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Tsunamis, earthquakes, nuclear meltdowns and COVID-19 – what Japan has and hasn’t learned from centuries of disaster

Japan has a long experience of hazards and disasters. Yet it does not seem like all lessons have been applied when it comes to COVID.

Three weeks after the 9.0 magnitude quakre and subsequent tsunami struck Japan. EPA/Stephen Morrison

A decade on from 3/11 – the devastating earthquake, tsunami and nuclear catastrophe that hit Japan – the country is again amid a crisis caused by COVID-19.

Japan’s already long experience with hazards and disasters was expanded when it faced the catastrophic triple disaster of 3/11. Yet it does not seem like the potential lessons from how to respond to unforseen disasters of unprecedented size and scale have been applied when it comes to COVID.

When flexibility and fast decision making was needed, Japan’s government has been slow to act against the pandemic. The response lacked urgency and was extremely cautious. With vaccinations getting underway in June 2021, Japan is finally coming closer to getting the pandemic under control, but it lags far behind other G7 countries.

The slow response – similar to a paralysed lack of action during the nuclear disaster in 2011 – shows that even extensive experience and expertise in hazard mitigation and disaster management do not automatically translate into good pandemic management. It is clear that there are serious weaknesses in Japan’s bureaucratic disaster governance.

‘Unprecedented’ disaster #1

On March 11, 2011, the largest earthquake ever recorded in Japan (and fourth in the world) struck off the coast of the country. It caused a tsunami that killed more than 20,000 people, devastated communities along 500km of coastline and led to a nuclear meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant.

Japan has an extensive history and experience facing and responding to earthquakes and tsunamis and because of this it is one of the most earthquake-prepared countries in the world. Few buildings constructed after Japan’s 1981 seismic building code were damaged, even by this mega-quake. But, exceeding all predictions, the tsunami destroyed places believed to be safe, causing tragic loss of life even among people who had escaped to evacuation centres, and overwhelmed disaster response capacity.

At 2:46pm on Friday, March 11, the shaking started. In Japan, earthquakes are measured and reported by not only their magnitude, but also on a scale that measures their shaking intensity from 1 to 7. This is called the shindo scale. For example, at shindo 6, people are thrown to the ground. On March 11, the earthquake hit shindo 7 in some areas.


Listen to Elizabeth Maly on The Conversation Weekly podcast episode: Fire, tsunami, pandemic: how to ensure societies learn lessons from disaster.


‘A black wave’

The shaking itself was scary, lasting six minutes that seemed like an eternity, but that was nothing compared to what was coming. In some places, the first tsunami wave arrived within 30 minutes. A tsunami is more like a moving wall of water than a wave in the ocean. Once the tsunami overtops levees or sea walls, water rises quickly in the streets and travels faster than a car. As it moves, it picks up oil, debris – all the parts of the cities it is destroying.

People described the tsunami as a black wave, a wall of water, a cloud of dust, a terrifying sound. On YouTube, you can see many videos from that day, filmed by survivors who managed to reach higher places. They show the sea level rising in harbours and then waters rushing into towns.

Tsunamis are not one, but multiple waves that come in and recede again and again; breaking and pulling houses, buildings, cars – everything – out to sea. In many of these videos, you can hear people yelling “tsunami” or “this is the end”, or yelling to people below to run away. In much of this region, which has experienced multiple tsunamis in the past, many people evacuated to the designated places on higher ground.

But some made decisions which turned out to be fatal: to go back to get supplies or blankets to keep warm, or to go to check on family first before evacuating. Some people tried to evacuate by car and were overcome by the tsunami. Others were washed out to sea. Around 18,000 people lost their lives in the tsunami directly – a figure that jumps to more than 20,000 when including related deaths that took place later.

It was still cold in March, and it snowed that night. People who spent it outside stranded on rooftops, speak of the clear sky, of being cold and wet. With blackouts, there was no electricity and as phone systems were also not working, there was no way to share or get information about the safety of people in other places.

Some areas remained cut off for days, as people stayed in evacuation centres, sleeping on the floor of school gymnasiums, or with extended family and neighbours in houses above the devastation. More than 400,000 houses were damaged, some with only the concrete foundations remaining. Homes and other buildings were reduced to huge piles of debris strewn across the landscape.

