Does Dr. Fukushima’s statement change anything?

Don’t bet on it.

A question from a reader prompted this post.  It is a topic on which I could write a book.  But writing it here in a post or more would not be appropriate.  What follows is as concise an overview as I can provide.  As with another doctor’s recommendation that ivermectin be used to treat covid, Dr. Fukushima’s statements seem to be taken by many overseas to indicate some major shift in how Japan is dealing with covid.  In the case of the use of ivermectin, Japan has NOT approved its use against covid.  However, Japan has not banned its use either.  It does recommend against its use.  These facts differ from what has been reported and circulated in the US.  Here is a link to the PMDA’s English language page detailing what it has approved. https://www.pmda.go.jp/english/about-pmda/0002.html

To explain how Dr. Fukushima can be on tv in Japan. yet still virtually unknown in here, let us consider the mass drugging of female college students at a drinking party in Shinjuku, Tokyo.  KREIS was the name of an official University club, much like a Registered Student Organization or RSO on college campuses in the States.  The stated purpose of this club, actually a “circle” as the Japanese use the words “club” and “circle”, was tennis.  In the late 90s I was an international exchange student at the school this club belonged to.  Tennis was used as an example of how circles were excuses for drinking parties.  Students in clubs were serous about the activity the club was said to do.  Those in circles used the group as a social club only.  Those in the tennis circle carried their tennis rackets with them, especially to the many drinking parties but never took them out of their cases, so went the joke.   As a student, I heard directly from students of the practices carried out by many of these circles.  The male kohai where in charge of providing female “refreshment” for their male sempai.  This included getting them drunk or even drugging them and then delivering them to their sempai.   Was openly talked, bragged and joked about.

On June 20, 2014 KREIS held a series of events and parties.  After one of the late night parties, the female students passed out on the street.  Passers by called the police and took photos.  The students did not call the police.  Many of the photos were posted on various social media sites.  I post some here.

Yet, I would not learn of the incident from Japanese news reports, rather from an overseas site that reported on Japan and then from local citizen reporters.  None of the national news broadcasters covered it.  I did not learn of it in any of the English versions of Japanese newspapers I subscribed to.  Many outside Japan were commenting on it online.  Yet, when I asked my students, mainly first year medical and other college students, only one was aware of it.  Her mother read about it on social media and shared it with her daughter as a warning.  I would learn that it was indeed broadcast on TV, but the one station (also told that only one covered the story) was a minor station that broadcasts regional news only. 

I am not sure JNN qualifies as a minor broadcaster, however, this news story was not nor is it well known in Japan.

Eight years later, and I have had only 6 or so college aged students say that they were aware of such things happening.   

I did a little research on the KREIS incident for this post and learned some things that I had not known.  One is that many companies HR departments immediately took action and decided upon temporary hiring freezes for graduates of the university that sponsored this circle.  It is also apparently the incident that brought rampant underage drinking to an end in Japan.  I knew something did as my earlier college experience in Japan included many underaged among us and lots of joking about it.  Underaged students now either do not drink or are not willing to even joke about it if they do.  Yet, the fact that these girls were drugged or at least served drinks in order to incapacitate them for rape is not made known to the college aged in Japan.  The potential victims are left completely unawares of the possibility that this could happen to them.  Up until the panic drove classes online, I used to teach a lesson on safety each year.  Most of my students are freshmen females, many who have attended girls only schools their entire educational lives.  Their naïveté is astounding.  No one tells them anything about any potental dangers.  They remain completely in the dark about this and similar other reported cases.

The Japanese do not differ form the rest of us is this regard.  We assume, naturally, that what we know is known by all or at least most.   There are many who are aware of KREIS and other such cases.  However, for whatever reasons they do not share this knowledge with those who would most benefit from knowing it.  This is similar to what I have learned about pediatric care in Japan.  Pediatricians in the US and apparently most medical professionals in the UK do not wear white lab coats any more, though for different reasons.  It has long been known that children do not respond well to white medical clothing, thus pediatric doctors and nurses in the US wear clothing that is brightly colored and often having cartoon characters on them.  Yet, pediatricians and their nurses in Japan still wear white.  Being employed at a teaching hospital in Japan, I asked a pediatrician about this.   He explained that his field in Japan was well aware of this, but parents were not.  Parents will not bring their kids to a doctor that does not look like a doctor in their eyes.

I have been almost entirely isolated for most of these last 3 years.  Most of my lessons have been all online since they started back up late Spring 2020.  I have no face to face contact with most of my students, coworkers nor anyone else.  What little contact I have is through email and that indicates that at least those I know are all confirmed covidians.  They all believe in the utility of masks against virus, “the safe and effective” vaccine lies and all the rest.  They refuse to read any of the studies I have attempted to share with them on these subjects.  Therefore, while I can not say the Dr. Fukushima’s statements are not widely disseminated, given my experience with KREIS and others, the facts that none of my acquaintances are aware of them and that nothing has changed in regards to how covid is being dealt with here, I doubt there are many in Japan that know of them.