Japanese newspaper and official Olympic sponsor, the Asahi Shimbun, published a staff editorial yesterday urging Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga to either cancel or delay the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, which are scheduled to begin July 23rd. The newspaper is one of the oldest and largest newspapers in Japan, with a print circulation of over six million copies a day. The editorial led with the following blunt call:
The COVID-19 pandemic has yet to be brought under control, rendering it inevitable that the government will have to declare another extension of the state of emergency currently covering Tokyo and other prefectures.
It is simply beyond reason to hold the Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics this summer.
More specifically, the editorial pointed to fears that holding the Games as scheduled would endanger the health and safety of Japanese citizens. Cases in Japan have spiked in recent weeks, leading to a state of emergency throughout much of the country, and only a few percent of the country’s citizens have been vaccinated.
The editorial continues to argue that, even if the Games are held in such a way to minimize contact between the athletes and the general public, there remains of risk of overwhelming Japan’s healthcare system.
According to a survey Asahi Shimbun conducted, only 14% of Japanese citizens favor the Olympics being held as currently scheduled, with the remainder split roughly evenly between canceling the Olympics totally, and delaying them once again, perhaps until 2022.
Despite the apparent feelings of much of the Japanese public and now of the prominent sponsors, both Japanese politicians and International Olympic Committee officials continue to reaffirm their belief that the Games will be held this summer with minimal risk. Leaders such as Japanese Olympic minister Seiko Hashimto and IOV Vice President John Coates have pointed to the five Olympic test events that Japan has hosted recently as evidence that things should be able to proceed this summer, despite much of Japan continuing to be under a state of emergency less than two months away from Opening Ceremonies.
Let every single participating athelete/coach to take the pfizer vaccine(I think Pfizer donated to IOC), then attend the meet with daily test. There is no further excuse to say the Olympics will bring covid to local community. The local workers/officials/referrees all go through same in the Olympic village. Its just 30,000 vaccines which pfizer can provide.
Between donations from Pfizer, China, BioNTech, and athletes’ home nation vaccine programs, every participant in the Olympic Games will have the opportunity to get vaccinated (especially since so many of them train in the US).
Whether they will or not is a different matter.
Asahi is a left lean news paper and largely opposes the current LDP.
Asahi news -TV and newspaper- CNN of Japan.
I’m hopeful but not optimistic that the Games will go ahead. There is growing opposition and fear mongering which might lead to their cancellation. This despite athletes being one of the most tested and controlled groups.
Why are they so slow with vaccinations in Japan?
First, Japan has always been a risk averse country and this has carried over into our vaccine deployment. Despite vaccines being administered millions of times around the world successfully, no Japanese politicians were willing to stick their neck out and push the vaccines out quicker, on the off-chance that they’d receive backlash from their voter base for 1-in-a-million side effects. A likely reason for this degree of care from politicians is because the elderly here account for a very large portion of votes and vaccine skepticism seems to be unusually high in this age group compared to others.
Because of this, Japan insisted on conducting their own trials, which slowed things down considerably for obvious reasons.
Japan also has ridiculous… Read more »
We knew from the beginning that the whole process of developing and rolling out vaccines historically takes longer than this…they should’ve gone for the 2 year postponement option when it was originally on the table. Water under the bridge and whatever consequences come from that short sighted decision will be what they’re going to be. Blame it on that decision solely, blame shifting doesn’t seem valid.
The euros were succesful with only 4 covid cases reported now. I hope they will not cancel again, even empty stands are a good option. It will be really depressing for all the athletes that have finished their trials and trained hard for this.
Most people in Europe are already vaccinated. That isn’t the case in Japan.
If the vaccine is effective, and most if not all athletes/coaches/staff are to be vaccinated, wouldn’t it be a safe assumption that that the game participants would not be contributing to spreading the virus?
Enough is enough, let these athletes compete.
Disgraceful behavior from Japan if the olympics is cancelled yet again so early before the games. It’s amusing to see them try to generate an image of themselves as a duly-responsible country in response to Covid yet in actuality they’ve continued life completely as normal with hundreds of people being crammed into subway carts at a time. Just with masks on!
Hundreds? Try thousands… the entire pandemic…