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Over 70% of Japan's elderly to be vaccinated by end of July: tally

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Due to a supply shortfall

There is no supply shortage in Japan. The government has always been the bottleneck in the inoculation drive.

1) At the start, they didn't secure enough medical workers and sites to do the inoculation.

2) To mitigate that, they finally allowed private companies to do the inoculation. But the government, again, didn't process the applications for timely inoculations.

This government loves to make artificial bottlenecks due to excessive red tape, indecisions and blatant refusal to take responsibility when things go wrong.

13 ( +17 / -4 )

It's because of hospital beds. The government doesn't want hospitals to be inundated with the elderly and overwhelmed. With younger people, they're willing to play Russian Roulette with their lives. Votes could also be another factor. But in the end they care more about saving face than saving human lives.

6 ( +10 / -4 )

‘Due to a supply shortfall’

since April J gov has devoted too much time to finding bothers to blame for their own incompetence. As has been said J gov is the cause of the so called bottleneck. Health care workers and over 65s should already be finished now

5 ( +8 / -3 )

So wow, the world's third economy has now managed with a massive effort to power up to 64th place in the world rankings, just a whisker behind Romania, French Polynesia and el Salvador. None of whom happen to be about to foist an international mixing and mingling event involving hundreds of thousands of people (if you include the athletes, coaches/trainers/hangers on, hospitality staff, security and police, drivers, health workers, volunteers, part time gig workers, journos, VIPs. and the people all of the above outside the bubble, ie most of them, come into contact with.

Nothing like fear of losing face to give Japan a good kick up the $$.

This will mitigate the immediate impact, by keeping more older people out of hospital, but it is still far far short of what is needed to bring the outbreak in Japan under control. And worse, does nothing to potentially seed new variants across the globe. Perhaps they can call it the Tohoku variant, to celebrate the recovery of Tohoku from the triple disaster.

4 ( +9 / -5 )

And do think the false emergency will then be over? And that EUA experimental medicines will stop being dispensed?

It is not false just because you don't want to believe the scientists and experts of the world, millions of deaths even under heavy measures are enough to prove the emergency is real. The vaccines have proved to be effective at their purpose and much safer than expected, there is no reason to stop using a tool that does exactly what is meant to do, it would be much more rational to expect the vaccines to get full approval, the same as all other drugs with EUA that worked during this period.

What it may cause is that no other vaccine will get an EUA unless it can prove to be much better than the ones in use right now.

Dexamethasone also proves that there is no suppression conspiracy, effective and cheaps drugs can be recognized as safe and effective without problems as long as there is scientific data to support it. Drugs with conflicting evidence like ivermectin, or that already proved to be worthless according to every institution of science and medicine in the world are by definition not proven effective.

3 ( +6 / -3 )

Over 70% of Canadians 12 and over have been vaccinated, and in British Columbia it's closer to 90%. Japan's rollout of the vaccine has been pitiful especially considering there having the Olympics in a couple weeks. They should have moved the Olympics to Vancouver.

2 ( +3 / -1 )

based funk,

The news is ok, not great for the elderly. The vaccination roll-out in Japan has been pitiful.

2 ( +3 / -1 )

@Jandworld: In actuality, most companies consider you elderly after you turn 60. The proof is in how your salary is adjusted.

To us, being elderly is a mindset thing.

So no matter what age they designate as elderly, get the shots, enjoy life, and smile that they are finally getting things done.

1 ( +3 / -2 )

Yeah, sure.

1 ( +1 / -0 )

If there is a supply shortage, why has Japan been donating so many vaccines to other countries? My guess is because the incompetent oyajis running the J-gov couldn't figure out how to use them all before their expiration date.

1 ( +1 / -0 )

Some 75 percent of people aged 65 and over in Japan have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine

We should be celebrating these news if we were in a third world country, not in the third largest economy.

All top economies have inoculated higher percentage of their +65 population long time ago, and not with the first jab but with both.

0 ( +8 / -8 )

Got my vaccination coupon but In Suginamiku 12 to 39 are prioritized over 40-59 so I can’t get the shot for another two months. Why are the younger first? Is it the same in other wards?

0 ( +4 / -4 )

July 25th for my second.

0 ( +4 / -4 )

So past 65 we become “the elderly”.

Then we are governed by them and this is the fate for the nation of part time “komuin”.

0 ( +1 / -1 )

therougou

It's not up to the central government to secure medical workers. That's where the local governments failed.

The problem with the central government is they were distributing to all prefectures almost evenly, with maybe only twice the vaccines given to places like Tokyo/Osaka, when they should've been getting most of the vaccines from the get-go. But like I said, the local governments showed they couldn't handle the vaccines properly, anyway, so I can't say for sure if that would've worked.

