Coronavirus vaccination to be made free in Japan

Whether the policy will cover foreign residents in Japan has yet to be officially determined, a ministry official said, while offering his personal opinion that it would be natural to include them for the sake of public health.

We pay tax too.

Whether the policy will cover foreign residents in Japan has yet to be officially determined, a ministry official said, while offering his personal opinion that it would be natural to include them for the sake of public health.

It better bloody do! I pay my health insurance and other taxes exactly the same as the next Taro.

Good. Flu vaccinations should be free too.

What about Japan's home-developed vaccine -- Osaka University and a japanese pharmaceutical company ?

It would be most practical to inoculate foreign residents for free. That way everyone in Japan will be virus free. It is shocking that Japanese authorities are not yet sure if they'll include taxpaying foreign residents in this program.

Members of the public in Japan will get vaccinated against the new coronavirus for free.

Well done. This is Japan.

I’ll wait until a substantial number of the public have gotten vaccinated and shown no crippling side effects.

Whether the policy will cover foreign residents in Japan has yet to be officially determined, a ministry official said, while offering his personal opinion that it would be natural to include them for the sake of public health.

There are plenty of foreign residents paying into the system so why wouldn’t they receive the same as anyone else paying into the system.

Even if that were not so then the potential marginalization and ostracism of foreign people by the vaccinated would be a huge scandal.

However, the fact that there is not a de facto policy already in place says a lot for the mentalities found in government here...

I respect the elderly. Give my vaccine to an old person.

the policy will cover foreign residents in Japan has yet to be officially determined

shocking statement!!!!!!!

anyways No problem , keep your poison , No thanks!

You guys go ahead お先にどうぞ!

@Dr.Lucifer.

Basicaly I agree with you.

I never took the influenca vaccine, until I caught Influenza C highest level 5 years ago.

I can tell you Man, I thought I would die! 41 degrees fever, and It takes 4 weeks to recover.

Since then I am taking every year that vaccine and I am fine.

I just caught it one time again, but very very mild.

I fail to understand the mentality of the people who downvoted comments saying that tax-paying foreign residents should of course be included in the free vaccination program (which has nothing whatsoever to do with whether one intends to get the shot or not).

I am still not convinced by your gram level of viral proteins. When you previously "explained" this, you multiplied two numbers that appeared to have been taken from... thin air and multiplied them.

What numbers? it is not like it is priviledged information. You can find everything you need easily, exactly the same as how one minute of googling proved you wrong when you said that no COVID vaccine candidate was being produced with microgram level of inoculum. I still do not understand how you have such big troubles to search for information.

Your math was correct, but the numbers you multiplied are baseless. I highly doubt an infection will result in a gram of viral protein.

Then why don't you bring the numbers and prove the calculations are wrong? It should be easy to do right? Doubt is usual when you have no understanding about the whole field of medical science.

Oh, interesting that the hidden pathology may take years to show up. Indeed, rushing the vaccine clinical trials is very dangerous. We might only discover their side effects in a few years.

But at least the risk is infinitely lower, not only because up to a million times of protein is involved, but also because of the lack of non-structural proteins in the vaccine, the ones the virus produces in large scale to mess with the immune reaction of the body. You can choose to run a a risk as low as can possibly be about hidden pathology with a vaccine run on clinical trials as the ones that are in use today. Or you can also choose to run a huge more lot of risk with the normal infection, including having complications that can cause death, frequent long term immediate sequelae AND on top the hidden pathology to be found in the future. The logical decision is clear, but you don't have to take it. People are free to be illogical, not so much to misinform others.

Also, human clinical trials does not involve intentionally infecting vaccinated people. So there is no guarantee that the severe overreaction will not occur (animal models are not perfect).

Yes they do, you really need to read what are they. Clinical trials for all COVID-19 candidates currently in phase III are being run internationally. The most famous example of AstraZeneca is quite obvious since the news have reported in which countries have been resumed and in which not yet.

