Olympics - Climate and Plague

We've been watching the Tokyo Summer Olympics 2020 the past few days and we're starting to wonder how long they will continue with the games as the infections and heat keep rising. Everything seems to be off.

It was a major blow to Japan and Tokyo last year when the Olympic games were postponed a year because of the pandemic. As the year progressed many people in Japan thought the games should have been cancelled but of course big business won out and planning for the games continued. 

The other factor has been the recent summer heat waves in Japan due to climate change. Long before the pandemic Japan was creating an infrastructure to deal with the expected wave of heat strokes and related problems that would impact on the large numbers of people expected to descend on Tokyo including spectators, press and athletes. However, as the games have moved forward this year and the pandemic seems to have had a recent resurgence in Japan the games are all being played without anyone attending the events as spectators. It is weird to watch the games on TV without anyone attending. The empty stands has been somewhat disconcerting for the Olympics but we've really become used to seeing that over the past year for all kinds of sporting events.

The officials in Japan consider it a silver lining that despite all the problems with the pandemic this year they do not need to worry about thousands of spectators getting heat stroke while watching Olympic games.

Becky and I have always loved watching the Olympics on TV and this year is no exception. We do enjoy the games, the spectacle and the stories about the athletes but this year is certainly different in so many ways. This was also the first time in many years that we did not watch any part of the opening ceremony. Watching the games has been a challenge since we dropped cable almost five years ago when we retired. For some reason we have never been able to get NBC channel 2 on our digital antennae. It just doesn't work for that channel and we really haven't wanted it for anything in particular except now for the Olympics which of course is an NBC event. We see much of the games on USA channel and NBCSN through the Sling TV service we subscribe to but we are not paying anything anywhere just to watch the NBC regular network channel that is available on their new Peacock streaming service.

Now the pandemic seems to be rising again with the delta variant and infections are on the rise around the world and especially in Japan where few people have been vaccinated. Many athletes have tested positive for the virus and some whole teams have been prohibited from participating. Things don't look so good and it's only the third day of competition. The games are scheduled over the next couple of weeks with the closing ceremony on August 8 but I wouldn't be surprised in the games are cancelled sometime before then.