Dec 20, 2020 (washingtonpost.com) - She’s worried about side effects and has faith in the precautions already underway. The 32-year-old elite athlete isn’t alone.
Japan’s government has preordered 290 million doses of the Pfizer, AstraZeneca and Moderna vaccines, more than enough to cover its population of 126 million, and says it aims to vaccinate everyone by the middle of next year — in time for the pandemic-delayed Olympics in July.
But the government’s haste to put an end to the pandemic, repair the economy and pave the way for the Games, stands in contrast to the public’s caution.
A global study published in September in the British medical journal the Lancet showed that Japanese people were among the least confident in vaccine safety in the world, alongside France and Mongolia, with fewer than 10 percent of respondents strongly agreeing with the idea that vaccines are safe.
“Athletes take managing our physical conditions as seriously as our results,†she told reporters after being selected by Japan’s athletics federation to compete in the 10,000 meters at the Games.
This is not a land of anti-vaxxers and conspiracy theorists, but a country where the public is often deliberate and careful, especially about foreign drugs. Layered on this is a memory of past vaccine safety scares, dating to the U.S. occupation after World War II.
Hitomi Niiya competes during the JAAF Athletics Championships on Dec. 4 in Osaka, Japan. The long-distance runner says she doesn’t want to take the vaccine before the Olympics.
The challenge for Japan — as for many other countries including the United States — is to overcome skepticism and mistrust as the vaccine effort moves onto the global stage. Failure in Japan to reach a critical mass of vaccinations could not only put the Olympics in danger, but slow the country’s return to the global economy and international tourism when the post-pandemic recovery gets underway.
A study in October by the international research group Ipsos found that 69 percent of Japanese people “agree†or “somewhat agree†that they would take a vaccine against the coronavirus when available. That’s down from 75 percent recorded in August, but above the U.S. score of 64 percent.
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But a closer look at polls in Japan shows much more caution than enthusiasm — reflected in sharply lower vaccination rates for diseases such as the human papillomavirus, or HPV, a common sexually transmitted infection.
A December survey of 1,000 people by Japan Trend Research showed that fewer than 11 percent of respondents wanted to get a vaccine immediately, compared with almost 27 percent who said they didn’t want to get a shot.