Yeah, about a month ago you mentioned the one or two antigens at the microgram level. At that time, the literature discussing current vaccine clinical trials did not include any such vaccines.

Of course they did, you just ignored it. Ignoring something (specially about something that you have absolutely no knowledge as vaccines appear to be) is the worst kind of reason to say they don't exist. Preregistration on clinicaltrials.gov for example is a place where dosing is written, as well as official documents from the companies. Again, you really need to improve how you search for things, apparently if it is not on a video from a doubtful source it becomes invisible for you.

That is why I asked you which vaccine you were referring to. You went silent, and it took you one month to finally answer, where you gave me some very recent examples. And your first answer was wrong; you confused RNA and protein!

No, you did not asked for any examples, you just said you did not believed it. It was when you actually proudly announced there were none where a single minute of googling gave you examples that proved you wrong. As expected since most vaccines are on that scale, only people that willingly are trying to refuse to be informed about vaccines could find difficult to believe that new vaccines are exactly like the rest that are already in use. In a way is like being surprised from being told that vaccines are not injected directly in the blood stream.

I don't want it until any side effects are smoothed out.

Let the guinea pigs go first!

'Erai hito saki ni dozo!' i.e Suga san.

There hasn't even been a successful vaccine yet lmao. So Japan giving out free chemicals to inject into the populace? Absolutely despicable by Japan once again..

Coronavirus vaccination to be made free in Japan

Nothing in this world is free, Japan!

I don't want it until any side effects are smoothed out.

Let the guinea pigs go first!

'Erai hito saki ni dozo!' i.e Suga san

That is perfectly fine, but it should be clear that you are choosing to be a different kind of guinea pig. Nobody actually knows what is the full effect of being infected. Children have been found to have important heart damage even if they went asymptomatic with the infection. So you would be still at risk of unknown side effects but from the infection instead of the vaccine.

There hasn't even been a successful vaccine yet lmao. So Japan giving out free chemicals to inject into the populace? Absolutely despicable by Japan once again..

There are already several vaccines successful enough to be on the phase III clinical trials, which is not something easy or simple. It is simply much more likely that they will end up being a safe and effective vaccine, and it is just realistically impossible that all the vaccines being developed would end up failing. By next year there will be at least one that will prevent a virus from producing immune system altering chemicals from within your own body.

"Whether the policy will cover foreign residents in Japan has yet to be officially determined, a ministry official said,"

How stupid and pointless, and against the law in most countries, this would be if foreigners (who pay taxes!) are not included.

"...while offering his personal opinion that it would be natural to include them for the sake of public health."

You think? Why is it even being debated? Did they use the "kokumin" term again with all of its specificity? I'm not paying for it if others are getting it for free (save seniors and children). Even then, I wouldn't get it until it's proven to have no side effects, which could take a while.

What about Japan's home-developed vaccine -- Osaka University and a japanese pharmaceutical company ?

As far as I know, it was on the Phase II in last month, behind the leading producers such as AstraZeneca, now on Phase III (final stage?).

I fail to understand the mentality of the people who downvoted comments saying that tax-paying foreign residents should of course be included in the free vaccination program

The current proposed program would cover all residents in Japan regardless of nationality.

In case a vaccination causes serious side effects, the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry plans to have the state, not companies, redress patients and pay damages through a law revision at an extraordinary Diet session expected to start later this month, it said.

I hope it's also applied to the home Japanese vaccine developers (although I hear the Ministry is still reluctant to give such an exemption clause). Let's wait and see the finalized plan.

"Utter gibberish"

Is that some delicacy to be had in the can?

Don’t tell me you only pay tax because you are an upstanding citizen?

This is welcomed news.

Indeed, and I believe antibodies from the people who recovered from SARS-CoV (17 years ago) can too. Whatever happened to that "pandemic", no vaccines and it just went away.

Yes, thanks to the efforts of several countries.

