Japan should brace for large 9th COVID wave: experts

More scare tactics!

Seems like they have some time to prepare this time then. I just deleted my SOS app and now this..

Just do what you are doing and keep on with life. People have gotten used to living with COVID, and giving warnings is prudent, and not a scare tactic. They do the same during the flu season.

Folks who need to take precautions, do so, and other folks should just let people make their own choices.

More scare tactics!

Your commenting like this is one and the same. You are guilty of spreading "scare tactics" by saying such!

Covid is here to stay. Counting it in waves is ridiculous. Most people should be vaccinated and have had their 6 monthly boosters. That's about all they can do for Covid. If you catch Covid and are vaccinated it should be no more severe than a normal flu. The population should be well educated on how to avoid Covid by now.

No surprises there. Considering masks have been proven to prevent infection, and I see more people without them.

Japan could face

> A possibility remains that it will be larger than the eighth wave

> Japan may see its mortality rate remain high compared to other countries

> There is a possibility that infections will spread toward this summer

....on the other hand......

Waves of an endemic, generally non-life threatening virus is no longer a threat warranting masking little kids or anyone else who is not pollen allergic. Let the staff everywhere de-mask asap, and I will return to eating out in a pleasant atmosphere again.

I see that Japan is going down the middle road regarding masks. On trains and or shopping centers people continue to wear masks, however outside more and more people are not wearing masks and so hopefully common sense will keep the numbers down.

Those who say masks don't work they have been around for a hundred plus years used by doctors and nurses in operating rooms and heavily relied on during the pandemic to keep them safe and so they do help. I am not a fan of masks; however, I will do my best to keep myself and others around me safe by wearing them on crowded trains and or when inside crowded venues.

However, each ‘wave’ is less severe than the previous one.

If my own experience is to be trusted then I have absolutely no fear of catching the latest strain as it could not be worse than my previous Covid infection

It won’t be any significant wave like in other countries. Scary tactics from those experts to keep their interests going on and prepare for a vaccination call

No measures, no pleasures.

It's funny how the Japanese are some of the most vaxed on earth, still use alcohol disinfectant, partition everything off, don't talk to one another, and STILL the waves keep on coming. When will they finally the difficult conversation about possible correlation.

What the medical community needs to do is come up with a lifetime vaccine like with polio and measles and mumps. Babies get a few drops of vaccine in their mouths and they are protected from polio for life. The polio virus still remains however. During the Syrian Civil War many children contracted polio because their were unable to access medical care. You can vaccinate the whole world but polio is here to stay.

What we need is a 1 time vaccine that offers blanket protection permanently against covid. Whether it is eradicated or not is not the issue. We need a permanent one time vaccine.

Sell masks, sell vaccines, control citizens human rights of movement, encourage side effects, the list goes on and the money funnels to a few. Billions.

there is also bird flu, cholera, influenza, breast cancer…etc, etc.

just wash your hands. Rest if sick.

More scare tactics!

What part of the warning can you demonstrate is false? just because you don't want to hear something that does not make it a "scare tactic"

Covid is here to stay. Counting it in waves is ridiculous

If the incident rates show sudden increases and decreases then this is only describing what is happening. There is nothing ridiculous about it, influenza and other seasonal diseases are also described in the same way and it helps preparing in advance.

Most elderly in Japan have already received 5 vaccinations. Are these vaccines working?

Yes, demonstrated scientifically. People complicate or die less thanks to the vaccines, that is clear proof they are working.

Japan is one of the most highly vaccinated countries on earth, why are the waves continuing, they have stopped in other countries?

What epidemiological analysis are you using to compare between countries? do you think for example that continous widespread infections, hospitalizations and deaths would be better than a huge reduction between peaks?

If my own experience is to be trusted then I have absolutely no fear of catching the latest strain as it could not be worse than my previous Covid infection

Well, it should be clear that professionals with decades of experience in epidemics and infectious diseases would be a better source to know what to worry about than laymen.

What the medical community needs to do is come up with a lifetime vaccine like with polio and measles and mumps.

And come up with a single dose treatment that cure all kinds of cancer, and fool proof supplements that controls completely all chronic conditions, it is simply much easier to say than to do it, not all infections are the same and immunity can't be so simply manipulated for the convenience of people.

