Tokyo Olympics ... [no foreign fans] [no fans period]

[bambam1729]

Certainly the best analysis of Florida hosting the 2021 Olympics - https://www.miamiherald.com/news/sta...248808660.html

[KevinR]

Dave Barry's article is now on the home page. I would be excited to see light sabers in Space Mountain, and swimming in Gatorland. Who's with me?

[Trickstat]

In 1996 I thought Atlanta weather was as cool as I had seen the southeastern USA ever - and I lived at the same climate in Durham, NC for almost 40 years. Yet the Europeans thought it was stifling and brutally hot. And last year I had a short twitter back-and-forth with a European Olympic writer who was telling me how Chicago was too hot in the summertime for sports - Chicago! They would go crazy if you tried to hold an Olympics in Florida in the summer.

According to Wikipedia the average high in Chicago in July is 84.2F. This is warmer than anywhere in the northern half of Europe, for example, but cooler than many cities in Spain, Italy, Greece etc. Not too hot for the Olympics, but too hot to start the marathon at noon.

[Conor Dary]

FT..

Japan insists on domestic trials before shot rollout

ROBIN HARDING — TOKYO

A contentious requirement for Japan-specific trials has delayed the rollout of Covid-19 vaccines in Asia’s largest advanced economy and threatened the Tokyo Olympics.
Small clinical trials that demonstrate the vaccines generate a similar level of antibodies when used in Japan are the main outstanding condition for approval of the jabs from BioNTech/ Pfizer and several other companies.

Japan’s demand for proof that safety and efficacy do not differ in the country means it will not start vaccinations until the end of February, three months after the earliest rollouts and fewer than five months before the Tokyo Olympics are due to start.

[Conor Dary]

Financial Times

Israel PM warns of ‘arms race’ between mutations and virus

The world should be prepared for a long race between constantly tweaked coronavirus vaccines and the mutating virus, Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned, even as his country has raced ahead of other nations in inoculating its citizens.

“It’s just a question of time before we hit a strain that the current vaccines” won’t work on, said Mr Netanyahu at the World Economic Forum meeting, explaining his decision to shut down the Jewish state’s main international airport and seal its land border for the foreseeable future. “I am just shutting it all down — the airports, the land borders — before it’s too late.”

Even with more than a third of its citizens inoculated and nearly all adults scheduled to be offered a vaccine by early March, Mr Netanyahu finds himself racing against a surge in infections triggered by the B.1.1.7 mutation first identified in Britain. Israel’s third national lockdown has been extended while health workers inoculate as many as 200,000 people a day.

[Atticus]

“It’s just a question of time before we hit a strain that the current vaccines” won’t work on,

Not according to Dr. Fauci. He said that even variations of strains would be recognized by innoculated bodies as Covid-19 and attacked. You'd need a Covid-21, which would not have mutated from Covid-19, to have a problem.

[guru]

You ever get the feeling Alfred was talking about our man CD? 🤣

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbPiIwFOQtU

[TN1965]

AP Interview: All 33 sports 'unanimously' want Tokyo Games

“At the moment, we’re positive that the games will be held,” said Francesco Ricci Bitti, president of the Association of Summer Olympic International Federations.

https://sports.yahoo.com/ap-intervie...121629618.html

[xw]

Not according to Dr. Fauci. He said that even variations of strains would be recognized by innoculated bodies as Covid-19 and attacked. You'd need a Covid-21, which would not have mutated from Covid-19, to have a problem.

The South African strain has exhibited some level of immune escape, but yes, the immunoreaction should still at least provide partial protection, only how much is enough is not yet known.

[NotDutra5]

There's no way Florida should be hosting anything this summer. We are too hot, literally and figuratively.

....and we can't institute a coherent unemployment benefit site or Covid 19 statewide plan and this state is going simply "take on" the Olympics.

LOL!

[Tuariki]

The South African strain has exhibited some level of immune escape, but yes, the immunoreaction should still at least provide partial protection, only how much is enough is not yet known.

With NZ's success in keeping covid-19 at bay, with no community spread for many months, it was almost laughable at the panic in Auckland when it was announced that the South African variant had escaped into the community when a parent and child were released from quarantine after 14 days but then became sick.they are now back in quarantine.

People rushing the supermarkets, thousands turning up at testing stations.

So far, no evidence of further spread.

[TN1965]

Katerina Stefanidi has been already demonized as an entitled narcissist for expressing something much milder, so i hope Will Claye will be okay after saying this on camera.

Athletes want their chance to shine at Tokyo Games

Will Claye is double Olympic silver medallist. He says his fellow athletes just want the games to be confirmed amid the cancellation rumours.

"We have kind of gotten pushed to the side a little bit. But you can't push the most prolific sporting event in all of mankind to the side, you know? So, as much as people want to put us in the shadows, I don't think that can truly happen. I think that, for that reason, the Olympics will happen, you know, because other sports are happening right now.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/athletes-...133223362.html

[Conor Dary]

Tokyo Olympic Games will not happen ‘without spectators’



The organising committee of the postponed 2020 Olympic Games has ruled out holding the event this year without spectators despite mounting health fears amid the coronavirus pandemic.


https://www.aljazeera.com/sports/202...out-spectators

[TN1965]

It would make no sense to ban all spectators if the NPB and J League games are accepting some spectators. But consider this.

Athletes want the Olympics to be held even without spectators.
IOC (and all IFs) want the Olympics to be held even without spectators.
NBC (and other TV networks) want the Olympics to be held even without spectators.

Only OOC has a different interest. They will lose a lot of money if no spectator is allowed. So they want at least some. Accepting spectators from abroad is an entirely different question,

[TN1965]

Australia aiming to vaccinate athletes before Tokyo Games

Advice from the body coordinating the vaccination rollout plan suggested that athletes would likely be inoculated before the July 23-Aug. 8 Games, Colbeck said in comments published by the Canberra Times on Thursday.

https://sports.yahoo.com/australia-p...001552289.html