[ad_1]
When the President of the International Olympic Committee announced the closure of the Tokyo Summer Olympics on Sunday, he called this year’s game “Hope, Unity and Peace.”
“For the first time since the pandemic began, the whole world has come together,” Thomas Bach said at the largely empty Tokyo National Stadium. “Billions of people around the world are united by emotion to share moments of happiness and inspiration. This gives us hope.”
In fact, for those who follow the Olympics on TV, the loss of audiences and the dazzling display of sportsmanship has indeed diverted people’s attention from the tragedy of the COVID-19 pandemic-including the host city’s hospital. The description of panic, because the recurrence of the infection caused a shortage of beds.
Now, as the Olympic flame is extinguished, the cameras are turned off, and the last remaining athletes go home, the Japanese public needs to weigh the costs and benefits of the IOC’s decision to advance the Summer Olympics during the pandemic.
Analysts say that there is nothing to celebrate. They said that the Olympics will only worsen the COVID-19 epidemic in Japan and burden taxpayers with 15 billion U.S. dollars in bills, even if the International Olympic Committee earns billions of dollars from broadcasting rights.
“Japan’s day-to-day workers are not doing any good,” said Jules Boykoff, a former Olympic athlete and professor of political science at the University of the Pacific. “The International Olympic Committee has decided to use health as a bet to host an Olympic Games that can bring economic benefits to the IOC.”
Speaking too early?
According to official data, since the opening of the Olympic Games on July 23, approximately 170,000 people in Japan have been infected with COVID-19. At least 178 people died. Tokyo-which was in a state of emergency until the end of August-is recording a record number of cases, with new infections reaching a pandemic high of 5,042 on Thursday.
The total number of cases in Japan has now exceeded 1 million, and a total of 15,309 people have died. These figures are low compared to those in most countries in the world, but because Japanese hospitals are on the verge of collapse, only a quarter of the Japanese public has been vaccinated, and experts worry that the number of infections and deaths may rise sharply. There are also increasing calls for a nationwide state of emergency and amending the constitution to allow the authorities to implement the kind of strict blockade seen in other parts of the world.
The International Olympic Committee denies any connection between the Olympics and the surge of coronavirus in Japan.
The organization said on Saturday that its daily testing program for athletes and the “bubble system” that separates those participating in the Olympics from the wider Japanese public have prevented transmission between the two groups. The company said that since July 1st, a total of 430 positive cases have been recorded and more than 630,000 screening tests have been conducted.
Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga agreed with the IOC’s assessment.
“I don’t think the Tokyo Olympics is the reason for the surge,” he told reporters on Friday.
However, analysts disputed this assessment, and some people said that it is too early to draw conclusions on whether the bubble really has a firm footing.
Kei Sato, an associate professor at the Institute of Medical Sciences at the University of Tokyo, said: “The enthusiasm in the bubble seems to be much lower than in central Tokyo, which shows that the bubble has played a role to some extent.” “But it may be too early to say.”
Attention and money
However, others said that 430 people (most of them Japanese officials and contractors) tested positive, indicating that there were more bubbles than the organizers claimed.
“New cases are reported every day. Unless all of these are brought directly from overseas, it cannot be said that the bubble has gained a foothold,” said Satoko Itani, an associate professor at Kansai University in Japan.
Although “it may be challenging to prove that there is a direct causal relationship between the positive cases of those participating in the Olympics and the surge in Tokyo’s coronavirus,” Itani said that the impact of hosting the Olympics on people’s behavior is “obvious”. This kind of false normality and “de facto green light travel”.
They added that the television coverage of the past two weeks has also focused on “computing medals”-Japan has won a record 27 gold medals this time-rather than reporting on the rapidly deteriorating situation there.
All of this ultimately led to contempt for coronavirus safety measures.
In fact, local media reported the “party atmosphere” in some neighborhoods of Tokyo. People ignored the fines for violating the city’s emergency regulations and swarmed into bars to watch the Olympic games.
“Holding the Olympic Games and the world rally in Tokyo sends the wrong signal to people,” said Barbara Hortis, a sociologist and deputy director of the German Japanese Institute in Tokyo. “If the Olympics are held at the same time, why insist on the’self-restraint’ that the government expects? When the whole world is traveling to them, why shouldn’t they travel all over the country?”
She said that Yoshihide Suga hopes to host a successful Olympic Games, which “prevents the government from doing its utmost to fight the epidemic.” “Attention and money have been diverted from the fight against COVID.”
The difference in measures taken inside and outside the Olympic venues clearly reflects this negligence.
“Due to the high coverage of large-scale testing and vaccination, the infection rate in the village remains at a low level. This is in sharp contrast to the situation outside the village-the coverage of testing and vaccination is low, the number of cases is increasing rapidly, and hospital care is overwhelmed. “Pointed out Kenji Shibuya, a famous Japanese public health expert.
“This clearly shows that unless the epidemic inside and outside the Olympic venues is resolved, hosting a safe and secure Olympic Games is extremely challenging.”
Shibuya pointed out that the decision of the International Olympic Committee to promote the Olympics ignores the wishes of the Japanese public. He said that the 2020 Tokyo Olympics “has left scars on Japanese society” and exacerbated division and mistrust.
Test Suga
Yoshihide Suga faces competition from the party leadership before the election to be held later this year, so the most dissatisfied politician is Yoshihide Suga. A survey conducted by the Asahi Shimbun on Monday showed that Yoshihide Suga’s approval rating fell to a record low of 28% for the first time since he took office.
Donna Weeks, professor of political science at Musashino University in Tokyo, said that the test for Yoshihide Suga will be how he responds to the worsening pandemic.
He and his allies also need to convince his voters that the increase in numbers is “not their fault, nor is it the result of the Olympics.”
She said: “This is a fine line,” she added: “The other question is whether they can increase the vaccination rate more effectively, and the vaccination rate is still quite slow.”
Only time can figure out the true cost of hosting the Olympic Games in Japan, and the Paralympic Games will be held on August 24.
Although some damage can be calculated and restored, as Itani of Kansai University pointed out, “the lives that are being lost now and in the future are impossible.”
By then, the biggest winner seems to be the International Olympic Committee, which will leave the Tokyo Olympics unscathed with its broadcast revenue of billions of dollars.
[ad_2]
Source link