Despite Japan being in the midst of her fifth (and most dangerous) COVID-19 wave, the Tokyo Olympics were beautiful with no real interruptions due to the pandemic. It was a pity that spectators were not allowed to observe the excellence live, …
but it was for the best; and the Olympics these days are really a made-for-TV event. As expected the United States topped the medal Tally, with China second and the host nation Japan, third. We (Australia) finished in sixth place but let’s be honest, if we do a per capita calculation, we would be off the chart; in a different dimension. It was great – competition at the very highest level.
Regarding the pandemic, COVID-19 cases a still on the rise in Japan during the fifth wave in that country. When looking back Japan handled the initial waves (1 and 2) in exemplary fashion with cases peaking at about 500 and 1000 per day, respectively. Waves three (January 2021) and four (May 2021) were a bit more severe with cases peaking at around 7000 per day. Currently, Japan is averaging 14,000 cases per day bring the total cases in Japan to over 1 million and over 15,000 deaths in total. Of course, people like to blame something, so the Olympics are on obvious target; many are saying that games are driving Japan’s COVID-19 surge. I think it is more complicated, particularly when consider the surges in the entire and in many of the world. In the US for example, over 235,000 cases were reported yesterday despite 50% of the population being fully vaccinated; in Japan ~34% of the population is fully vaccinated.
In the meantime in Australia where approximately 18% of the population is fully vaccinated, lockdowns are in place in major cities. In Melbourne, we are reporting ~20 cases per day (but we are not taking any chances), and in Sydney the last seven day average is 285 with 344 new cases being reported today, resulting in an ongoing lockdown (almost 2 months now); warnings
I don’t think the Olympics are to blame for the surge of COVID-19 in Japan – it is the highly transmissible delta variant that causing issues in that country and around the world. The delta variant does not muck about, with R0 estimated to be ~9 (the original strain out of Wuhan had and R0 of 2-3). It spreads too fast.
One thing that is clear is that COVID-19 is a now a serious disease of the unvaccinated – fully vaccinated people are protected from severe disease, hospitalization, and their chance of death is almost fully diminished.
So, the simple rule is get vaccinated as soon as you can!
Until next time …