Japan’s top modeler returns for Season 8 of The Covid Show

Even though the media has neglected to tell them that the Omicron boosters were approved on the basis of mouse data, the Japanese public haven’t been rushing out to get injected with the same enthusiasm as previously.

So who do you call when you need to sell unnecessary and harmful pharmaceutical interventions? The same guy you called when you needed to sell unnecessary and harmful non-pharmaceutical interventions: Japan’s top modeler, Prof Hiroshi Nishiura!

Thankfully, his simulations this time are far less apocalyptic.

Prof Nishiura estimates 8 million cases in the 8th wave, but vaccination can lower them by approx 30%

In his simulations, Prof Nishiura ran various scenarios with different amounts of daily doses to compare with the current sluggish baseline. As you can see, Scenario 5 (シナリオ5) involves the most jabs, with over a million people a day getting injected during December.

And would you believe it, Sceanrio 5 (S5) has the fewest daily cases…

…and the fewest hospitalisations.

You’ll notice the underlying assumption is that the jabs will reduce infections and hospitalisations almost as soon as they’re in the arm. Well, it’s been clear to some of us since early 2021 that the risk of severe or fatal Covid increases immediately after the jab, as shown by Japan’s own data.

Time from last dose to symptom onset for severe and fatal cases

Which probably explains the uncanny correlation between daily jabs (blue) and daily reported deaths (red).

Daily reported Covid deaths per million (red, left axis) and Covid vaccine doses per million (blue, right axis).

And even if the jabbers can make it through the Devil’s Two Weeks, a recent study in JAMA shows that the vaccinated have higher risk of symptomatic Covid in the Omicron era.

Prof Nishiura would probably respond by saying something like “Ah, but you’re talking about the old wild-type vaccines. But my simulations are based on the new bivalent boosters, which are expected to produce effective infection-preventing antibodies towards Omicron-derived varients.”

Unluckily for Prof Nishiura and anyone credulous enough to take them, there’s no evidence the updated shots generate different antibodies to the wild-type shots. The previous jabs seem to have locked the immune systems of the vaccinated into producing the same one-trick-pony response, as predicted and explained in detail by el gato malo here.

Neutralization ID 50 titers of serum samples from “3 shots WT”, “BA.4/BA.5 breakthrough”, “4 shots WT”, and “3 shots WT + bivalent” cohorts. Values above the symbols denote the geometric mean ID50 titers, and values on the lower left indicate the sample size (n). The limit of detection is 100 (dotted line).

And generating more of those antibodies will do little to prevent infections. Another study in JAMA states that “no significant association was found between antibody level and infection observed during the Omicron surge.”

Comparison of Anti–Receptor Binding Domain (RBD) IgG Index Levels in Participants With Documented SARS-CoV-2 Infection Occurring After Sample Procurement and Those With No Evidence of Subsequent Infection.

But there is still one thing antibody titers correlate with.

So it doesn’t look like Prof Nishiura’s predictions will come true. In fact, administering one million doses a day would more likely heighten the curve than flatten it.

But since Prof Nishiura has never made a prediction that has come true before, why start now? After all, all his models have been wrong, but some have been very useful, for the government at least.

Japan's top modeller