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Clinical study begins in Japan for Moderna's COVID-19 vaccine

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Let's wait and see when and which vaccine will be approved soon and will be available for the public.

I dont expect anything before summer. Hopefully July or August.

My business trips overseas should resume from August.

But only if I am vaccined.

-3 ( +6 / -9 )

still strikes me as odd that a J-Pharma Company is the one entrusted to test a competitor's product. and a foreign competitor at that.

3 ( +7 / -4 )

That’s all nice and all...

So what exactly is Takeda going to be doing? Asking a billion dollars to put a Japanese label and a cartoon on the vial?

This is a serious thing as many people will die every day that the vaccine is idled on.

And did “distributing by February” just become “sometime this year”?

5 ( +8 / -3 )

Too bad Japan refuses to accept the results of foreign testing, like other countries do.

7 ( +13 / -6 )

Waste of time and resources just to confirm that the Japanese population are, after all, members of the human race...

I wonder how the applicants are phrased the Clinical trial justification "Available data proving safety and efficacy on 30,000 people of many different ethnic backgrounds is not sufficient, so we want to add... 200 more"

11 ( +16 / -5 )

There are several Japanese vaccines being developed.

This is the reason why the foreign vaccines are taking so long to be approved, to “buy time” to when these are widely available to the public some domestic vaccines may be already approved and in the market as well.

This nationalist and lobbyist attitude shamelessly despises japanese citizens/residents health in favour or business.

Approve the damn vaccines and make it available to the general public!

7 ( +11 / -4 )

OK, I get that one wants to protect one's own industries, but does that thinking even extend to a life-saving vaccine? The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines were approved in the US in December. Trump, as usual, messed up the distribution, but the vaccines are gradually being dispersed and injected. Meanwhile, clinical trials are set to begin in Japan? Really?

If possible, manufacture of vaccines should be done in Japan, but if buying them from other countries will save time and lives, so be it.

1 ( +6 / -5 )

The justification for this must be that Japan wants to test the vaccines on it's own people before granting approval. There is no other logical explanation for why they need to do this. If that is the case, and they simply don't trust the approvals granted from other countries because Japanese are somehow 'different', fair enough.

It's their country, their government, their bureaucracy.

This delay does nothing for Europeans living in Japan, or Americans, or Australians, or any other nationalities whose governments have already deemed the vaccine safe for them. Therefore Japan should be able to administer the vaccine to any national of a country who has already approved the vaccine for its own people.

Living in Japan for 1 year, or 5 years, or 20 years doesn't suddenly make my body Japanese, no matter how much miso soup I consume. This is a global pandemic, therefore a global approach should be taken to how vaccines are distributed to residents.

I know this will never happen, but let's just remember that it's only politics that is preventing it.

4 ( +6 / -2 )

Is there anything stopping Embassies from distributing the vaccine to their nationals from within the Embassy grounds?

-5 ( +2 / -7 )

Let’s wait a year before wasting taxpayers money on Covid19 vaccines. Heathy people are dying from these and no stage 3 clinical studies have been carried out on new mutation strains.

close the borders, keep old and sick people home, wash hands and social distance. Convert Olympic stadiums into Covid19 hospitals. China can build in 5 days. UKs Nightingale Covid19 hospital in a stadium also reasonably quick.

-5 ( +3 / -8 )

The extra approval involving testing on Japanese is frustrating and will lead to increased suffering and death through delay of vaccine roll-out. But since this is one of the most vaccine nervous countries in the world as has been well-reported recently, the government is attempting to reassure the nervous masses through additional in-country testing, ultimately leading to higher levels of long-term covid vaccine uptake.

Ask your Japanese family, colleagues and friends. I have and many say that while they know the vaccine needs to be rolled out urgently in principle, in practice they'd prefer to wait and see and don't want to be first in line for a jab.

Personally, I don't like the approach the government is taking which appears to be a classic case of extra regulation based on fallacies of uniqueness.

