# 2020 Japan Olympic Games: do we really need to have them THIS summer?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2020-japan-olympic-games-do-we-really-need-to-have-them-this-summer/940061>\
**Category:** The Game Room\
**Tags:** olympic-sports-track\
**Created:** [April 15, 2021, 9:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2020-japan-olympic-games-do-we-really-need-to-have-them-this-summer/940061 "2021-04-15T09:57:15Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\
**Post date:** [April 17, 2021, 12:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2020-japan-olympic-games-do-we-really-need-to-have-them-this-summer/940061/21 "2021-04-17T00:51:25Z")

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> [@Fretful\_Porpentine](#):
>
> This is not to say that the situation in Japan couldn’t get bad enough to force them to cancel – exponential growth can be brutal, and for some reason, they are lagging way behind pretty much all other wealthy countries and lots of middle-income ones in terms of vaccinations – but in terms of raw numbers, this is not a particularly large wave as yet.

I was going to mention that fact about vaccinations – Japan has just about the worst rate of vaccinations so far in the developed world – as of April 15, less than 1% of the population had received at least one dose. Not sure about the reason, but this sounds like a potentially serious problem for a major influx of visitors.

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**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\
**Post date:** [April 17, 2021, 6:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2020-japan-olympic-games-do-we-really-need-to-have-them-this-summer/940061/22 "2021-04-17T06:10:35Z")

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Yeah on first draft I said the threshold _should be_ much lower, but at some point during editing (probably correcting me bad grammars), it inadvertently became _is_.

Anyway, probably the reality is somewhere in the middle. With just 3 months to go, it’s extremely embarrassing, and will cause a lot of chaos, to cancel now, so officials might downplay initial warning signs. But I still think the alarm bells will ring long before anything like US case rates.

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**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\
**Post date:** [April 17, 2021, 1:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/2020-japan-olympic-games-do-we-really-need-to-have-them-this-summer/940061/23 "2021-04-17T13:05:26Z")

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The chaos and loss of face form a close-in cancellation (and for something of this scale, anything less than 18 months is close in) should (that word again) be offset against the chaos and loss of face after the Olympics are held this summer as scheduled and prove to be a superspreader event infecting millions extra around the world plus vast numbers of Japanese at home.

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