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.
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.
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.