Should the Olympics Be Canceled?

东京奥运会应该被取消吗？

When the prime minister of Japan and the president of the International Olympic Committee decided last March to postpone the 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games in Tokyo, the hope was  that the pandemic would be a thing of the past by now.

去年3月，当日本首相和国际奥委会主席决定推迟2020年东京奥运会和残奥会时，人们希望到那时疫情已经过去。

But the coronavirus had other plans: With five weeks to go before the opening ceremony, cases and variants are still surging in much of the world. Public health experts have expressed grave concerns about the Games' potential to become a global superspreader event, and a May poll found that 83 percent of the Japanese public did not want them to go forward.

但新冠疫情的局势却事与愿违：距离开幕式还有五周，世界大部分地区的病例和变异病毒仍在激增。公共卫生专家表示十分担忧，奥运会有可能成为一场全球性超级传染源的活动，并且5 月份的一项民意调查发现，83% 的日本公众不希望奥运会继续举办。

The I.O.C. and Tokyo organizers have said the Games cannot be postponed again. At this point, should they just be called off?

国际奥委会和东京组委会表示，本届奥运会不能再推迟了。在现在这个时间点上，奥运会应该被取消吗？

Japan has fared much better during the pandemic than the United States, but it has struggled recently to contain infections. Japan's vaccination effort has also been "embarrassingly slow," as one top Olympics official put it: Only about 15 percent of the population has received a dose.

日本在疫情期间的表现比美国好得多，但它最近一直在努力控制传染。日本的疫苗接种工作也“慢得令人尴尬”，正如一位奥运会高级官员所说：只有大约 15% 的人口接种了疫苗。

Against this backdrop, hosting the Games poses a risk that many Japanese people feel is unacceptable. Many in Japan's medical community have also called for the Games to be canceled.

在这种背景下，举办奥运会带来了许多日本人无法接受的风险。日本医学界的许多人也呼吁取消奥运会。

The I.O.C. naturally has a vested interest in the Games going ahead, but the costs of cancellation would prove more than financial. To some, the Games are a much-needed symbol of global solidarity, "an example that life can be normal again," as Henry Olsen writes in The Washington Post.

如果继续举办奥运会，国际奥委会自然享有既得利益，但取消奥运会的成本将不仅仅是财政上的。对一些人来说，奥运会是急需的用于证明全球团结的标志，正如亨利奥尔森（Henry Olsen ）在华盛顿邮报中写道的那样，“这是代表生活可以恢复正常的一个例子”。

Athletes stand perhaps the most to lose. "If you outright canceled these Olympics and made it seven years and 11 months in between Olympics, that's the span of a lot of Olympians' entire careers," the sports journalist Henry Bushnell told Slate. "That's their window to have this chance to accomplish a lifelong dream, never mind money or anything like that."

运动员可能是最容易蒙受损失的。体育记者亨利布什内尔（ Henry Bushnell ）告诉《石板》杂志：“如果彻底取消这届奥运会，使得两届奥运会之间间隔 7 年零 11 个月，这个跨度将是许多奥运选手整个职业生涯。这是他们有机会实现终身梦想的平台，更不用说金钱或其他类似的东西了”。

But it seems unlikely that things will get to that point. On Thursday, Suga announced that the state of emergency would be lifted in most of Japan this weekend. Half of the Japanese public thinks the Games will go ahead, and the I.O.C. recently declared itself to be in "operational delivery mode."

但事情似乎不太可能走到那一步。周四，菅义伟宣布本周末日本大部分地区将解除紧急状态。一半的日本民众认为奥运会会继续举办，而国际奥委会最近宣布自己即将进入“运营交付模式”。

"Simply put," The Times's Andrew Keh says, "there's the feeling that this is too big a ship to turn around."

“简单地说，”泰晤士报的安德鲁肯尼斯说，“感觉这是船大难掉头了。”

主讲人·Ivory

香港大学硕士，北京外国语大学本科

雅思7.5分，GMAT720，中英韩三语互译，两年英语线上教学经验

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