But even as rescue workers and relief supplies were arriving for tsunami evacuees, inside the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, things were going from bad to worse. The plant had lost power and it was losing the ability to cool its reactors. At that time, it was not clear what was happening – but it was later confirmed that nuclear meltdowns happened in three reactors.

After several explosions, evacuation orders were issued and then upgraded for the surrounding communities. Without clear coordination or an organised plan (then or even now), initial evacuation orders were issued for areas depending on their distance from the nuclear power plant. It turned out that this did not match the heavier areas of contamination caused by the wind patterns on that day.

Evacuation from the nuclear disaster area was chaotic. Some people evacuated on their own, some towns tried to evacuate together. Evacuation was especially difficult for residents of nursing or care facilities, many of whom lost their lives. It was hard to find available areas, especially since many evacuation centres were already at capacity with tsunami evacuees. Nuclear evacuees often moved multiple times in their evacuation.

Even ten years later, there are still some areas where people are not allowed to return because of radioactive contamination. Many other people do not want to return even with assurances of safety, especially those with young families.

Building back

Although 3/11 was unprecedented, the Japanese government drew from past disasters and existing legal frameworks to develop a standardised menu of funded programmes to rebuild destroyed communities. In the name of building back safer, massive infrastructure has drastically altered the landscape. Sea walls have been built, land raised and mountains cut into to relocate houses and communities out of reach of future tsunamis.

But questions remain over the long-term effects of these recovery projects and the changes inflicted on tsunami-stricken communities. For those affected by the nuclear disaster, programmes that focus on “hometown recovery” (rebuilding housing and community infrastructure within former municipalities) struggle to address issues of radioactive contamination, indefinite displacement and un-inhabitability in towns where residents cannot, or choose not to, return.

One strength of Japan’s disaster response and reconstruction is standardisation – emphasising “equal” support to all. Decisions made at the top are implemented through an efficient, if slow, bureaucratic process. Japan has detailed legal frameworks and standardised disaster management policies, and community disaster management plans are promoted across the country. For housing recovery after 3/11, policies were based on standardised compensation for damaged homes and support for new housing across the region.

During COVID-19, the highly-ridiculed policy to send two (very small) masks to each household in the county (regardless of the household size or local pandemic conditions) is a perfect example of a policy that was fair and the same for all, yet slow and not responsive to actual needs.

The flip side of this precision and standardisation is a lack of flexibility or incentive for developing creative solutions. This system is incapable of moving quickly, decisive action, or course corrections. Detailed manuals with rote responses that can be practised could be effective for a reoccurring event such as heavy rains, typhoons, blackouts, or even small earthquakes – but they are useless in an unpredicted crisis.

It is difficult for this system to address massive and complex problems such as those created by the nuclear disaster. The slow moving governmental bureaucracy has proved itself even less capable of responding decisively to control the spread of an unknown pandemic virus, which does not fall under Japan’s well established laws and policies governing disaster management.

‘Unknowable’ hazards

Both the nuclear accident and the pandemic were unpredicted and “unknowable” disasters, especially in the early days of each crisis. We grew to understand more over time.

In the days after the tsunami, the world wondered what was happening inside the Fukushima nuclear power plant – efforts to cover up the fact it was actually a nuclear meltdown were only officially admitted five years later. While the path of radioactive particles was known, this data was not shared with the public, or used to direct evacuation – in some cases people unknowingly remained in, or were evacuated to areas, with higher contamination.

Like radiation, COVID-19 is an invisible risk. While both radiation and virus exposure can be silently carried in our bodies without our knowledge, the window when potential health impacts become known is much shorter with COVID-19. In both cases, though, unsure about what risks they were exposed to and lacking proactive government actions, people made their own judgements about risk and safety.

With an official COVID-19 death toll of just over 14,000, and daily deaths rarely much over 100, in Japan the pandemic has not reached the tragic levels seen elsewhere. The health care system has been stretched in some places, but never collapsed. This means that people in Japan are fortunate compared to those in many other countries, yet many of those lives may have been saved with more effective pandemic management.

