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Japan to stage Tokyo Olympics without overseas spectators

japantoday.com

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Re: Japan to stage Tokyo Olympics without overseas spectators

#131

Post by sandworm101 »

book-sandworm wrote: post #46

This is such a painful situation for Japan. When I visited a couple a years ago the preparations were still going full force. They were so proud and looking forward to hosting it. Really think they are between a rock and a hard place with any decision. This together with all the sub-human conditions the workers in Qatar for the football world championship make it seem like organising events like this not something I…

>> make it seem like organising events like this not something I would feel comfortable with hosting in my own country.

Vancouver Olympics 2010. No, it did not make a profit, and there was a fiasco involving how the athletes village was converted into condos, but the city did not go crazy over preparations. Most of the venues were already there. Whistler was already a winter sports mecca. Vancouver didn't need to build new airports or erect new mountains. Things like highway improvements and sports facilities were not left to rot after the event. They are all still there being used today. And it was canada. Canada knows how to do winter stuff. I think it was the first olymics where the ice doctors didn't hide the fact that every winter olymics has a Canadian coin buried under center ice.

The olympics isn't something that a city does to turn a profit, but that doesn't mean it has to bankrupt itself either.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Winter_Olympics

Re: Japan to stage Tokyo Olympics without overseas spectators

#132

Post by speeder »

dfxm12 wrote: post #127
speeder wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am Brazillian and we had that reaction too. The World Cup was more popular, but still wasn't widely accepted as some people think it would be. The Olympics was outright hated, so many stupid shenanigans happened there (like demolishing a NEW stadium, to build another identical one, just because the seatings positions were slightly bad). So no, you don't need to be first world to recognize how stupid hosting the Oly…

just because the seatings positions were slightly bad). A lot of the IOC (and probably FIFA) requirements seem silly. Pretty soon, we're going to see the Olympics go back and forth between LA and Paris just because they're the only cities that naturally have the required infrastructure, unless there's a change.

Not if they keep changing stuff.

The stadium in question was the one for bicycle racing, it was built for the Pan-American games.

Right after those games, IOC decided to change the percentage of seats allowed behind pillars.

So they concluded the solution, instead of reducing amount of seats or something, was to demolish the entire stadium, and build a new one with the support pillars in new locations.

Re: Japan to stage Tokyo Olympics without overseas spectators

#133

Post by michaelt »

Blikkentrekker wrote: post #73
toyg wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think "the world accepts it", but they are resigned to the fact that the moneyed interests powering these events are unstoppable. Which may or may not be true. Some of the opposition is even tactically waiting for the best time to make a stand - which might well be when the country is most exposed. See for example how the Yemeni Houti rebels tried to hit a Formula E event in Saudi Arabia with missiles. The wo…

The world could easily pressure Qatar into abolishing this, but it does not do so. We're speaking of countries that were willing to wage costly wars on flimsy evidence of w.m.d.'s, that are now not willing to pressure a nation over real evidence of slavery.

The US could indeed pressure Quatar over slavery, or Saudi Arabia over Khashoggi and human rights, or China over Uighur Muslims and emissions, or Russia over Ukraine and corruption, or Iran and North Korea over nuclear weapons, or Israel and all its neighbours to get a move on with the peace process, or the UK about the Irish border and laundering Russian money, or Mexico about border security and the drugs trade, or Myanmar about restoring democratic rule, or Japan about whaling or Turkey about treatment of their Kurdish minority.

But pressuring them all at once, and hard enough to get results? That could leave the US in a lonely spot.

Re: Japan to stage Tokyo Olympics without overseas spectators

#134

Post by Retric »

rjsw wrote: post #112
Retric wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Winter Olympics locations rarely end up as tourist destinations because people take fewer international vacations to cold locations. Summer Olympics have a better shot, and the stadiums can more often be useful long term. But, it’s still low odds of success. The best bet seems to be a lesser known location which can use most of the infrastructure and has some non Olympics tourist destinations. Which isn’t a huge list…

> Winter Olympics locations rarely end up as tourist destinations because people take fewer international vacations to cold locations. I would describe it differently, the facilities used for skiing events are usually already tourist locations, plenty of people take international skiing vacations.

It’s purely a numbers game, ski trips happen but are really a small subset of trips. Meanwhile 1/2 of the Olympic city’s host winter games.

Re: Japan to stage Tokyo Olympics without overseas spectators

#135

Post by rjsw »

Retric wrote: post #134
rjsw wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Winter Olympics locations rarely end up as tourist destinations because people take fewer international vacations to cold locations. I would describe it differently, the facilities used for skiing events are usually already tourist locations, plenty of people take international skiing vacations.

