By Guy Gin
If you like to follow Covid-related news in Japan as I do, your reaction to the headline of this post is probably similar to my reaction yesterday when I learned of this information:
“WHAT!? When the hell did this happen?”
Well, it’s been happening incrementally since December 2021.
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The Ministry of Health, Labour, and Welfare’s Covid Vaccine Health Harm Adjudication Panel (新型コロナウイルス感染症予防接種健康被害審査部会) has been getting together once or twice a month to determine whether to pay medical support and other forms of compensation to people who required medical attention or whose family members died as a result of taking the Covid shots.
So far, the panel has recognized causality with the vaccine, decided to pay compensation in 1096 cases, and rejected only 97 cases.
Another 3660 cases are awaiting adjudication at the time of writing.
All graphs below come from lawyer/blogger Hitofumi Yanai, who seems to have been the only person following this.
Only 4 of 1096 recognized cases have been fatal: two men in their 70s (70代) and one man and one woman in their 90s (90代), highlighted in brackets in the graphs below.
Most recognized cases have been working-age people in their 20s to 50s.
The jabs can’t be called equal-opportunity offenders when it comes to the sexes either: 19% of recognized cases have been male (男性) and 81% female (女性).
These large age and sex imbalances may be surprising, but they align with Japan’s scientific literature on adverse events after mRNA shots.
Now, I’m not suggesting there has been a complete media blackout.
Here’s an article from the healthcare news site CB News that was syndicated on Yahoo!
The article lists the various adverse reactions recognized as being caused by the jabs.
But since it doesn’t report the cumulative number up to now, readers would be forgiven for thinking only 100 cases have so far been recognized.
More importantly, TV and the major national newspapers haven’t touched even this partial information.
The reasons for this aren’t hard to grasp. For one thing, open reporting would probably lead to more people applying for compensation.
The 1096 recognized cases are a drop in the bucket when considering that 1854 deaths have been reported after Covid vaccines in Japan.
But when you consider that there were only 191 recognized cases of health harm caused by influenza vaccines from 1977 to 2021, then 1096 looks a bit excessive.
But the main reason is that the media and government are doubtlessly worried that open reporting would lead to fewer people taking the shots.
And that would really mess with their plans.
This post was published first here.
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