It’s not 2021 anymore, so much to the disappointment of pharma and “public health” hacks, people in the west have given up on Covid jabs and are more focused on War. But in Japan, where Pestilence is still the most popular of the Four Horsemen, the vax pushers face a different problem: there aren’t enough shots to go into every willing arm.
That’s right. Clinics and local authorities around Japan are reporting that they don’t have enough Covid jabs to meet higher than expected demand, so Health Minister Keizo Takemi has said he’ll look into ordering more shots in addition to the 35 million XBB variant jabs Japan already procured.
Being a cynical old Guy, I’m open to the possibility that Japan deliberately ordered too few XBB jabs to meet the initial demand, leading to headlines like the above raising interest in the shots by giving them scarcity value and free publicity. But even so, why do so many Japanese still want to roll up their sleeves for yet more mRNA injections? Fear of the dreaded flurona, of course.
Now, the Japanese media actually reported in January about a study by Japanese researchers showing that Covid and flu waves don’t occur at the same time in the same place. But since jab season has come round, the media is hyping up viral double-trouble, since more anxiety means more shots. Japanese over 60 are especially eager to get not just the new and (allegedly) improved Covid jab (solid line) but also the flu jab too (dashed line)1.
Sure enough, reservation slots for influenza shots have also been filling up fast thanks to media flu-mongering.
So media-induced anxiety about fevers and runny noses leads to Covid/flu vaccination reservations filling up, which leads to media reporting that so many people want to get Covid/flu shots, which makes more people want to get Covid/flu shots. If only the jabs were as effective as the marketing campaign.
And as long as the zero-risk mentality of large numbers of Japanese can be exploited to heighten their anxiety about the Virus of the Month, don’t expect the vaccine exhaustion seen elsewhere to happen in Japan any time soon.
The graph comes from a separate article (https://maidonanews.jp/article/15025058) but seems to be from the same poll since the numbers are the same as in the Mainichi article.
There were concerns that the quad influenza vaxx given to all the older people in Italy in 2019, led to their demise when they were exposed to sarscov2. It will be an interesting winter, given the uptake of covid jabs in the U.K. and the ongoing repeat infections amongst the recipients.
The flu vaccine increases your risk for acquiring other respiratory viruses. This BMJ response provides a couple of peer reviewed research studies. I have not met a doctor https://www.bmj.com/content/368/bmj.m626/rr
Here are some other studies that showed the same.
https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/54/12/1778/455098
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7126676/