Japan's experts get excited about the 9th Covid wave

Yesterday, our old friends at the Covid Response Advisory Board held their last meeting before Covid’s downgrading on 8th May, after which they’ll no longer meet regularly. Their analysis is as high quality as ever though.

“The 9th wave may be bigger than the 8th”

So the experts think the 9th wave could be even bigger than the 8th wave, which had more deaths than all preceding waves. But why do they think the next wave may be bigger when Japan is the most boosted country on earth? From the Asahi Shimbun.

A comparison between Japan and the UK, where infection waves have been becoming smaller, shows that 86% of blood donors in the UK possess antibodies due to natural infection, but only 42% in Japan do. Japan's 9th wave could still be bigger than the 8th wave, the experts said, given the low proportion of infected people.

That’s a tacit admission that natural immunity is superior to mRNA injection-induced immunity, but the experts are still ignoring all of Japan’s pre-existing immunological advantages in order to keep insisting that antibodies = immunity. This means their solution to the threat of a large 9th wave is as predictable as the falling of the cherry blossoms.

In addition, since Japan has a large population of elderly people aged 75 and over, if the vaccination rate does not increase from the current level and the infection rate becomes the same as in Europe and the US after Covid measures are relaxed, Japan may continue to have a higher number of Covid deaths than other countries.

In other words, the elderly will need yet another jab. Luckily for Japan’s tens of millions of elderly mRNA enthusiasts, they’ll be able to get their sixth shots from 8th May. That’s a whole revolvers’ worth!

As cynical as I’ve been towards their consistently pharma-friendly advice, I’ll think I’ll miss the advisory board’s weekly/biweekly output. Both they and I agree the number of Covid vaccines helps to determine the number of Covid deaths in each wave. We just disagree on exactly how it does so.