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Comment by jackschultz | Hacker News Reader

I don't see comments on this yet but I'll says some of that is because of the Olympics based in Tokyo this summer. I heard the other day about how there's kind of a cutoff point in May determining if it needs to be postponed, pushed, or moved. The Olympics is still huge and if your country is hosting, I can see them wanting to close schools to try anything to stop the possible spread for people to trust and want to still go and compete.

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Does the situation in Japan even really matter when you're making that call? If the virus is still rampant in the rest of the world, surely they're still going to cancel.

I wouldn’t count on Japan acting logically after the way they handled the Diamond Princess quarantine.

e.g. letting people disembark because they tested negative and then spent weeks in quarantine. [1]

[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/23/coronavirus-wo...

I honestly wonder why any country would want to host the Olympics. It costs an enormous amount of money, and I'm pretty sure that it's been found that the host country never really recoups that "investment"; instead the taxpayers fund the construction of a bunch of big facilities that are never used again. The world would be better off just having 2 permanent locations for the Olympics (summer and winter) and reusing them every time.

Prestige. For country, state, city and all the associated organizers/politicians/etc. The idea of permanent locations is perennially suggested and never goes much of anywhere.

The original Olympics certainly didn't move around

You can't move olympics. They can only be cancelled or they can do something without spectators/locals only maybe not to loose trucks of money on broadcasting agreements etc. Travel to Japan is pretty much banned on all orgs/companies so good luck with organising anything in this conditions.

Why it can't be +1 year tentatively? I see no showstopper, all contracts remain. A lot of pain locally, but better for everybody rather than just cancelling.

There is a very full worldwide calendar of lower-tier events that take place in the other 3.75 out of four years when the Olympics aren’t happening, some of which would have to be canceled to accommodate. There’s also the issue of clearing all of the massive hotel room blocks needed, and re-working the schedules of all of the Olympic venues.

It could probably be done, but it will be very painful.

Not +1, but +2 is possible.

But then you end up delaying the Olympics AND cancelling the World Championships. Better off just canceling IMO.

Not just the hosting country but TV business globally. They have other big events later and can't afford to have them all go over each others.

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