On Monday, Japan declared that they have reached a Level 4 Covid crisis. A nation being declared Level 4 means people are advised to not travel to that country. People being advised not to travel to Japan seems like a straightforward order however some might think otherwise.
Originally the Olympics scheduled for Tokyo in 2020 was canceled and postponed until July of 2020. Now the Olympics are scheduled from July 23 through August 8. Even before, people already begged the International Olympics Committee(IOC) to cancel the event scheduled for 2021. With Japan’s new Level 4 crisis, the IOC might be inclined to cancel this year’s Olympics. However, on Friday, the IOC said that despite whatever new health crisis appears, the current schedule for the 2021 Olympics will remain untouched. In response, Japan is attempting to get as many people fully vaccinated as possible before people start visiting Tokyo in time for the Olympics. Now protesters are asking how far the IOC will go before they cancel this year’s Olympics.
Questions:
What do you think would be a solution that everyone could agree upon? Or is there one at all?
Are the Olympics so important that it’s worth risking Covid for?
Do you think Japan’s effort to get people vaccinated will be enough to make the Olympics justifiably safe?
Sources:
https://olympics.com/ioc/news/tokyo-2020-enters-operational-delivery-mode
https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/japan-olympics-us-covid-travel-advisory/index.html
https://deadline.com/2021/05/tokyo-olympics-japan-will-be-held-state-of-emergency-ioc-1234762448/
4 comments:
I think a possible solution to this issue would be to make the Olympics only accessible to the athletes going there and to vaccinated citizens of Japan. Much like what the US did with sports leagues, games will still be held but without global attendance, streaming the games on television or streaming platforms. Thus the games will still be held, those who were frustrated with delays can watch them on their televisions, and those who were worried about the possible spread of covid can rest assured that there won't be a massive flux of potential virus carriers coming to the country. While Japan may be mobilizing an effort to vaccinate it's citizens, with only around 2 months late, I don't think 100% of people will end up being vaccinated, so I wouldn't think that they would be able to make the country safe enough to open up for the Olympics, thus my prior solution seems to be the best so far.
There seems to be no "perfect" solution for this event or Japan. If it were any other event, I think most would side with public health experts and Japan and flat out cancel/postpone it further. However, being the Olympics and usually scheduled for every four years the athletes and the millions watching from home want this event to take place. In order to make this event at all better for Japan, I think it would be very important for all countries participating to help Japan in vaccinated their citizens and all involved. Countries with vaccine surpluses should look to donate their supplies to Japan to hopefully move the country down in crisis levels. Moving the Olympics to another location would be very difficult as would changing the date with the winter Olympics scheduled for 2022. I hope the Olympics do not worsen the crisis in Japan, but I do understand where the IOC is coming from in wanting to put on the events for the athletes and to make use of all the infrastructure Japan built.
I think that with any other sport event, there would be no problem postponing the event. But since it is the Olympics and it only takes place every 4 years, it's an extremely big event for athletes. While I would prefer that the event be postponed/cancelled due to the rising number of cases in Japan, it's more likely that they change the restrictions for the Olympics. Like sporting events in the US, they should just keep the event open for athletes to fly in and keep the audience to vaccinated Japanese citizens. The event is always being televised anyways, so I think its a better choice to just refuse any audience members from out of the country
It'd be such a let-down for athletes for the corona-virus to take yet another important event away. However, athletes wouldn't be able to get the full experience of winning or participating in the olympics without the crowd, or in other words the atmosphere. The only athletes who would really care about the postponing were older athletes who were planning on having their last competition then. The best solution in terms of the number cases is just to continue and postpone the olympics.
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