Yes, I know that "SARS-CoV1" is not the same as the SARS-CoV2 that escaped from the Wuhan lab, but

It did not, all the experts in the world that have experience with the field coincide that there is no hint of human intervention for this virus appearing, and the supposedly proof recently published have been totally destroyed all over the internet, with arguments that you qualified of nonsense because of lack of understanding.

For COVID-19 infections we don't yet have scientific proof the mechanisms for long term protection are activated, but for vaccines we do. So you can get a vaccine that has not reason not to be safe and effective and be sure you get that protection or be at much higher risks of complications with the natural infection, hoping that future studies can demonstrate the same.

but a number of experts are stating that this pandemic might just go away without any significant second waves. There will likely be "cases" (PCR positives), especially as they increase testing, but the virus will tend to mutate to less virulent forms.

Again the invisible experts that cannot be named? what evidence do they have? what assumptions are taken for those.

It would be obvious that keeping all economies as closed as possible and very heavy restrictions can prevent the spreading of the pandemic and avoid involving the vulnerable population (that now includes children that can develop serious problems after infection, even without a single symptom). But a perfectly working treatment proved by studies (not like the HCQ) or a vaccine that can replace those measures is very obviously a better option.

And yes, epidemiologists know viruses tend to become importantly less virulent, usually after affecting everybody, including vulnerable populations, for a generation or two. Most people would like to resume a more normal life before their unborn children become adults.

On August 15, I wrote: "Anyway, you are making it sound like they are injecting a pure antigenic protein. Which vaccine are you referring to?"

I answered then the question just before that with "Even non-scientists can understand that a vaccine injecting micrograms of a protein is nothing when compared with a full infection which can mean viruses produce proteins (including many not included in a protein) up to the gram level, that is one million bigger scale."

I had no idea at that time you were completely ignorant about what is the norm for vaccines and were asking about them in general, so I answered than in general most vaccines with recombination antigens are in that scale.

Then, on August 17, I wrote: "I'm still curious as to which vaccine you had in mind that involves injecting micrograms of pure proteins."

And I answered then with "Take your pick, the WHO has current information on over 100 vaccine candidates including many listed as inactivated virions or recombinant S proteins, those involve injecting micrograms of proteins."

It is a perfectly valid answer that anybody that has used google even once could go and check directly. Any of the vaccines listed as inactivated virions or recombinant S proteins are in the microgram level, all of them.

If you cannot understand the answer, or if you have such big troubles checking a perfectly valid reference by yourself you cannot blame the rest of the people that are used to a much higher standard of discussion.

And again, on August 25th you wrote:

I knew there were no trials for Covid19 vaccine candidates that involved the injection of one or two proteins.

Which is completely false, what you "knew" was false and it was easy to prove it with google. The information is not anything recently published either.

For CoV2373 the details of the trial began to be published from the first week of August https://www.precisionvaccinations.com/vaccines/nvx-cov2373-sars-cov-2-vaccine

And for PiCoVacc the information comes even from July

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/369/6499/77

If you search for any other vaccine based on proteins, you will find many other examples where information is available at those times if not earlier. Unfortunately that requires ability to search for information on things different from videos made by people with low reputation or taken out of context.

Even a small, quick rudimentary search on google can make anybody find out what kind of vaccine candidate is, and anybody with even a small experience with health sciences or biology (as you were pretending to be at that time) would immediately understand that all vaccines made with purified inactivated virions or recombinant proteins will be dosed at the microgram level. At that moment it was not clear how much you ignored even very basic details of what you were asking to.

I have questions;

does the vaccine vary from vendor to vendor,

and if it doesn't, can the receiver choose which one to get?

Overall, this is a direct application on where the taxes go, but as for all new things such as buying new gadgets, it is best to not jump ahead in decisions without doing the research yourself.

I am more than willing to be a guinea pig if it means getting rid of all those infernal masks. I'll take it as a test subject or as just a member of the public. Someone has to do it, and it might as well be me.

