It's officially postponed for a year. It's actually being held in 2021 but it seems they'll keep calling it Tokyo Olympics 2020. By the way, I assume that 2021 will have a lot more infected people than 2020 but the Olympics games will be held in 2021 because people will "get used to" COVID-19. People tend to get into a panic over new risks (including COVID-19). I wonder what the lockdown is for?. The only virus that we humans could annihilate is smallpox. It's the very exceptional case and we humans can't annihilate any virus. SARS and MERS are also corona virus but there isn't a vaccine nor a medicine for SARS & MERS even now. We can't make a new vaccine / medicine soon. Any country can NOT keep the lockdown till a new vaccine / medicine is made. Then, what is the lockdown for?. As of this morning, nearly 19,000 people have died of COVID-19. Yes, the number is not small, but flu kills 650,000 people every year, but no lockdown for flu. Speaking of SARS and MERS, they are not very infectious (compared to COVID-19) and they didn't spread in many countries, so regional lockdown was meaningful. But as to COVID-19, it's already been confirmed in 95% countries all over the world, so it's too late. In my opinion, lockdown is only for the government to justify themselves "We are working hard for the nationals". But in a way, lockdown can worsen the situation. I mean, lockdown can't annihilate the virus , then it will just kill the economy and it'll make more difficult for us to face the new virus under economic crisis. Edit: Coronavirus: How Japan keeps COVID-19 under control https://www.dw.com/en/coronavirus-how-japan-keeps-covid-19-under-control/a-52907069 Why Japan appears to have avoided a mass coronavirus outbreak https://www.foxnews.com/world/japan-avoid-mass-coronavirus-outbreak Japan’s social distancing is shrinking as coronavirus fears ease. Too soon? https://www.washingtonpost.com/worl...816cee-6d0c-11ea-a156-0048b62cdb51_story.html
Its great to see a decision at last but in the absence of any other credible way to minimize the spread, social isolation is what we are adopting, as best we can. Clearly this greatly reduces the chances of us becoming infected and then passing that onto others including family members, a few of which are in very high risk groups. Its mind blowing how little the Japanese government is doing to encourage or inforce social isolation, particularly as we have the oldest population thus most susceptible population on the planet. Now the games is sorted they really need to shut down all these public gatherings as a start. Close skijos etc etc etc. The lock down in other countries is not intended to stop the virus, just slow it down so the medical facilities can cope with a relatively steady influx of patients, hence the term 'flatten the curve' rather than huge spikes like in Italy where 1000s are dying each day, some/most of which cant get adequate health care.
It is reasonable to expect that by Olympics time in 2021 there will be a vaccine. Maybe they will have a policy of no vaccination - no ticket. Just guessing.
This is what the lockdown is for: spread the number of cases so that hopefully the hospitals can keep up. If not, people will die of lack of care on top of those dying from the virus. Flatten the curve. Yes, flu kills a lot of people, but it does so spread over a long period of winter months. Furthermore, those not dying from flu usually don’t have to go to the hospital either, at least not in the numbers we see now. If you google news items about what hospitals in Italy and Spain are dealing with now: that is what we’re trying to avoid. At the moment the Netherlands is about the only European country not yet in full lockdown (shops are still open and we can still go outside for exercise etc, as long as we keep our distance), because our government thinks full lockdown doesn’t add that much value. But they took a gamble with that, and are closely monitoring whether it is indeed sufficient to keep the hospitals from flooding. Chances are we still get full lockdown in a week or so.
