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- Billionaire SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son has joined a call to cancel the Tokyo Olympics.
- “Now more than 80% of people want the Olympics to be postponed or cancelled. By what authority is that being enforced?” my son wrote on twitter Saturday.
- Tokyo and the rest of Japan remain under a state of emergency amid the new wave of COVID-19.
Billionaire SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son joins growing calls to cancel the Tokyo Olympics as Japan struggles with the novel coronavirus surge and many parts of the country are under a state of emergency. rice field.
“Now more than 80% of people want the Olympics to be postponed or canceled. my son wrote on twitter Saturday in Japanese.
Son, who founded SoftBank in 1981 and has invested millions in financial, healthcare and technology companies such as Uber, ByteDance and SoFi through a conglomerate, is Japan’s second richest with a net worth of $30.3 billion. is a person.
A day after his first tweet, the billionaire investor wrote: We will lose much more: lives, subsidy burdens if a state of emergency is declared, gross domestic product (GDP) declining, people’s patience,” he said.
It is still unclear how many will take part in the Tokyo Olympics, which are expected to feature around 11,000 athletes. As for local fans, the organizing committee has not announced how many spectators will be allowed to attend the competition, but has previously considered limiting capacity to 50%. Son did not immediately respond to an Insider’s request for an explanation for the 100,000 figure mentioned in his tweet.
Son’s remarks come after International Olympic Committee vice-president John Coates said at an online press conference on Friday that the Olympics would “absolutely” go ahead, even if Japan were under a state of emergency. rice field.
Protest against the Olympic Games in Tokyo on May 9, 2021. With the Tokyo 2020 Olympics less than three months away, concerns remain in Japan about the feasibility of hosting such a large-scale event amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
Yuichi Yamazaki/Getty Images
The voice of SoftBank’s CEO joins growing calls to cancel the Olympics as Japan struggles to control the coronavirus outbreak. A poll last week found that more than 80% of him in Japan want the Olympics cancelled. That same week, a group of 6,000 Japanese doctors sent an open letter to Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, saying the country’s medical system could be overwhelmed if the Olympics go ahead as planned. Many took to the streets to protest the upcoming Olympics.
The Olympics, which had already been postponed from their original dates in 2020, are scheduled to kick off on July 23. Meanwhile, the government on Sunday announced a state of emergency in Tokyo, Osaka, and seven other prefectures as originally planned. Said they were looking to extend it beyond their planned end date of May 31st.
Japan recorded 5,041 new coronavirus cases on Saturday, with only 2% of the population fully vaccinated, according to Bloomberg’s vaccine tracker.
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