murabito comments

Is this really the time for the government to be doing this? I mean, probably it is been planned for years, but it seems as if there are other priorities right now.

It is sad to see how this situation that could have been prevented months ago has to happen. It would have been much better to make things clear last year and let small places get their losses

If vaccines today are considered like every other medicine, why would this VICP be needed then? And why did big pharma lobby so strongly for it?

Because differently from other safe and effective health interventions their benefit is not only personal but also the preservation of the public health, which means that promoting them bring a benefit for the population at large, if one person refuses to take an antibiotic and dies because of it, that would be the extent of the problem, for vaccines that is only the beginning of the problem so the government is responsible to protect the public health by taking out the perceived problem of a pathologic lawsuit environment (where a product can be stopped even if not a single lawsuit wins against the producers). This can be done in two ways, taking out the rights of the people to seek compensation or siding with the people so compensation is paid without the extra costs of litigation (and with a much lower burden of proof from the particulars) Obviously the best solution was the one that was taken. Safe and effective vaccines for everybody and compensation for anybody that could have been damaged even if it cannot be even proved.

Vaccine companies are as interested as the government to distribute their product, it is obvious that they push for the problem to be solved satisfactorily for everybody. In this case the difference is that government is also interested in having an immune population, which is why it takes the responsibility of the compensation.

This is getting sadder every day, what is the point of making events to inspire people while actually giving the opposite message?

@nandakandamanda

Just to keep the record straight, this has happened repeatedly. Third time in the last few months.

I find very difficult to understand something so prone to cause accidental deaths can be used commonly. Is this some kind of catastrophic failure kind of thing?

@Aly Rustom

salary cuts- sure. Who wants to bet they'll get a later bonus in the year when its all forgotten.

Came here to comment exactly this.

I love Frasier, lately I had to conform with his roles as a voice actor.

Some people thing the world is made to please them, its difficult to imagine how he could think he would make it out of this without being arrested.

This is a sad situation, one big part of the current problem with the reconstruction of Fukushima is that people are already forgetting about it. More support have to given or else it will be repeated endlessly.

The perfect storm of policies directed to make difficult to have family, a pandemic badly controlled and a cultural preference for letting this problem go on. On the other hand Japan is not the only country to struggle with low births last year, maybe expecting the people in charge to actually act to solve it is too naive.

@neowave

[edited]: That would be your opinion. From my understanding Robert F. Kennedy Jr. would never have gotten into vaccine research if the mothers of vaccine injured children had not brought vaccines to his attention.

This is no personal opinion, in nursing and medical school is taken as the textbook example for an organization working against science and public health. I have not yet met an American pediatrician that doesn't talk horribly about it.

@robert maes

will not accept vaccination with the AZ vaccine nor the Chinese junk. But i am fine with J&J, Pfizer, Moderna en even Sputnik

Really? I can't find evidence of something specially bad about the AstraZeneca vaccine, on the other hand the Sputnik data is so shady I am surprised is not being openly rejected everywhere.

Low for a Thursday, but deaths are still a worry.

The problem with cases going low is that probably someone is already planning how to put half a dozen Go To campaigns so their very important friends can profit again.

Terribly unfortunate, it would have been really nice if there were no lives lost.

@shogun36

I say line up cardboard cutouts and sex dolls along the streets.

One can only wish, but the more they do the more it seems the purpose is to waste the efforts in controlling the pandemic.

The images on TV are terrible, I hope the losses are kept to a minimum

This whole thing seems more and more desperate every week, bad solutions to even greater problems, complete lack of planning, contradicting measures.

I suspect the whole thing is actually a really big effort to make the whole japanese population hate the olympics as much as possible so the government can use it as an excuse to call it quits.

@Matej

really pointless "action" for everyday people...sorry..thumbs down in my case

Exactly, out of the many things they could do to help the people that have been affected the most they choose to help people buy houses and cars.

Looks more like a gimmick to interest children than something really useful, but books are not exactly the most risky thing to be touching, probably the coins or card used to ride the train to the library or the handles on the door are much more likely to be contaminated, as long as kids don't use the pandemic as an excuse to stop reading I can live with this.

I really want to wish them the best, but I cannot avoid seeing everything happening this year with some cynicism, maybe its just jealously, maybe just seeing so many bad news is making me expect a bad twist at the end.

At this point probably nobody can be disappointed about what Trump does, for good or for bad he made clear all his defects from the beginning of his presidency if not before. But the GOP? this is a really new kind of shocking surprise, the worst part would be if even after being so clearly antidemocratic they did not lose votes, I hope they do, because it would mean the American population is not so easy to fool.

It is unfortunate but the situation has made it clear that everything in excess is bad, including obsessing with personal freedoms. The pandemic can be fought successfully, several places have done it, but this is simply not possible if enough members of the society consider any kind of cooperation as an insult to their personal rights. Giving everybody the right to be a jerk was fine for America, until this meant putting everybody else at risk.

@ Slickdrifter

Blaming government officials for not doing enough in any country. Unless severely negligent and Trump was not. Its just not right. 

It is more than right, it is what the US is apparently about. There are countries where the top of the government cannot really do that much so the whole group shares the responsibility, Trump made it clear from the beginning that was not going to happen to him and grabbed as much power as he could, that also means he can be made responsible for what the government of the country as a whole accomplished or failed to do.

Wonder if a protest in support of the Uihgur would be 'divisive demonstration'?

I can already see every single Chinese athlete "protesting" the foreign interventions on the Chinese internal problems (like the Uihgur, Hong Kong and Taiwan), or half a dozen other countries forcing their athletes to do the same against their national enemies. I cannot see this as a positive development.

From superficial explanations I have seen this is not an effective tool, counting all the direct and indirect energy costs it ends up producing more CO2 than what it can trap unless it uses very expensive clean energy, but then it would be better to replace the CO2 producing methods with this clean energy on the first place.

It is good news, even if it feels late compared with other countries, the last paragraph is specially important because I have heard it is one of the choke points that could lead to waste and lost time.

@Divinda

That is entirely not true due to something called antibody-dependent enhancement which essentially means that a person increases their chances of getting a virus after getting the antibodies (as with a vaccine).

The ADE theory was already discussed two replies above yours. Nothing you said contradicts why it could not be observed for this coronavirus.

Interesting news, I am still not convinced of the drug being effective, but at least the regulatory reviews will end up providing a lot of good information. Maybe this drug is useful, maybe not, but any hint is welcomed in the fight against this tragic disease.

This looks more like a bad publicity stunt, his popularity has been dropping a lot lately and I would be offended If I was part of the people affected and was used like this.

@Derek Grebe

Oh but let's not forget, the Olympic sales pitch was all built around milking support for the recovery of Tohoku.

IT would be much more meaningful just to cancel the whole thing and dedicate the funds to Tohoku, that would have shown a much more honest interest.

Nice development! it will be interesting to see how it is used and if it makes tracing actually easier, my understanding is that RNA viruses are not so easy to sequence and follow between people.

Good to see this guy being caught, The KyoAni tragedy was caused by one of these deranged people, any threat should be treated seriously.

The CCP is not even pretending anymore, I am not hopeful but this may mean the gloves will come out on the other side as well.