Japan needs to cancel the Olympics. This very modern, industrialised and affluent nation should know better. This country appears to be blinded by the spotlight that it may get upon it from the games. Japan cannot remain complacent.
I believe the country needs to announce now, in no uncertain words, that the global nations cannot congregate as planned, for the ‘great games to start’ given the grave horrific scenes unfolding in many parts of the globe.
What else will move the minds of the Japanese government? How many more deaths and thousands of burning corpses need to be shown on the daily television screens to the Japanese Prime Minister or the chairperson of the International Olympics Committee (IOC), for them to come to their senses?
I believe Japan cannot hold even the slightest hope of showcasing such a major event in a short two months’ time, given what is unfolding around us internationally.
The Japanese Government has to be decisive, definitive, and firm. Without ‘doublespeak’, and without mincing words, the Prime Minister of Japan needs to loudly and clearly announce to the world that the Olympics has been cancelled.
This will allow all — the prospective participants, the organisers and the athletes — to go on with the more important tasks that the world finds itself preoccupied with at the moment.
Presently, all parties are in the doldrums, not knowing anything that may unfold — imagine if you were an athlete, what would you be going through right now with all this uncertainty.
Yes, no pussy-footing and no wavering. We need to be decisive in these moments of pain and suffering.
Given that the entire world is in peril — when a number of waves of the COVID-19 disease are ravaging many nations and the SARS-CoV-2 itself also continues to mutate — it is becoming very elusive to manage.
Despite the impact that the virus has had on the global community, it is shocking to note that reportedly only between 1 and 2.6 per cent (that is between one and three in 100 people) have been vaccinated in Japan.
From this type of data, we can say that almost the entire population is not vaccinated — a shocking, scary and horrendous revelation — one can even call a downright scandalous situation for Japan.
How could Japan get it so wrong is my question? This is a horrendous and scandalous miscalculation on the part of the Japanese, who while harbouring great hopes of running the Olympics, even without spectators, did not even care to immunise their own population.
It is a fact that many thousands of local and international volunteers are often required to manage the running of such large international games — including security personnel, crowd controllers, referees, games village hosts, airport arrival and departure hosts, prize-giving ceremony hosts, technical and logistical staff members, and above all the home nation putting up one of the greatest spectacles for the opening and the closing ceremony.
Many thousands of local Japanese populations need to take part and to be actively involved, and cannot be allowed to do so without immunisation.
All these participants would be expected to work in close proximity with the international athletes, international visitors and international diplomats and high-level dignitaries from nearly two hundred nations.
Imagine if the Olympics become the primary dissemination point of the SARS-CoV-2 virus or of the many mutants like B.1.167 doing the rounds in over 40-50 nations internationally and creating havoc in the Asian nations like Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand and India at the moment including B.1.167.2 in the UK at the moment.
The several strains of the virus, if even a trivial breakout happened either in the opening or closing ceremony, or during the proceedings proper, or whilst living within the Olympic village, may well easily be transmitted back internationally, to as many as 200 nations.
This will mean geometric chain feedback and a flareup of COVID-19 cases in the entire world, like wildfire and like a time bomb, could be the death knell of many human beings.
While the entire world is in peril and on the verge of total destruction economically, the Olympics could become a game changer, — the final straw to break the camel’s neck, so to speak.
Whatever precautions the Japanese say that they would undertake if given a chance, the world cannot take any gamble from this event going wrong.
I believe the Japanese people want the event to be cancelled, but I believe their government is not so eager for that to happen.
Masked Japanese protesters often hold signs reading ‘stop the 2021 murder Olympic’ in Tokyo, Japan, where the Summer Olympics are slated for July and August 2021. The Japanese capital is now under a state of emergency, as it logs new record high COVID-19 contagions.
The illness is so terrible that a state of emergency in Tokyo has been extended until the end of May to fight the blow-out of the virus. In spite of this, the Japanese leaders maintain that the games must go on, or remain silent.
“We are putting all our efforts into stemming the spread of infections,” Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga said last week, asserting that despite concerns, Tokyo can still host a “safe and secure Olympics” this July and August.
An online requisition to abandon the Olympics, which went live last Wednesday, has so far gathered more than 310,000 signatures.
“With the rise of COVID-19, we urge the IOC, the Japanese government, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government, and the organising committee to make the right decision and cancel the event as soon as possible,” Utsunomiya Kenji, the Japanese lawyer who authored the petition, said in a news release.
“I do not understand the reason for holding the Olympics when our medical care system is already in a state of collapse,” a Japanese nurse who signed the petition said.
“As much as I feel sorry for the athletes, there are others who I feel sorrier for,” she added during a protest against the Olympics that took place on May 9, 2021, in Tokyo, Japan.
“The IOC is being extremely irresponsible,” another petitioner wrote.
The IOC president, Thomas Bach is set to visit Japan in mid-May to meet with PM Suga. A state of emergency that had been in effect in Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto, and Hyogo since April 25 was extended until the end of May on Friday, and it was being broadened to include even more territories, as the disease spreads.
“Gold medals are being given priority over people’s lives,” activist Misako Ichimura said at an Olympic protest, according to ‘The Wall Street Journal’.
Ichimura had been a staunch anti-Olympic protester since Japan was awarded these games in 2013, back when most Japanese people were very supportive of hosting them. But Japan has now recorded more coronavirus deaths in the first four months of 2021 than it did in all of 2020, and a snail’s pace vaccination campaign in the country is souring public sentiment.
“I don’t want to see the Olympics worsen the situation that Japan is currently in!” one petitioner wrote online.
Dark days are yet on the horizon for Japan, with or without the Olympics.
Whatever the case, some politicians are known to take the political-suicide route, taking with them their people to the chasm of tragedy and ruin.
Appearing blinded to unfolding events globally and even on their own turf, I believe the thoughts of all the glitz and glamour of the great Olympics games — ‘the games that startle and stop the entire nations of the world’ — continues to cloud the thoughts and decisions of the Japanese PM Suga.
- Dr Sushil K Sharma is an associate professor of Meteorology at the Fiji National University. These are his views and may not be necessarily shared by The Fiji Times.
