Japan’s Toxic Olympics: 10,000 Deaths and more to come

There is a Japanese saying, (悪因悪果) that “from bad beginnings come bad endings”. Holding the Tokyo 2020 Olympics in the midst of a pandemic will not end well.

The Tokyo 2020 Olympics begin with a bribe and lie. That lie was told to the world when Prime Minister Abe assured them that Tokyo 2020 Olympics would be safe because the nuclear disaster at Fukushima was under control. It wasn’t under control then and it isn’t now. Deadly radioactive waste is spilling from 8000 corroded containers on site, the company running the operation, Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings, will dump the tons of radioactive water on the site into the ocean in two years. They will keep dumping the water for years after, because sea water has to be pumped into the core to keep cooling the remains of the reactor. 

The Tokyo 2020 Olympics also begin with a bribe. That bride was given from the government through the Japan Olympic Committee (JOC) and channeled  by Dentsu, the largest advertising firm in Japan, to former members of the IOC (International Olympic Commission) to make sure that Japan won the bid. The French authorities investigated and the head of Japan’s Olympic commission resigned in disgrace. No one at the IOC or the JOC gives a fuck.

It bears repeating, if Fukushima nuclear disaster was really under control when Prime Minister Abe made that lie in 2014, the Japanese government wouldn’t be unilaterally deciding to dump nuclear contaminated waste into the ocean two years from now.

Now Japan claims that it has the pandemic under control. 

“Come to Tokyo! It’s perfectly safe!” 

It’s so safe that the government has banned attendance at all sporting events starting today—and plans to hold the world’s largest sporting event in three months. The safety protocols in place are underwhelming.

The 2020  Olympics which are very likely to be a catalyst for creating new and more terrible variance of the coronavirus, looks like a biological nuclear disaster waiting to happen. But just as Japan ignored warnings and coverups that led to the 2011 deadly disaster which displaced 160,000 people and will pollute the world for years to come, they are ignoring all sensible arguments to postpone or cancel the Olympics this year

The Tokyo Olympics are not something that the Japanese people want, they are something that a few old men in power want to hold desperately so they have something to add to their retirement scrapbooks. The majority of the Japanese people, nearly 80% do not want the Olympics to be held this year or want it be canceled. That is wise. Japan is in the middle of a state of emergency as coronavirus number surge here again, and anemic and poorly thought out countermeasures failed to stop the spread of the disease. People are dying and their dying faster than they have before. It took one year for the first 4000 people to die (January 16 2020–January 6 2021). The next 4000 died in less than two months. Today, 10,000 people will have died from COVID19 here. Neighboring countries in Asia have done much better.

At one point in time Japan’s Minister of Finance, bragged that Japan was able to handle the coronavirus without lockdowns or other stringent measures because of the superiority of the Japanese people. He can’t make that claim now. If you compare Japan to the United States or other countries in Europe, it seems to be doing very well, at least in terms of mortality. However if you could compare Japan to its Asian neighbors, it’s the worst kid on the block. Japan’s per 1000 people testing ratio is worse than Kazakhstan. It has refused to follow the successful examples of other countries in the region. Now there is a bit of a mystery as to why the death toll in Asia is so low, with theories that the genes are different or that an earlier less virulent form of the disease is already given people immunity, are that the BCG vaccine which was widely used in Asia especially the so-called Tokyo strain, gave those who received it what is called trained immunity. No one knows the answer. But here’s how it shakes out

Taiwan which has 1/5 the population of Japan, was the first country to warn the world of the, deadly virus, originating in China. Taiwan, thanks to strong leadership and a swift response, has done a remarkable job of containing the virus, without vaccines, so the people there are now living more or less a normal life. Korea, Vietnam, Thailand, Singapore, have all dealt with the virus better than Japan, if you count the number of deaths as a bear meter.

Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, Hong Kong each country has had less than 100 deaths. Taiwan has only had 12 deaths. Even when adjusting the numbers of deaths to the population of each country, Japan has done a dismal job.

Japan now has 10,000 people dead from the coronavirus and more to come. Why has Japan done such a dismal job of protecting its own people from this virus?

Because time and time again the insane desire to put on the Olympics no matter what, has encouraged the country to take half ass measures to pretend that everything is all right, to squander opportunities to get the disease under control, and to put saving face before saving lives.

Tokyo is now in its 3rd State of Emergency. It will be lifted when the head of the IOC comes to visit the country. “We can’t have the IOC visiting Tokyo during a state of emergency, can we?”

