News Desk :
The Olympic flame went dark in Japan on August 8th, closing out the uncanny spectacle of a pandemic-era games. When the Tokyo Olympics were first delayed last year, organisers hoped they would become a symbol of how humankind overcame the coronavirus. That proved premature. Instead the games, held in empty stadiums amid widespread public opposition, are likely to be remembered as an example of how strange and fraught life became during the pandemic.
For Japan, Tokyo 2020 (as organisers insisted on calling the games) will leave a mixed legacy. The country has set several records during them. Its Olympic team racked up 27 gold medals and 58 total medals, both the most in its history. It has a new youngest-ever gold medallist, a 13-year-old skateboarder, Nishiya Momiji. And it has achieved new heights in its daily covid-19 caseload, which exceeded 15,700 on the eve of the closing ceremony.
Many Japanese celebrated the athletic triumphs, despite misgivings about the games before they started. Barred from attending most events in person, sports fans gathered at outdoor venues to try to catch glimpses of cyclists or skateboarders. Such enthusiasm did not rub off on the event as a whole or on its organisers, as Japanese leaders had hoped. While the International Olympic Committee (IOC) gave Suga Yoshihide, the prime minister, an honorary gold medal, the approval ratings for Mr Suga’s cabinet among the Japanese public have dipped below 35%-another new record. The tensions have been on display from the start. On opening night, a long column of protesters marched through central Tokyo to the new Olympic stadium. During quiet moments in the ceremony, their chants-“Stop the Olympics”-could be heard inside the mostly empty venue. Farther up the same street, fans gathered, streaming the ceremony on their smartphones and glancing up to catch fireworks and drone shows rising above the stadium’s rafters. Throughout the competition, Olympians shuttled between hotels and venues, where they competed in front of scatterings of volunteers, officials and journalists. Around the host cities, reminders of the games were muted, with almost none of the big crowds and good cheer that usually accompany such events. “It’s a little lonely,” lamented Iizuka Masaki, a collector of sports pins who waited last week outside the heavily guarded gates to the Tokyo stadium in the hope of finding partners from abroad to trade with.
Officials have rejoiced that the games do not appear to have become the superspreader event some feared. Over 50,000 people from more than 200 nations came to Japan; just 436 of them tested positive, mostly residents of Japan. Although a few athletes-and the entire Greek artistic swimming team (yes, that is an Olympic sport)-had to drop out because of positive tests, the competitions have unfolded smoothly. A handful of athletes and support staff have had their credentials revoked for breaking protocol and wandering around, but as yet no evidence has emerged linking reckless Olympians to viral clusters among the wider population.
Yet outside the Olympic bubble, the spread of the Delta variant has left hospitals under strain. The government decreed last week that only critically ill or high-risk patients would be admitted to hospitals. Others must recover at home. (Deaths have remained relatively low, thanks in part to high vaccination rates among the elderly.) The state of emergency in Tokyo and Okinawa was expanded on August 2nd to include four more prefectures.
Many public health experts believe the Olympics are at least partly to blame for the uptick. Since the start of the pandemic, however, Japan’s ability to contain it has relied on co-operation from the public. The government lacks the legal authority to impose strict lockdowns; its emergency declarations are, in essence, requests for people to limit their movements and for businesses to close early and stop serving alcohol. The current state of emergency is the fourth. Fatigue has set in.
Holding the Olympics reinforced the complacency. Foot traffic, for instance, has fallen far less during the current state of emergency than it did during past ones. “Since the Olympics are being held, it makes people think it’s okay to go out,” said Onishi Moeri, who joined a crowd taking pictures beside the Olympic rings last week. It has been, as Mr Iizuka mused, “a very unusual Olympics”. (Courtesy: The Economist)