In the face of uncertain risks and unknowable hazards, the Japanese government’s approach to COVID-19 and the nuclear disaster show some similarities, with official narratives shaped through the use of selective information.

For example, COVID-19 case numbers and data have been released daily – but they don’t include all tests. Policies that focus on contact tracing while avoiding widespread testing were intended to reduce the number of people going to hospitals. So – as explained by global health expert Kenji Shibuya – rather than a public health approach, Japan was focused on preserving the functions of the health care system. While this may have been a valid goal, it could not effectively control the virus after widespread community infection.

The Japanese government has continuously downplayed the risk of COVID-19 (as it did with the nuclear disaster) prioritising economic activity while promoting an image of “COVID-safe” Japan, both inside and outside of the country. Without real lockdowns or stay-at-home orders, Japan’s COVID-19 states of emergency limit business hours for bars and restaurants and large gatherings. People are asked to practice “self-restraint” and avoid crowded and congested places.

Existing cultural factors such as widespread mask-wearing, keeping physically distanced, high levels of sanitation and rule-following may have contributed to slowing the spread of COVID-19 in Japan. Some experts and officials fell back on culturalist and even racial superiority reasons for this perceived Japanese exceptionalism. However, by the end of 2020 it was clear that Japan’s strategies were not working.

With the number of seriously ill COVID patients peaking in May 2021 and vaccinations for the elderly only just getting started in June, cases continuing to rise and the state of emergency extended for much of the country, it is becoming harder to see Japan’s pandemic management as something to emulate.

Despite this, the national government has been vowing to get COVID under control and promising the world that Tokyo will still hold the Olympics from July 2021.

Olympic redemption?

The shadow of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics was already present after the nuclear accident, when in 2013 the prime minister assured the world that Japan was safe while securing Tokyo’s bid to host the games. Only days later it was revealed that massive amounts of radioactive groundwater had been leaking into the sea.

Downplaying risks to create an image of safety both in Japan and globally was a core government strategy. This message became inextricably linked to hosting the Tokyo Olympics (an economic opportunity as well as an ultimate chance to present Japan in a positive way to the world). Initially, the “Recovery Olympics” were framed to show successful recovery after 3/11 (an idea that many found to be offensive to disaster survivors still facing many challenges).

Then in 2020, with the Olympics finally around the corner, the pandemic struck. Japan made every effort to avoid the eventual postponement of the Tokyo Games to 2021. Now, they have been reframed as a way to show the world Japan’s triumph over the pandemic.

With Tokyo under an extended state of emergency into June, questions lingered as to whether the postponed games would go on as scheduled from July 2021 and if teams will come. There has even been speculation that the Olympics could result in a new virus mutation

With a few notable exceptions, the places that were able to act quickly to effectively control the spread of COVID-19 were those with experience handling the SARS pandemic, such as Hong Kong and Taiwan.

While Japan has expert knowledge and a national infectious disease research centre, without a national government agency such as the CDC in the United States, the COVID-19 response was ad-hoc. Several expert committees were set up to advise the government; the national response was led by the minister of economics. This is a telling factor of Japan’s response, although Japan is no way unique among countries of the world that struggled to balance the control of disease with impact on their economy.

In Japan, natural hazards are precisely predicted and calculated, with hazard maps of local areas mailed to residents. From a young age, children learn what to do in the case of an earthquake, and there is high awareness of disasters in the general public as well as private and public sectors. The shinkansen (bullet train) automatically stops seconds after an earthquake is detected, and cell phones automatically issue a warning for anyone in the area. With standardised policies in place, risk events are confirmed and conveyed, warnings are disseminated, and pre-existing plans are activated to set up evacuation facilities and give out relief supplies.

Yet, Japan shows us that disaster management experience does not automatically translate to effective pandemic management, at least not on a national level. Japanese disaster management and response is technologically proficient, with expertise and precise calculations and efficient systems to calculate and issue warnings and implement safety measures.

But disaster management that is based on planning for specific expected events is not flexible. Effective response to natural or technical hazards – or pandemic diseases – requires competent national leadership as well as suitable localised responses. Most importantly, as natural hazards continue to grow and become even more unpredictable with climate change, the next global pandemic or disaster may be here soon. The ability to respond quickly and with flexibility may be the most important factor to avoid repeating the failures of COVID-19 and a potentially even greater loss of life.