Ask yourself, are the Tokyo 2020 Olympics worth holding if even one person dies as a result? How many deaths are acceptable?

Japan has wanted to save face over saving lives from the first reports of the deadly virus being issued from Taiwan—-the same day, January 16th, 2020 Japan had its first COVID19 case. When the infected cruise ship, The Diamond Princess, arrived on the shores of Japan, this nation refused to let the passengers be taken off board and treated at hospitals, because they didn’t want the numbers of infected and dead to be counted as Japan’s number. That wouldn’t look good for the Olympic Committee. So they kept them on board, effectively turning the ship into a giant floating Petri dish.

Then the government let the Japanese passengers leave the ship after insufficient testing and despite warnings that passengers not showing symptoms might still be carrying the disease. They went home by public transport—spreading the disease nationwide. Several turned out to be infected—the total number hasn’t been made public.

It also became clear that health care workers who had been aboard the Diamond Princess and staff from the Ministry of Health had become infected. However, at first the Japanese government refused to test them. Refused. And when they did test them, sure enough, there were infections.

Japan’s first cluster of coronovirus cases off the Diamond Princess was the Ministry of Health. It has been a clusterfuck ever since. The Olympics obsessed Abe government as well as Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike seemed unconcerned about the coronavirus for weeks. Abe wined and dined the media while the virus was spreading. Koike barely mentioned the word until—-the Olympics were officially postponed on March 23rd 2020. The next day, Koike sounded the alarm bells, calling for a lockdown and the number of reported coronavirus cases miraculously surged. What a coincidence!

Japan has ignored the successful examples of other nations and steadfastly refused to test widely or test wisely. In the midst of the pandemic, the Japanese government ran a domestic tourism campaign, Go To Travel, which ensured that there was nowhere safe in the country from the coronavirus. Misguided efforts to prioritize the Olympics, to make Japan appear safer than it is, have delayed serious countermeasures and as a result, people have died. The mismanagement is so great that it is equivalent to professional negligence resulting in death and injury.

You could and you will argue that Japan has done so much better than the US or England. The relatives and loved ones of the 10,000 dead will tell you this irrelevant.

The Tokyo Olympics have already killed hundreds of people. They have been killed because priorities were screwed. If the Olympics continues, more people will die. Is even one death acceptable to hold what are, once you take away the hyperbole, simply games? Even one of Japan’s top athletes was brave enough to say what should be said, that human lives were more important than an international competition.

We know that the IOC has no moral compass. They have no qualms about hosting Olympics in China which is committing general genocide against a minority of its people. The only reason the IOC is not holding the Olympics in North Korea is the hermit Kingdom just doesn’t have enough money.

We should change the name of the IOC to stand for the International Oligarch Club, because that’s whom they appear to be serving.

Almost every media outlet in Japan is a sponsor of the Olympics, and having become a sponsor they have also become an accomplice in promoting the Olympics above public safety, and they should be ashamed of themselves. They aren’t.

Japan’s Olympic Committee will turn a blind eye to corruption, to bribes, to yakuza influence, to the real possibility that athletes die from heatstroke amidst Japan’s notoriously brutal summers.

Maybe I’m naïve, but if Japan and or rather the government of Japan, and the IOC actually gave a damn about the ideals espoused in the Olympics, they would suck up their losses and postpone the games to next year. And they hold them in the autumn (as they did in 1964) so fewer people die, or cancel the damn things altogether.

Japan’s Finance Minister Taro Aso also who asserted so stupidly that Japan’s so-called victory over the novel coronavirus was due to Japanese superior was right about one thing. He called the the Tokyo 2020 Olympics “cursed”

He’s right. For the sake of all the nations participating in the optics, and all the people living in Japan, it’s time to end that curse you. We only need two magic words, “Postpone” or “Cancel”.

Let’s see if the greedy clowns running the Tokyo 2020 Olympics have any decency and do the right thing, but I suspect if compassion were a Olympic event, the organizers wouldn’t even win a bronze medal.

The Tokyo Olympics (#Toxic2020) are a terrible idea in the middle of a pandemic—and were bought with a bribe and won with a lie. They do indeed seem to be cursed. If they are held as planned, it is likely to spread new and deadly variants of COVID19 to the public in Japan, and participants here may take back, along with their medals, new and deadly variants from Japan.

Time to end the curse. Let the IOC and the JOC know how you feel, before it’s too late.