The Briefing Room
General Category => World News => Topic started by: thackney on June 02, 2021, 04:47:08 pm
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Thousands of Tokyo Olympics volunteers quit - NHK
https://www.reuters.com/lifestyle/sports/thousands-tokyo-olympics-volunteers-quit-nhk-2021-06-02/
Around 10,000 of the 80,000 volunteers who signed up to help at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games have quit, broadcaster NHK reported on Wednesday, citing organisers....
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https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Tokyo-2020-Olympics/Olympics-latest-10-000-volunteers-have-quit-Tokyo-2020
... The Japanese city of Kurume has pulled out of hosting Kenya's pre-Olympics training camp as local COVID-19 infections spread rapidly, Kenya's Olympic committee says. Facilities for training camps have become vaccination venues, the Kenyan statement quotes Kurume authorities as saying, though Japan has provided no immediate confirmation....
...The Tokyo Metropolitan government formally announces it will scrap a plan to hold public viewing of the Olympics in the city's Yoyogi Park. Instead, police and firefighters will be vaccinated in the park from next month....
...Shigeru Omi, head of the government's coronavirus advisory panel, calls on organizers to strengthen control systems and downsize the games.
"Holding the games under the pandemic is usually unthinkable," Omi tells parliament....
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https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/japan/ While it appears to have peaked, Japan has recently experienced a serious surge in cases and deaths.
If one selects the US and Japan on this site's chart, https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations , where ~50% of the US population has received at least one dose of vaccine, a bit over 8% of Japan's has. For whatever reason, Japan is ~4 months behind the US in its vaccination effort and Japan wasn't hit very hard by Covid until very late last year (= not a large population of people who have recovered from Covid), so a very large % of Japan's population is vulnerable to Covid.
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https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/japan/ While it appears to have peaked, Japan has recently experienced a serious surge in cases and deaths...
I suspect they are more concerned with the infected coming into the country than the infection rate already in Japan.
(https://i.postimg.cc/PJJS8W7Q/Capture.jpg)
https://ourworldindata.org/covid-cases
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Yes, "imported" Covid and the Japanese population's high degree of vulnerability are the interlocked concerns.
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Sumpin' tells me there aren't going to be any Olympics in Japan this year, either.
(not that I care).
Try again next year...?
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In other Olympics news, Cuba's baseball team failed to qualify for the Olympics after being bested by Venezuela and Canada. To top it off, the games were in Florida and their star player defected!