Even the natural infection (with the much higher risks for the health) is not enough to produce lifelong protection.

The narrative (and marketing) in early 2021 was that we had that.

No, that is still false, even before the vaccines were developed variantst that would evade previous immunity were a known risk.

This "perfect vaccine" only comes up from antivaxxer groups propaganda, not what the experts or developers said about what could be realistically expected from the vaccines in the contexts of a recently introduced pathogen.

Boring. I never had any vaccinations and caught COVID last December. It was a flu. 3 bad days, then I recovered. Move on.

No surprises there. Considering masks have been proven to prevent infection, and I see more people without them.

And plenty of studies on how no conclusive evidence that wearing masks beneficial. Haven't worn a mask for more than a year myself and never got anything. And yep I'm one of the drones on those insanely packed trains. Don't use alcohol disinfectant either, and avoid partitioned joints like the plague.

And during the eighth COVID wave, these same "health experts" were telling us to brace for over 400,000 COVID cases per day.

That didn't even come close to happening.

So now these "experts" are telling us to brace for a ninth wave? Given their track record, that means there probably won't be any such wave. At least not a significant one.

At least Japan's "health experts" only have a spotty record when it comes to COVID predictions. The "health experts" in the US and the UK sport a record that's far worse.

These "health experts" have four choices when it comes to COVID:

Say nothing at all about COVID. (That's what I wish they would do.)

Say "we don't know what's going to happen." (That would likely be the truth.)

Say "there won't be any more big COVID waves."

Say "there's going to be another big wave, so brace yourselves!"

Obviously they're going to choose no. 4.

Why? Because it's better to say no. 4 and be wrong, than to say no. 3 and be wrong.

If they say no. 4 and are wrong (which I suspect they will be), nobody will care. Few if any people will fault them or call them out for being wrong. (Although I will be one of them.)

If they say no. 3 and are wrong, though, they'd have some explaining to do.

So they take no risk at all in saying no. 4. If they turn out to be right, they can pat themselves on the back for how smart they are.

But again, if they're wrong, few people will care or even notice.

Isn't Japan prepared with its high vaccination rate, so this will stop people from getting infected, right?

Roxy MusicToday  09:17 am JST

Isn't Japan prepared with its high vaccination rate, so this will stop people from getting infected, right?

You know that it reduces symptoms, thereby reducing the likelihood of hospitalization or death, but you wrote this anyway?

Not if people don’t go to be tested. We’ll see.

NO WAY! Last week I found a 'rare' Pizza Hut store you can eat inside (Kita Ayase), asked for the "eat in menu" and the staff gave me the standard one without even thinking, and after discussing for 5 min. with my wife I went to place our order and that's when the staff told me: "due to the spread of Coronavirus we are asking the customers not to eat inside the store".

April 2023. Are you kidding?? Isnt Pizza Hut american??

Here we go again right before golden week bunch of control fears mongering geeks. Those mask do nothing to prevent spread and in May they are to down grade Covid. If soo many are to catch the sniffles in the next wave then the medical system of Japan will collapse.

Seriously is the media hell bent in destroying peoples minds through this endless bombardment of fearmongering? Seriously...

Are people being put on ventilators still or are they dying from other causes/symptoms? You would think the elderly would have naturally immunity by now, plus how many boosters/shots have they had already...8? Why not just have them on an Covid-19 booster IV 24/7? Its worrisome that many elderly might be dying from an excess amount of "mystery serum" being put into their bloodstream and the cause of death not being investigated.

I will keep washing my hands and avoid sitting by the obviously sick persons riding the trains.

Since transmission is still important from people without any symptoms you are not reducing your risk as much as you think.

And plenty of studies on how no conclusive evidence that wearing masks beneficial

You mean studies made to compare between types of masks, or mask use only from the part of the unifected, etc.? there are many studies that have found a significant effect, selecting only those studies that are well known to have low sensitivity for effective measures is not an argument to say those measures are not beneficial.

https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/masks-revisited/

Isn't Japan prepared with its high vaccination rate, so this will stop people from getting infected, right?

Why pretend this is the norm? vaccines are against covid, because the purpose is to prevent serious disease, the same as the vaccines against polio (not poliovirus) that do not stop infection or even mild disease for example.

Which experts? The experts whose pay and position requires that they push a certain line? 

