TOKYO (Reuters) – In a series of tweets, SoftBank Group Corp’s founder and CEO Masayoshi Son expressed bewilderment and concern about the Tokyo Olympics going ahead amid Japan’s slow-going vaccination drive during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Currently more than 80% of people want the Olympics to be postponed or cancelled. Who and on what authority is it being forced through?” the billionaire executive wrote in a Twitter post in Japanese.
In a follow-up tweet late on Sunday, he wrote: “Does the IOC (International Olympic Committee) have the power to decide that the Games would go ahead?
“There’s talk about a huge penalty (if the Games are cancelled) but if 100,000 people from 200 countries descend on vaccine-laggard Japan and the mutant variant spreads, I think we could lose a lot more: lives, the burden of subsidies if a state of emergency is called, a fall in gross domestic product, and the public’s patience.”
Son’s tweets followed comments on Friday https://www.reuters.com/article/olympics-2020-idCNL2N2N80BL from International Olympic Committee (IOC) Vice President John Coates that the Olympics would “absolutely” go ahead even if Tokyo was under a state of emergency.
With just two months to go until the Summer Games, much of Japan remains under state-of-emergency restrictions https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/japan-approve-more-covid-19-vaccines-state-emergency-set-widen-2021-05-21, including Tokyo, as the spread of infectious coronavirus variants strains the medical system.
That has kept the majority of the public opposed to holding the Games this year. A Reuters corporate survey found nearly 70% of Japanese firms also want the Olympics either cancelled or postponed.
Japan has vaccinated just 4.4% of its population, the slowest among the world’s larger, rich countries. Japan has recorded 711,360 coronavirus infections and 12,232 COVID-19 deaths so far.
(Reporting by Chang-Ran Kim; Editing by Sam Holmes)