This article is part of a series on recovering from the pandemic in a way that makes societies more resilient and able to deal with future challenges. Read more of our coverage here.

Elizabeth Maly does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

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International

Beloved mall retailer files Chapter 7 bankruptcy, will liquidate

The struggling chain has given up the fight and will close hundreds of stores around the world.

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It has been a brutal period for several popular retailers. The fallout from the covid pandemic and a challenging economic environment have pushed numerous chains into bankruptcy with Tuesday Morning, Christmas Tree Shops, and Bed Bath & Beyond all moving from Chapter 11 to Chapter 7 bankruptcy liquidation.

In all three of those cases, the companies faced clear financial pressures that led to inventory problems and vendors demanding faster, or even upfront payment. That creates a sort of inevitability.

Related: Beloved retailer finds life after bankruptcy, new famous owner

When a retailer faces financial pressure it sets off a cycle where vendors become wary of selling them items. That leads to barren shelves and no ability for the chain to sell its way out of its financial problems. 

Once that happens bankruptcy generally becomes the only option. Sometimes that means a Chapter 11 filing which gives the company a chance to negotiate with its creditors. In some cases, deals can be worked out where vendors extend longer terms or even forgive some debts, and banks offer an extension of loan terms.

In other cases, new funding can be secured which assuages vendor concerns or the company might be taken over by its vendors. Sometimes, as was the case with David's Bridal, a new owner steps in, adds new money, and makes deals with creditors in order to give the company a new lease on life.

It's rare that a retailer moves directly into Chapter 7 bankruptcy and decides to liquidate without trying to find a new source of funding.

Mall traffic has varied depending upon the type of mall.

Image source: Getty Images

The Body Shop has bad news for customers  

The Body Shop has been in a very public fight for survival. Fears began when the company closed half of its locations in the United Kingdom. That was followed by a bankruptcy-style filing in Canada and an abrupt closure of its U.S. stores on March 4.

"The Canadian subsidiary of the global beauty and cosmetics brand announced it has started restructuring proceedings by filing a Notice of Intention (NOI) to Make a Proposal pursuant to the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act (Canada). In the same release, the company said that, as of March 1, 2024, The Body Shop US Limited has ceased operations," Chain Store Age reported.

A message on the company's U.S. website shared a simple message that does not appear to be the entire story.

"We're currently undergoing planned maintenance, but don't worry we're due to be back online soon."

That same message is still on the company's website, but a new filing makes it clear that the site is not down for maintenance, it's down for good.

The Body Shop files for Chapter 7 bankruptcy

While the future appeared bleak for The Body Shop, fans of the brand held out hope that a savior would step in. That's not going to be the case. 

The Body Shop filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in the United States.

"The US arm of the ethical cosmetics group has ceased trading at its 50 outlets. On Saturday (March 9), it filed for Chapter 7 insolvency, under which assets are sold off to clear debts, putting about 400 jobs at risk including those in a distribution center that still holds millions of dollars worth of stock," The Guardian reported.

After its closure in the United States, the survival of the brand remains very much in doubt. About half of the chain's stores in the United Kingdom remain open along with its Australian stores. 

The future of those stores remains very much in doubt and the chain has shared that it needs new funding in order for them to continue operating.

The Body Shop did not respond to a request for comment from TheStreet.   

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Government

Are Voters Recoiling Against Disorder?

Are Voters Recoiling Against Disorder?

Authored by Michael Barone via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The headlines coming out of the Super…

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Are Voters Recoiling Against Disorder?

Authored by Michael Barone via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The headlines coming out of the Super Tuesday primaries have got it right. Barring cataclysmic changes, Donald Trump and Joe Biden will be the Republican and Democratic nominees for president in 2024.

(Left) President Joe Biden delivers remarks on canceling student debt at Culver City Julian Dixon Library in Culver City, Calif., on Feb. 21, 2024. (Right) Republican presidential candidate and former U.S. President Donald Trump stands on stage during a campaign event at Big League Dreams Las Vegas in Las Vegas, Nev., on Jan. 27, 2024. (Mario Tama/Getty Images; David Becker/Getty Images)

With Nikki Haley’s withdrawal, there will be no more significantly contested primaries or caucuses—the earliest both parties’ races have been over since something like the current primary-dominated system was put in place in 1972.