The experts in general, as in those in every country of the world and forming the scientific community in general. Obviously you can't pretend every institution is included in a global conspiracy just because you can't find any example that support what you claim.

 The experts the media keeps trotting out regardless of how (in)accurate they are?

That can explain why you keep having a wrong understanding of what is scientifically sound, forget the media, go to the primary sources in peer reviewed indexed journals publishing the studies that are the basis for the scientific conclusions. Or if you can't properly judge the validity of those studies refer to the professional opinion of the authorities on the field.

Maybe it's high time to rethink what an expert is if many of them keep getting things wrong or deliberately mislead the public in order to fit a certain narrative.

Since you keep pushing invalid conclusions made from people that are guilty of this, it does not seems completely honest to say this is not a good attitude to take.

You keep trying to say the scientific consensus is wrong, but then you only use your personal opinion (or sources demonstrated as false/mistaken) to do it. That would mean your criticism applies first to you, not to the people that are not "getting things wrong" as you claim.

What we need is a 1 time vaccine that offers blanket protection permanently against covid.

Why? Its basically the common cold at this point and many people aren't even showing symptoms when they get it. Also, there are too many variants that make a 1 time vaccine impossible to make. Most people wouldn't want to get it either. Natural immunity is the best solution. You can't vaccinate your way out of a pandemic. Better to encourage people to live a healthy lifestyle. Covid-19 hasn't claimed the life of a young healthy person to date.

I trust this Japanese advisory panel though, as opposed to CCP propaganda some posters here are spouting. This is an actual group of experts from Japan as opposed to "the experts".

Are people being put on ventilators still or are they dying from other causes/symptoms? You would think the elderly would have naturally immunity by now

The same as the beginning of the pandemic, deaths come from many different complications of covid, not all deaths are directly from pulmonary problems, other things derived from the infection (like hearth complication, or coagulopaties) are still causing deaths.

And the problem is that all the immunity gained fails to be completely protective, including for people that were infected. It has been proved repeatedly that getting a vaccine reduces the risk even if the person was previously infected, this means the recommendation still applies by boosting the immunity, something specially important for people with vulnerabilities.

This is pure garbage and you know it

Of course is garbage, that is the whole point, no expert said the vaccines was eternally and absolutely protective against any possible variant that could appear, that is just a strawman made by antivaxxer groups, but people keep trying to use this falsehood as if the experts actually said it,

Up to the point where anybody ask for a source where the experts supposedly did so and nothing is brought. At the end that is the whole thing, baselessly claiming people promised magical vaccines but failing to prove this was the case.

If you catch Covid and are vaccinated it should be no more severe than a normal flu.

The same is true if you are unvaccinated.

And if you already caught covid, catching it again will likely not be any worse than a minor cold.

Japan is one of the most highly vaccinated countries on earth, why are the waves continuing, they have stopped in other countries?

I suspect you already know that the answer is likely in the first half of your question...

The same is true if you are unvaccinated.

No, that is not true, being unvaccinated comes with a much higher risk for the health and life of the person.

And if you already caught covid, catching it again will likely not be any worse than a minor cold.

Also untrue, people can die from a reinfection. Vaccines have a demonstrated role lowering this risk including from people that have been infected previously.

I suspect you already know that the answer is likely in the first half of your question...

It should be obvious, but having periods of low transmission (so waves are distinguished) instead of constant full transmission, hospitalizations and deaths is a much better situation to be.

You keep trying to say the scientific consensus is wrong, but then you only use your personal opinion (or sources demonstrated as false/mistaken) to do it. That would mean your criticism applies first to you, not to the people that are not "getting things wrong" as you claim.

You keep trotting out the old chestnut of "consensus," but it only takes one person to blow a consensus out of the water - especially a false one based on protecting special interests. This has been done time and again, and it is intellectually dishonest to claim otherwise, but links proving your consensus is worthless keep getting deleted on this site.

'More scare tactics!' An accurate comment from Dan, above.

It is highly unlikely those reinfected will die from Covid. No "expert" is saying that. Regardless, it is proven that those who were infected have the same or better immunity than those relying on vaccines, regardless of what the CCP cheerleader rants.

