> by the public

More precisely, preselected by a committee, who then had elementary schools choose the winner.

There also was wide plans to have elementary school kids go watch the Olympics, it seemed a really big effort went into drilling the event into them.

Thanks for pointing this out, while the bread and circuses are free and on offer, Japan is entering a real state of emergency.

Something I've heard (no great sourcing) is that at the very least Olympic staffers/participants who are getting COVID are for the most part Japan-based staffers and the like, and not people who came from abroad.

My gut feeling is that this recent spike is partly the "lockdown rejection" that we saw across the US last year, in particular stuff like trying to ban alcohol sales in restaurants seemed to have really made a lot of people just kind of give up with the state of emergency recommendations.

And like... there aren't any spectators right? The amount of people at the event is maybe comparable to how many people are at a local supermarket in one day.

Not to defend the gov'ts decision to do the olympics, or any of this thing in general. There will probably not be many real consequences to these people, and people are watching it on TV, but it definitely doesn't feel very "state of emergency" and sets the wrong tone for this moment. It's just that this spike doesn't feel single-factor.

There is likely a certain amount of that:

https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/14393135

However I would guess people are less likely to exercise self restraint when you're holding a huge unnecessary event. When vaccine availability is unclear and vaccines are inconsistently deployed. And when there's limited financial support.

The spike is most likely delta by my guess. This is the first spike Japan is experiencing after delta has taken hold.

Japan's low vaccination rate means nothing but masks are holding delta at bay.