That is where you are wrong! A lot of the local areas were able to vaccinate all of there people quickly and efficiently. It was the bigger areas like Tokyo and Osaka that have failed, and needed the self-defense force to come in and help.

0 ( +1 / -1 )

Hakman- indeed, once the vulnerable are vaccinated, Japan can open up 100% from a health standpoint. The threat of overburdened hospitals due to COVID- currently there are 63 patients COVID patients in all of Tokyo- would be diminished significantly. Readily available therapeutics also prevent serious illness.

That is an exaggeration, specially because there are vulnerable people that can't be vaccinated, so it would mean no society would be able to open up 100% ever.

In reality a gradual careful opening is the one health care experts say is appropriate, and this comes as much as herd immunity thresholds become near, not only because of immunity of vulnerable people. The delta variant has not been found to be less dangerous either, you are just making the mistake of comparing infection with and without vaccinated people,

0 ( +2 / -2 )

There is no supply shortage in Japan. The government has always been the bottleneck in the inoculation drive.

1) At the start, they didn't secure enough medical workers and sites to do the inoculation.

2) To mitigate that, they finally allowed private companies to do the inoculation. But the government, again, didn't process the applications for timely inoculations.

This government loves to make artificial bottlenecks due to excessive red tape, indecisions and blatant refusal to take responsibility when things go wrong.

It's not up to the central government to secure medical workers. That's where the local governments failed.

The problem with the central government is they were distributing to all prefectures almost evenly, with maybe only twice the vaccines given to places like Tokyo/Osaka, when they should've been getting most of the vaccines from the get-go. But like I said, the local governments showed they couldn't handle the vaccines properly, anyway, so I can't say for sure if that would've worked.

-1 ( +5 / -6 )

Even with vaccination I like to sit with the EU father in front of a Tokyo sub station sharing

his fate some 30 some years back. And there are many of us.

-1 ( +1 / -2 )

As of Friday, 26.65 million, or 75.1 percent of the elderly, had received one shot, according to the government tally.

That is kind of weird considering as of now the official figure (https://www.kantei.go.jp/jp/headline/kansensho/vaccine.html) for senior citizens with at least one shot actually stands at 26,258,095 and not 26.65 million. Where did Kyodo find the additional 400,00 people?

Assuming that they at least got the 35.48 million in the article right that means that roughly 30.8% (or 10,931,008) have so far received one shot and another 43.2% (15,327,087) have received both shots. So the article isn't that far of here I guess. But that also means that around 26% (~9,221,905) have not received any shots at all. Going by the official numbers, I don't see how they will acheive their goal unless they focus on giving second shots now (which would mean a lot of people will have to wait longer for their first shot). As things stand now the middle of August seems feasible but not the end of July.

-1 ( +0 / -1 )

Excellent. Let them attend the Olympics.

-1 ( +0 / -1 )

This is good for the LDP for two reasons. Firstly, as has been stated, the elderly are more at risk from Covid. And (I suspect this is the real reason) the elderly are probably the LDP’s core voting base, so the government wants as many of them as possible to be around towards the end of the year to vote them back in because change is scary…and because even holding the most pointless Olympics ever for reasons of vainglory and greed is no impediment to getting re-elected.

-2 ( +6 / -8 )

Fingers crossed, zichi, Japan, assuming the data is pucker, has resisted the worst effects of the pandemic to date. Gives time to weight up any possible risks.

-2 ( +1 / -3 )

Hakman- indeed, once the vulnerable are vaccinated, Japan can open up 100% from a health standpoint. The threat of overburdened hospitals due to COVID- currently there are 63 patients COVID patients in all of Tokyo- would be diminished significantly. Readily available therapeutics also prevent serious illness.

This has been proven in many areas, even with increased cases from Delta, which is not very lethal.

Japanese society also tends to be healthier and cleaner, so Japan faces a minimal threat compared to most places.

-3 ( +0 / -3 )

This great news for the elderly.

-4 ( +1 / -5 )

Given that the vast majority of COVID deaths involve the elderly, and that the average age of death is around 80 (give or take a year or two) in most countries including Japan ...

And do think the false emergency will then be over? And that EUA experimental medicines will stop being dispensed?

No way. Not with the record profits Big Pharma is raking in. And by suppressing information on alternative treatments proven to be effective and the growing incidents of dangerous side effects in demographic groups largely unaffected by Covid-19, they will milk this “emergency” right down to newborn babies.

-7 ( +2 / -9 )

Yes, better than nothing. But you do already know about that reduced efficacy of 64% caused by the delta variant, don’t you? That means, even if 100% theoretically would all have received their second vaccination shot, still 46% are only like partly or very reduced vaccinated and 13% are even similar to completely unvaccinated people.

-8 ( +3 / -11 )

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