I have never taken the flu vaccine and never caught the flu likewise will obviously give this experimental vaccine a pass. I will continue to take the necessary precaution and rely on my natural immunity.

Is this stage 3 of the testing program?

No, phase III of the clinical trials to check for safety and efficacy on the target population is still in progress and will finish next year, after that is where the vaccine becomes available, same as usual.

In principle, that is a good idea. But you might never learn about the crippling effects. There are powerful forces trying to stiffle any negative publicity. Few people are aware of the negative effects of other vaccines.

Ah yes, the very famous conspiracy when doctors and scientists all over the world to keep them secret, and the money is enough to make them all vaccinate their own family and friends and see them suffer in silence right? and then more money is paid to every hospital and science institue in the world to keep all the numerous victims hidden forever so nobody ever find out.

Totally believable.

Yeah, instead of paying for ginea pigs, they just reword it and make it sound like they are doing us a favour.

No, that is wrong. Volunteers are part of the phase III, the guinea pigs after that are the people that keep getting infected naturally and get a much higher risk of side effects from the natural infection that are much more likely to appear from viral proteins produced up to a million times more than what is present in a vaccine. Those will be the group to which vacinees are compared to see exactly how much of those complications will be prevented.

There isn’t such a thing like a free vaccine...lol And if I am informed right, there is not even a real and good safely working vaccine existing at the moment, wether it were free or expensive.

Japan government taking care of its people, unlike other countries that will charge a fortune.

Great work!

well thats just wonderful news.

By the time it rolls out, IF it rolls out, Covid 19 will be gone/ mutated.

The evidence until now contradicts you. Antibodies from a person infected in December last year are perfectly capable of neutralizing any strain of the virus isolated today from anywhere in the world.

If you think that "mutations" means the virus can automatically escape the immunity you are just wrong.

What about Japan's home-developed vaccine -- Osaka University and a japanese pharmaceutical company ?

It is in phase 2 trials.

Another reason is that previous vaccine candidates for SARSCoV, failed badly when tested on animals. They initially appeared to be fine, producing all the right antibodies. But one test they can do on animals, but not with humans, is to intentionally subject them to the virus. Some of the promising candidates caused deadly overreactions when exposed to the virus.

That could be said for most of the vaccines that are already available. People that have no experience nor interest in science think research is just corroborating what is already known. In reality is about testing and corroborating what is being theorized.

Many of the previous vaccine candidates for SARSCoV were purposefully tested together with versions that are not safe or effective enough to proceed, "Negative controls" that do not produce the reaction sought. The actual candidates produce protection in a stable and safe way that looks much better when presented with the failed candidates. Candidates that have not been successfully tested on animals are never qualified as "promising" because those are the results that provide that promise.

Obviously there are many vaccine candidates for both SARS and MERS that produce safe and effective vaccines against highly pathogenic coronaviruses. As well as veterinarian vaccines for other coronaviruses that produce disease in animals different from humans.

Vaccines that are tested on humans have already passed these animal trials, but there is no guarantee that the same deadly overreaction would not occur in humans when they encounter the virus.

Yes there is, that is a huge part of what clinical trials search for. You may want to check what they are since you apparently do not know about them very well. Anything that pass a phase III is guaranteed not to produce deadly overreactions just because the vaccinated person is exposed to the pathogen.

I would accept receiving a vaccine only if I am confident it is safe and effective AND the disease it is meant to protect me from is a big enough risk for me (Covid19 is not).

Which is fine, people have reasons to do everything, some people logical, others not. Choosing is not a problem, but expecting to be treated the same as immune people and exposing vulnerable population may not be.

You are free to choose infections producing a dozen viral proteins to the gram level in your body with a yet to be understood process (that includes hidden pathology that may become apparent on the following years) instead of a vaccine with one or two antigens at the microgram level (yes, the same were you were easily proved wrong when you said they did not exist) with a much better understood response.

Is this for real?

