

For anybody that can see the evidence of cheap drugs being used without problems and useless drugs being discarded because of lack of efficacy the conspiracy is clearly disproved. The only ones insisting are the same people that proudly accept being irrational about the subject.