The primary results have spotlighted some of both nominees’ weaknesses.

Donald Trump lost high-income, high-educated constituencies, including the entire metro area—aka the Swamp. Many but by no means all Haley votes there were cast by Biden Democrats. Mr. Trump can’t afford to lose too many of the others in target states like Pennsylvania and Michigan.

Majorities and large minorities of voters in overwhelmingly Latino counties in Texas’s Rio Grande Valley and some in Houston voted against Joe Biden, and even more against Senate nominee Rep. Colin Allred (D-Texas).

Returns from Hispanic precincts in New Hampshire and Massachusetts show the same thing. Mr. Biden can’t afford to lose too many Latino votes in target states like Arizona and Georgia.

When Mr. Trump rode down that escalator in 2015, commentators assumed he’d repel Latinos. Instead, Latino voters nationally, and especially the closest eyewitnesses of Biden’s open-border policy, have been trending heavily Republican.

High-income liberal Democrats may sport lawn signs proclaiming, “In this house, we believe ... no human is illegal.” The logical consequence of that belief is an open border. But modest-income folks in border counties know that flows of illegal immigrants result in disorder, disease, and crime.

There is plenty of impatience with increased disorder in election returns below the presidential level. Consider Los Angeles County, America’s largest county, with nearly 10 million people, more people than 40 of the 50 states. It voted 71 percent for Mr. Biden in 2020.

Current returns show county District Attorney George Gascon winning only 21 percent of the vote in the nonpartisan primary. He’ll apparently face Republican Nathan Hochman, a critic of his liberal policies, in November.

Gascon, elected after the May 2020 death of counterfeit-passing suspect George Floyd in Minneapolis, is one of many county prosecutors supported by billionaire George Soros. His policies include not charging juveniles as adults, not seeking higher penalties for gang membership or use of firearms, and bringing fewer misdemeanor cases.

The predictable result has been increased car thefts, burglaries, and personal robberies. Some 120 assistant district attorneys have left the office, and there’s a backlog of 10,000 unprosecuted cases.

More than a dozen other Soros-backed and similarly liberal prosecutors have faced strong opposition or have left office.

St. Louis prosecutor Kim Gardner resigned last May amid lawsuits seeking her removal, Milwaukee’s John Chisholm retired in January, and Baltimore’s Marilyn Mosby was defeated in July 2022 and convicted of perjury in September 2023. Last November, Loudoun County, Virginia, voters (62 percent Biden) ousted liberal Buta Biberaj, who declined to prosecute a transgender student for assault, and in June 2022 voters in San Francisco (85 percent Biden) recalled famed radical Chesa Boudin.

Similarly, this Tuesday, voters in San Francisco passed ballot measures strengthening police powers and requiring treatment of drug-addicted welfare recipients.

In retrospect, it appears the Floyd video, appearing after three months of COVID-19 confinement, sparked a frenzied, even crazed reaction, especially among the highly educated and articulate. One fatal incident was seen as proof that America’s “systemic racism” was worse than ever and that police forces should be defunded and perhaps abolished.

2020 was “the year America went crazy,” I wrote in January 2021, a year in which police funding was actually cut by Democrats in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, and Denver. A year in which young New York Times (NYT) staffers claimed they were endangered by the publication of Sen. Tom Cotton’s (R-Ark.) opinion article advocating calling in military forces if necessary to stop rioting, as had been done in Detroit in 1967 and Los Angeles in 1992. A craven NYT publisher even fired the editorial page editor for running the article.

Evidence of visible and tangible discontent with increasing violence and its consequences—barren and locked shelves in Manhattan chain drugstores, skyrocketing carjackings in Washington, D.C.—is as unmistakable in polls and election results as it is in daily life in large metropolitan areas. Maybe 2024 will turn out to be the year even liberal America stopped acting crazy.

Chaos and disorder work against incumbents, as they did in 1968 when Democrats saw their party’s popular vote fall from 61 percent to 43 percent.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times or ZeroHedge.