It’s purely a numbers game, ski trips happen but are really a small subset of trips. Meanwhile 1/2 of the Olympic city’s host winter games.

The venues for Olympic Winter games are by definition where people go for ski trips, they may build varying amounts of infrastructure for non-skiing events but they will have an economy already geared around tourism.

Re: Japan to stage Tokyo Olympics without overseas spectators

#136

Post by Blikkentrekker »

legerdemain wrote: post #77
Blikkentrekker wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have read a very interesting theory in that it is about how Japanese is spoken. There is an interesting trick that is often taught to students of Japanese to faithfully reproduce the sounds in the language: that is to cover one's teeth with one's lips while speaking as much as possible, as most of the characteristic sounds of Japanese are caused by this. This greatly reduces the amount of air that escapes as one sp…

Please, no, no more "This is a PEN" Japanese-language chauvinism, I beg you. There is a whole thing in Japan about how the Japanese language has various hidden beneficial qualities, like it's some kind of gift from God. This idea about expelling less air while speaking in Japanese is firmly in that vein, and it got a lot of play on tabloid news shows, and it's total garbage.

So why is it garbage? What do you have to disprove the hypothesis? because I did read it accompanied with measurements that did show that bilingual persons exported less air speaking Japanese vis-à-vis English.

As there is scientific evidence to back up the idea that phonological features of languages affect the spread of diseases:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7263261/

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...

Re: Japan to stage Tokyo Olympics without overseas spectators

#137

Post by LatteLazy »

HeavenFox wrote: post #18

This seems like the worst outcome for Japan and best outcome for the IOC. Japan incurs all the cost of hosting the Olympics while reaping none of the tourist yen, while the IOC gets paid the broadcasting fee. At this point the optimal outcome for Japan is probably to cancel the game altogether. Is it an example of the political pull of the IOC? The Asian culture of face-saving? Or plain old sunk cost fallacy? I hones…

I don't know why they didn't just delay it for 4 years and push the rest back effectively missing 1 games.

Re: Japan to stage Tokyo Olympics without overseas spectators

#138

Post by SonicTheSith »

h0nd wrote: post #126
pablovidal85 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there is a staggering 22% positivity rate in Tokyo today Do you mind citing your source? A quick search got me a 3.3% positivity rate [0] as of today. [0]: https://stopcovid19.metro.tokyo.lg.jp/en/cards/positive-rate...

Sure, same source as original article: https://japantoday.com/category/national/Tokyo-reports-340-c... However, I just saw that the rate is for the whole country, not for Tokyo alone.

Even with the link, I am confused about where the 22% came from...

Re: Japan to stage Tokyo Olympics without overseas spectators

#139

Post by dagw »

newsclues wrote: post #129
HenryBemis wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The upside is that you modernise your city. In this case, they would have receive X thousand/million of tourists, which they won't come. If you travel to Japan (e.g. from Europe) you don't just go for the events. You also say an extra 5-10 days. That is a big loss for the tourist industry, the millions of mouths eating in restaurants, drinking in bars, and on top of the costs/profits, imagien that the state takes a 5…

So we should pick cities in developing countries in need of modernization and have the global community fund it? Instead of incremental improvements to wealthy nations, the Olympics is the opportunity to build up the developing world a as and highlight it for the world to see. If only the IOC was not the peak of corruption

Honestly, it's not the dumbest idea. Shame it will never happen.

Re: Japan to stage Tokyo Olympics without overseas spectators

#140

Post by cdavid »

brigandish wrote: post #114
cdavid wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obesity does not really explain order of magnitude fewer cases, and obesity is much less of a factor than age for mortality. I can't find the numbers now, but it is better to be younger and quite fat than much older and fit. Japan does not lack people above 85 years where the fatality rate is double digit if you catch the disease. The only reasonable answer I have seen so far about Japan is that we don't really know.…

Well, problems with obesity might also correlate with older, wealthier populations but they also looked at that: > The figures are affected by the age structure of national populations and a country’s relative wealth and reporting capacity, but our findings appear to be independent of these contributory factors It's got links to a lot of other studies (admittedly, I'm yet to read those) but the summaries they give se…

Just looking at your second link, the odds to hospitalized w/ a severe obesity (> 35 BMI) is 2.5 higher than people w/ BMI in healthy 20-25 range

Now, according to https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-data/investi..., the risks of hospitalization in 85+ years is more than 10x the risk in 30-39 year old range.

If we're talking about mortality, it is more than 100x difference between those two age ranges.

It is really not comparable: being old is much much worse than being obese as far as hospitalization/mortality goes w/ covid.

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