Governor Kawakatsu: Jabs for thee but not for me

Ever since the Covid jabs became available, conspiracy-minded vax sceptics have theorised that there were many politicians who loudly promoted the jabs in public while quietly declining them in private. But now we know there’s at least one honest phrama shill among Japan’s 47 prefectural governors: Heita Kawakatsu, Governor of Shizuoka Prefecture and author of numerous books including “The Lancashire Cotton Industry and its Rivals” (yes, really). Governor Kawakatsu openly admits he never once rolled up his sleeve for an mRNA injection despite strongly recommending his constituents do so, as discussed in a recent article in the magazine President.

As an example of Governor Kawakatsu’s public pro-vax stance, the article points to his words and actions during the State of Emergency (SoE) that he’d declared in 2021. After saying that “the SoE can’t be lifted in the current situation”, he opened up two more large-scale vaccination centres in Shizuoka to “accelerate vaccinations across the whole prefecture”, which had a vaccination rate lower than the national average at the time.

It’s not that Governor Kawakatsu is a massive hypocrite, you understand. He’d have happily got the Covid jabs if only he didn’t think they might kill him.

“An anaphylactic shock is a terrible thing. It’s even worse than thrombosis. If I have another anaphylactic shock, I'm likely to die. Knowing that and speaking to various doctors, I decided against getting the Covid vaccine.”

The article fails to find any of these “various doctors” who went against the medical establishment’s position that all eligible people needed to get jabbed and advised him not to, but whatever. As an economic historian fluent in English, he’d have had far less trouble trawling through the safety data and reading studies in order to make up his own mind than the average politician in Japan (or the west for that matter).

But while I’m hardly going to criticise anyone for citing a potentially deadly side-effect as a reason to decline the mRNA jabs, it would’ve been nice if he’d told the public from the start that the supposed benefits don’t always outweigh the proven risks. And I’m not the only one who feels this way. The same article quotes a female medical worker from Shizuoka whose right arm was paralysed after getting the Covid jab.

“I wish I’d never got vaccinated like Governor Kawakatsu. Even though Governor Kawakatsu understood the dangers and didn’t get vaccinated, he strongly recommended the vaccines to people in Shizuoka. I want him to take responsibility for the people injured by the vaccines.”

But better late than never, eh? At least we’ve come to the point where one of Japan’s prefectural governors can be open about his medically informed decision to decline the Covid jabs without being hysterically denounced by the media for encouraging “vaccine hesitancy”. Yeah, about that. The above quote about Governor Kawakatsu’s fear of another anaphylactic shock comes from a press conferences he gave in September 2021! It was a bit weaselly of him to publicly admit he was declining the vax after the majority of adults had already had two doses, but it’s even worse that the media didn’t report the fact until almost two years later. Impressive that all TV channels and newspapers made the same editorial decision, isn’t it?

In other under-reported news this week, the government has decided to pay out 44 million yen each to the families of 38 more people who died following the Covid jabs, bringing the total to 147 with hundreds more claims still to be adjudicated.

Heita Kawakatsu is still alive and kicking though. And for him, that’s probably all that really matters.