Tyler Durden Sat, 03/09/2024 - 23:20

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Government

Veterans Affairs Kept COVID-19 Vaccine Mandate In Place Without Evidence

Veterans Affairs Kept COVID-19 Vaccine Mandate In Place Without Evidence

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The…

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Veterans Affairs Kept COVID-19 Vaccine Mandate In Place Without Evidence

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) reviewed no data when deciding in 2023 to keep its COVID-19 vaccine mandate in place.

Doses of a COVID-19 vaccine in Washington in a file image. (Jacquelyn Martin/Pool/AFP via Getty Images)

VA Secretary Denis McDonough said on May 1, 2023, that the end of many other federal mandates “will not impact current policies at the Department of Veterans Affairs.”

He said the mandate was remaining for VA health care personnel “to ensure the safety of veterans and our colleagues.”

Mr. McDonough did not cite any studies or other data. A VA spokesperson declined to provide any data that was reviewed when deciding not to rescind the mandate. The Epoch Times submitted a Freedom of Information Act for “all documents outlining which data was relied upon when establishing the mandate when deciding to keep the mandate in place.”

The agency searched for such data and did not find any.

The VA does not even attempt to justify its policies with science, because it can’t,” Leslie Manookian, president and founder of the Health Freedom Defense Fund, told The Epoch Times.

“The VA just trusts that the process and cost of challenging its unfounded policies is so onerous, most people are dissuaded from even trying,” she added.

The VA’s mandate remains in place to this day.

The VA’s website claims that vaccines “help protect you from getting severe illness” and “offer good protection against most COVID-19 variants,” pointing in part to observational data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that estimate the vaccines provide poor protection against symptomatic infection and transient shielding against hospitalization.

There have also been increasing concerns among outside scientists about confirmed side effects like heart inflammation—the VA hid a safety signal it detected for the inflammation—and possible side effects such as tinnitus, which shift the benefit-risk calculus.

President Joe Biden imposed a slate of COVID-19 vaccine mandates in 2021. The VA was the first federal agency to implement a mandate.

President Biden rescinded the mandates in May 2023, citing a drop in COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations. His administration maintains the choice to require vaccines was the right one and saved lives.

“Our administration’s vaccination requirements helped ensure the safety of workers in critical workforces including those in the healthcare and education sectors, protecting themselves and the populations they serve, and strengthening their ability to provide services without disruptions to operations,” the White House said.

Some experts said requiring vaccination meant many younger people were forced to get a vaccine despite the risks potentially outweighing the benefits, leaving fewer doses for older adults.

By mandating the vaccines to younger people and those with natural immunity from having had COVID, older people in the U.S. and other countries did not have access to them, and many people might have died because of that,” Martin Kulldorff, a professor of medicine on leave from Harvard Medical School, told The Epoch Times previously.

The VA was one of just a handful of agencies to keep its mandate in place following the removal of many federal mandates.

“At this time, the vaccine requirement will remain in effect for VA health care personnel, including VA psychologists, pharmacists, social workers, nursing assistants, physical therapists, respiratory therapists, peer specialists, medical support assistants, engineers, housekeepers, and other clinical, administrative, and infrastructure support employees,” Mr. McDonough wrote to VA employees at the time.

This also includes VA volunteers and contractors. Effectively, this means that any Veterans Health Administration (VHA) employee, volunteer, or contractor who works in VHA facilities, visits VHA facilities, or provides direct care to those we serve will still be subject to the vaccine requirement at this time,” he said. “We continue to monitor and discuss this requirement, and we will provide more information about the vaccination requirements for VA health care employees soon. As always, we will process requests for vaccination exceptions in accordance with applicable laws, regulations, and policies.”

The version of the shots cleared in the fall of 2022, and available through the fall of 2023, did not have any clinical trial data supporting them.

A new version was approved in the fall of 2023 because there were indications that the shots not only offered temporary protection but also that the level of protection was lower than what was observed during earlier stages of the pandemic.

Ms. Manookian, whose group has challenged several of the federal mandates, said that the mandate “illustrates the dangers of the administrative state and how these federal agencies have become a law unto themselves.”

Tyler Durden Sat, 03/09/2024 - 22:10

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