San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Pandemic Olympics
Fearing the worst: Could the Tokyo Games
become a superspreader event?
Athletes pulled off the starting blocks?
Entire teams forced to forfeit their Olympic dreams?
It could happen at the Pandemic Olympics. It seems almost inevitable.
“Oh, there will be forfeits,” said Michaela George, an assistant professor of Global Public Health at Dominican University.
In almost every Olympic cycle, the Games arrive cloaked in trepidation. In the shadow of danger and potential death. The Salt Lake City Winter Games took place while America was still reel
ing from 9/11. The Athens Olympics, as the Iraq war was escalating, required terrorism training for sports journalists. Beijing and Sochi came with issues of freedom of speech and movement. London carried the specter of the Underground bombings, and the threat of the Zika virus hung over Rio in 2016. The memories of Munich terrorism and the Atlanta bombings are never far from the Rings.
But there’s never been an Olympics like these: the Superspreader Games.
Delayed for a year while the world wrestled to contain a disease that claimed more than 4 million lives, the Tokyo Olympics are about to happen. Despite the best advice of scientific experts, and despite only 20% of Japan’s population being fully vaccinated, according to the New York Times database.
“I think that bringing people from all around the world together and then dispersing them back around the globe is one of the worst things you can do in the midst of a pandemic,” said UC Berkeley infectious disease expert Dr. John Swartzberg.
The International Olympic Committee has already proclaimed that these “will be the Games that conquered COVID.” That is one more bit of spin from the delusional IOC, the only entity that can cancel the Games and which has steadfastly refused to despite the ravages around the world. The modern Olympics have only been canceled in times of war. These are the first Games to be postponed for a full year. But even buying 12 extra months hasn’t quelled concerns and has only raised more questions about the wisdom and value of holding the event.
“You can look at the Olym
“I think that bringing people from all around the world together and then dispersing them back around the globe is one of the worst things you can do in the midst of a pandemic.” UC Berkeley infectious disease expert Dr. John Swartzberg
pics from two particular sides,” said George, an epidemiologist by training. “I understand that public health doesn’t dictate how we run the world. I understand what the Olympics stand for. I do know how hard the athletes have worked.
“But I don’t believe we are at a place where the Olympics — bringing people from 200 countries to an island in the midst of a pandemic — makes any sense, whatsoever, from a public health perspective.”
So far, the Games have been a miasma of continuously shifting protocols. First foreign spectators were banned. Then a cap was placed on domestic spectators. But after Japan declared a state of emergency this month, virtually all spectators will be banned. The emergency decree will last throughout the Games, as the delta variant of COVID has caused a spike in cases in
Japan and local medical officials have pleaded for authorities to reconsider holding the event.
More than 11,000 athletes from 206 nations are expected to arrive in Japan this month. But those are just the athletes; even without spectators more than 80,000 visitors — support staff, coaches, media — are expected to descend on Japan.
“It’s a lot of people from all over the world,” Swartzberg said. “It’s bad timing. Delta is a real game changer. Here in the U.S., we have a distorted view, because we’re doing so well with vaccinations. But the rest of the world doesn’t have the vaccine access that we do.”
For most of the past year, Japan has done a good job of controlling the spread of the virus. The public is used to wearing masks, accustomed to obeying health mandates. Where Japan has failed is in vaccinating its citizens. A cultural mistrust of vaccinations and a delay in Japanbased clinical trials has led to a painfully delayed rollout.
After a frantic push to get needles into arms in recent weeks, Japan has made some headway. But, despite having one of the oldest average populations in the world, the country still trails 28 others, including Brazil, Turkey, El Salvador and the Dominican Republic.
“It is a nonvaccinated country,” said U.S. softball pitcher Monica Abbott, who has played professionally in Japan for the past decade. “I’ve talked to several people about it and they told me they just don’t believe in it for their country.”
Vaccinations are not required to participate at the Olympics. While the majority of athletes will likely be vaccinated, some have chosen not to be (U.S. swimmer Michael Andrews on July 9 proudly defended his decision not to be vaccinated). Athletes from countries with less access to vaccines may not have had the opportunity.
“It’s the Olympics — you can’t pick and choose the countries that get to compete,” George said.
There will be no bubble, as there has been successfully in some sporting events, like the 2020 NBA Finals. All the COVID protocols for the Games will be based on contact tracing. Participants will be monitored through apps on their smartphones and by an appointed CLO — COVID liaison officer.
“That has its limitations,” George said. “Do you take your phone to the pool? If you go out because you’re starving, are you going to take your phone? Sometimes when there are so many restrictions, it shoves risky behaviors underground.”
The risks aren’t necessarily in the actual competition, but in all the other aspects of the Olympics: the airport, the buses, the endless lines. With both heat and humidity expected in the 90s, visitors will want to be indoors, in air conditioning, rather than outside, which is safer.
“There are always cracks in the system,” said UCSF infectious disease expert Dr. George Rutherford, “unless you have a lockdown system like the NBA did last year.”
Even in our country, now awash in available vaccines, there have been cracks, and the coronavirus has recently derailed sports dreams. Golfer Jon Rahm forfeited $1.7 million in prize money at the Colonial after testing positive and being pulled off the golf course (he was not fully vaccinated at the time). The North Carolina State baseball team never had the chance to play for a College World Series title because of COVID protocols and contact tracing.
Bradley Beal, the NBA’s secondleading scorer behind Stephen Curry, won’t travel to Tokyo after testing positive for the coronavirus, Team USA announced Thursday. So COVID is already derailing some Olympic competitions and dreams.
But the competition is only one part of the Superspreader Games. The followup is the dispersal of all those people back across the globe.
“The secondary event is the going home, going back to places that don’t have a 90% vaccination rate,” George said. “That worries me.”
The Games that conquer COVID? In reality, there is no conquering of COVID. At least not yet.