You keep trotting out the old chestnut of "consensus,"

And you could easily disprove it if you brough a respected institution of science or medicine around the world that contradicts it, but you never do, you are unable to find even one example, in any country of the world that supports your claims. That proves more than anything else that the consensus is real even if it contradicts what you want to belie.

It is highly unlikely those reinfected will die from Covid. No "expert" is saying that.

So much for trusting the experts as you claimed in your previous comment, Takaji Wakita that heads the advisory panel is part of the researchers that have produced evidence of this, you may not care for those that die after reinfection, but the health care professionals that understand vaccination can lower that risk definetely do, and that is why they are recommending a booster, specially for people with vulnerabilities.

Caught in your own foolish nonsense testimony of untruth

Can you provide any evidence that contradicst this? because the experts do have evidence that clearly shows unvaccinated people are at a much higher risk from the disease for all segments of the population for whom the vaccine is recommended.

Claiming other people lie without proving it first (and specially claiming all the experts of the world are lying) is not an argument.

FYI - there's no evidence or data to prove the long-term effects of the vaccinated aren't harmful of better than being unvaccinated.

Yes there is, because long term effects do not suddenly happen without previous evidence of damage, and because covid is already an identified cause of long term problems, including permanent ones, so that becomes direct evidence to contradict your personal belief.

Don't try to lie about it !

What evidence do you have to demonstrate anything wrote is a lie? without evidence yours is only a baseless attack that goes against the rules of the site.

And the problem is that all the immunity gained fails to be completely protective, including for people that were infected.

Yes, but natural immunity if far better (broader, longer lasting...).

The vaccines have been characterized by experts as effective measures that importantly reduced the risk.

Yes, there is data that shows that the injections provide a temporary reduction of hospitalization and death from Covid, but not from overall hospitalization and death. But as Roy said above, much of this has already been said many times over the past few years.

Also, a so-called "scientific consensus" that relies on censoring opposing opinions is quite meaningless.

Are people being put on ventilators still or are they dying from other causes/symptoms? 

As a reference, about 1,300 people per week are still dying from it in the US, and it remains the third leading cause of death behind heart disease and cancer.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/us/covid-cases.html

That is not true.

Every jab I ever had, I needed to sign a consent form that outlined the risks. Nothing was played down.

Except that in case of the Covid vaccine, in many countries one was basically forced to take multiple jabs despite a much higher risk of complications compared to any other vaccine, and treated like a pariah if one refused. And that consent you signed was waiving your right to sue in case of complication.

Yes, but natural immunity if far better (broader, longer lasting...).

Not at all, for the same reason that losing a hand is not a "better" protection against injuring that hand. Infection only comes with the full risks you are trying to protect against with vaccines, meaning that it is a self defeating proposition. And since vaccination still reduces the risk for people already infected that means that vaccines are abe to improve on the immunity obtained anyway.

*Yes, there is data that shows that the injections provide a temporary reduction of hospitalization and death from Covid, but not from overall hospitalization and death*

Which makes as much sense as saying that helmets only provide reduction of risks from accidents in construction sites and factories but not to the "overall population" so they are to be considered useless. Once you begin to use less sensitive ways to evaluate the effect of something you are already accepting the measure is effective enough to make you do that manipulation.

Also, a so-called "scientific consensus" that relies on censoring opposing opinions is quite meaningless.*

That is not what is being censored, what is rejected (and it should be) are not opposing opinions but people trying to manipulate others with false, fabricated evidence or invalid misrepresentations. There is no value gained by letting these falsehoods poison any discussion. The problem is that opinions against the vaccines can only depend on this invalid arguments, so they are discarded in general (as they should).

Except that in case of the Covid vaccine, in many countries one was basically forced to take multiple jabs despite a much higher risk of complications compared to any other vaccine

Completely false, specially because the risks are completely in line with many other vaccines, including some used on pediatric patients. When people reject objective evidence and increase the risk for others for their personal (irrational) beliefs there is nothing wrong with that decision to come with consequences. There is nothing new about that.

And that consent you signed was waiving your right to sue in case of complication.

Because it is replaced with compensation done automatically without you having to prove beyond reasonable doubt the vaccines caused those complications, you just have to prove there is a chance of this being the case.

Talk about scare mongering with old news.

Its about time they moved on from this and used their time for something more useful.

9th wave

For crying out loud