Whether the policy will cover foreign residents in Japan has yet to be officially determined, a ministry official said, while offering his personal opinion that it would be natural to include them for the sake of public health.

I do not know any other country in the world where this would even be a debate other than perhaps somewhere like China or North Korea.

Somehow foreigners' health care premiums which we pay as well as the taxes which we pay are for what?

This pandemic has shown Japan's true colors; vividly.

My kids have a zero percentage chance of dying, I have at worst at 0.5% chance.

I don't think the vaccine will be dangerous, but unless there are clear benefits I

Don't think I'll rush to get vaccinated.

People will no doubt think this is selfish, but the health of my children comes first.

"It's from public money owed to local taxpayers"

Tax is not "money owed to taxpayers"!

Where did you learn this?

You pay tax so that Governments can have money.

That same money builds roads you will use, public schools you will use, parks you will use, hospitals you will use. Airports for you to fly in and then criticise everything you seen in someone else’s country.

And I could carry on.

In addition, you shall pay even if you are a simple foreigner. By paying tax, you are making a favour to no one other than yourself.

Would like to know where in the world tax is a private’s loan to Governments, to be returned in kind upon demand.

By paying tax, you are making a favour to no one other than yourself.

Utter gibberish

You are unfamiliar with corona viruses it seems. There are reasons why we have had no available vaccines for them and our knowledge of them spans decades. One of those reasons is constant and fast mutations that make it so that by the time a vaccine is made for one particular strain, its either useless, mostly useless, or will be in mere months.

You seem unfamiliar with the highly pathogenic corona viruses it seems. The phenomenon you describe is not applicable to none of the 3 examples we have of them.

Constant and fast mutations are common to all RNA viruses, its part of their intrinsic advantages. But the same as other (like flavivirus, pestivirus togavirus) mutations do not mean change of antigenicity. How many times do you think we have to adapt the Yellow Fever vaccine in the last few decades?

zero times.

As mentioned in the part of the comment that you failed to include in your quote, there have been no change in serotype in all the time we have lived with COVID-19, the virus has been stable in that aspect for at least 11 months now in all over the world. Thinking is going to suddenly going to change that is as likely as thinking it will stop being dangerous and give you a health boost instead.

Credit where it's due.

Well done by the Ministry of Health.

thank you but no thank you...

i'll pass this one...

lol, So If we refuse to get the shot, does that make us anti vax : (

Noooooo thank you

I will never subject myself to be vaccinated.

I will depending on circumstances. But my circumstances had better be pretty dire before I am going to join the lemmings in mass injecting a new vaccine that has not yet taken the test of time.

I’ll wait until a substantial number of the public have gotten vaccinated and shown no crippling side effects.

In principle, that is a good idea. But you might never learn about the crippling effects. There are powerful forces trying to stiffle any negative publicity. Few people are aware of the negative effects of other vaccines.

Is this stage 3 of the testing program?

Yeah, instead of paying for ginea pigs, they just reword it and make it sound like they are doing us a favour.

I will certainly pass.

The Anglo-Swedish monkey vaccine? Take it and pray it doesn't stop the virus by killing the recipient before the virus gets a chance? No thanks. According to all independent experts, the Russian vaccine is definitely safe. Only a question of weather it's effective.

I thought you had to wait a certain amount of time with drugs and medicine thats part of the testing phase, you know to make sure its safe.

By the time it rolls out, IF it rolls out, Covid 19 will be gone/ mutated. There goes my tax yen, right down the toilet, cause everyone will line up for the useless shot anyway. And yes, it will be FAR from free. What it will be is a hidden cost.

The evidence until now contradicts you.

You are unfamiliar with corona viruses it seems. There are reasons why we have had no available vaccines for them and our knowledge of them spans decades. One of those reasons is constant and fast mutations that make it so that by the time a vaccine is made for one particular strain, its either useless, mostly useless, or will be in mere months.

Instead of chasing away Russian Red Cross choppers why not take a Russian Vaccine. It is safe and it even seem to do the job. One Japan is choosing is not proven to be safe and only speculated to work.