If the Olympics is officially canceled, I wonder if roll-out will be even slower, allowing time for Japanese companies to take a larger slice of the vaccine revenue pie...

1 ( +4 / -3 )

Let’s wait a year before wasting taxpayers money on Covid19 vaccines. Heathy people are dying from these and no stage 3 clinical studies have been carried out on new mutation strains.

Healthy people are dying from COVID-19 not from vaccination, and controlling the pandemic would mean a much necessary reactivation of the economy, in comparison the spending on vaccines is a drop in the ocean. Also clinical studies on new virus strains? that is just nonsense, the new strains are the disease, not the treatment, are you expecting nature to apply for approval to infect people.

Your suggestions are also much more expensive and less effective than mass immunization, as usual preventing a disease is much more cost effective than treating it, or its complications.

4 ( +9 / -5 )

Another example of how Japanese think that they are physiologically different enough from other people to warrant their own clinical trials. Another example of bureaucratic delay and indecision on part of the government. Yet when you go the doctor and get prescription medication, it's the same medication that's prescribed around the world. This is Moderna not some new vaccine that hasn't undergone enough testing. But I guess Japanese need to know that these are clinical trials conducted on Japanese to make them feel comfortable about being administered it.

-1 ( +2 / -3 )

I guess they don't trust foreign clinical trials. Not surprising considering several billions of dollars in fines have been paid over the years by a number of pharma companies for falsifying data and bribing officials.

-1 ( +3 / -4 )

If they knew they had to do a local test, why didn't the JGov pushed for it earlier?

1 ( +2 / -1 )

I guess they don't trust foreign clinical trials. Not surprising considering several billions of dollars in fines have been paid over the years by a number of pharma companies for falsifying data and bribing officials.

That is a nonsense argument, Japanese politicians have their share of corruption, and who do you think is going to run the tests? obviously the pharma companies. Your "reason" would not justify doing the same thing just locally and in a much smaller scale, if anything it would do the opposite.

3 ( +5 / -2 )

I am not one to subscribe to conspiracies but having a good knowledge of the pharmaceutical industry including here in Japan many of my friends in that industry are claiming that the Japanese government and or pharmaceutical companies are doing whatever they can to delay these vaccines in hope the far far far behind home grown one will be developed before the government has to give in and release foreign vaccines.

For some reason this claim does sound so crazy to me.

0 ( +2 / -2 )

@Raw Beer

I would look at how many Japanese pharmaceutical companies were caught doing the same thing, lets not forget deliberately releasing and then covering up of HIV contaminated products.

So any idea that Japanese companies are any less capable of wrong doing is a bit unrealistic.

2 ( +4 / -2 )

Oh, so just because Japanese companies or officials are dishonest, they should trust foreign ones? Riiiight....

1 ( +1 / -0 )

Oh, so just because Japanese companies or officials are dishonest, they should trust foreign ones? Riiiight....

No, but it makes your whole argument pointless, if that where the reason to make domestic trials it would bring no benefit whatsoever, so it can be proved that is not a reason.

-1 ( +0 / -1 )

I do not wish to take this inoculation, period. I have never take a Flu jab, and I have never had the Flu.

Those who take the flu jab, have to take one again and again every year, which is as I fear this one is going to end up as - so who benefits ? Me or the Pharmaceutical Companies ?

In my case, given the various allergies I have, I have a high likelihood, of serious complications from taking the current vaccination... but because of my refusal, I will be considered as a social pariah and if Tech Companies have their way, be banned from all forms of interaction with the public.

On that latter point, the vaccination passport is truely concerning... where does it stop ? I would not be surprised if we all will have to have a identity chip implanted into our bodies at some stage, and then that be included upon the list.. the same said chip, can be used by the likes of Google to track where you walk, and provide advertising tailored to your experiences for all to see as you walk by....

0 ( +1 / -1 )

the same said chip, can be used by the likes of Google to track where you walk, and provide advertising tailored to your experiences for all to see as you walk by....

Minority Report is a good movie. Are you up to the bit where they take his eyes out yet?

0 ( +0 / -0 )

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