Coronavirus vaccination to be made free in Japan

Misleading. It's NOT free. It's from public money owed to local taxpayers. Please don't take it for granted, and let's check whether the budget is properly arranged, without any "dubious" handling agents covertly involved, just as we've seen in rescue money provision (some amount being deducted in the process).

Antibodies from a person infected in December last year are perfectly capable of neutralizing any strain of the virus isolated today from anywhere in the world.

Indeed, and I believe antibodies from the people who recovered from SARS-CoV (17 years ago) can too. Whatever happened to that "pandemic", no vaccines and it just went away.

Yes, I know that "SARS-CoV1" is not the same as the SARS-CoV2 that escaped from the Wuhan lab, but a number of experts are stating that this pandemic might just go away without any significant second waves. There will likely be "cases" (PCR positives), especially as they increase testing, but the virus will tend to mutate to less virulent forms.

There are reasons why we have had no available vaccines for them and our knowledge of them spans decades.

Another reason is that previous vaccine candidates for SARSCoV, failed badly when tested on animals. They initially appeared to be fine, producing all the right antibodies. But one test they can do on animals, but not with humans, is to intentionally subject them to the virus. Some of the promising candidates caused deadly overreactions when exposed to the virus.

Vaccines that are tested on humans have already passed these animal trials, but there is no guarantee that the same deadly overreaction would not occur in humans when they encounter the virus.

I would accept receiving a vaccine only if I am confident it is safe and effective AND the disease it is meant to protect me from is a big enough risk for me (Covid19 is not).

I am lucky, my company pays my Flu vaccination.

So if the Covid vaccine is also for free would be very nice.

I am glad to live in Japan!

I will never subject myself to be vaccinated.

All of us are responsible for taking care of our own bodies and therefore having an unknown substance injected into them is frightening.

You are free to choose infections producing a dozen viral proteins to the gram level in your body with a yet to be understood process

I am still not convinced by your gram level of viral proteins. When you previously "explained" this, you multiplied two numbers that appeared to have been taken from... thin air and multiplied them. Your math was correct, but the numbers you multiplied are baseless. I highly doubt an infection will result in a gram of viral protein.

that includes hidden pathology that may become apparent on the following years.

Oh, interesting that the hidden pathology may take years to show up. Indeed, rushing the vaccine clinical trials is very dangerous. We might only discover their side effects in a few years.

Also, human clinical trials does not involve intentionally infecting vaccinated people. So there is no guarantee that the severe overreaction will not occur (animal models are not perfect).

instead of a vaccine with one or two antigens at the microgram level (yes, the same were you were easily proved wrong when you said they did not exist).

Yeah, about a month ago you mentioned the one or two antigens at the microgram level. At that time, the literature discussing current vaccine clinical trials did not include any such vaccines. That is why I asked you which vaccine you were referring to. You went silent, and it took you one month to finally answer, where you gave me some very recent examples. And your first answer was wrong; you confused RNA and protein!

That is why I asked you which vaccine you were referring to. You went silent, and it took you one month to finally answer, where you gave me some very recent examples. And your first answer was wrong; you confused RNA and protein!

No, you did not asked for any examples, you just said you did not believed it.

Wrong.

On August 15, I wrote: "Anyway, you are making it sound like they are injecting a pure antigenic protein. Which vaccine are you referring to?"

Then, on August 17, I wrote: "I'm still curious as to which vaccine you had in mind that involves injecting micrograms of pure proteins."

You finally answered on Sept 25.

Good for Japan, and a brilliant move by PM Suga. Peoples lives matter, and everyone should be equal in the face of this unbelievably deadly virus.

Heres hoping the vaccine starts rolling out for the most needy from November.

And on a voluntary basis ?

Life is a precious gift. Health is wealth. As so often, mighty Japan is showing the way. Fine gesture. Hope other countries are able to save the lives of their citizens with timely and free vaccine.