Front Burner - The Olympics: Tokyo’s unwelcome guest

Episode Date: July 22, 2021

Tokyo 2020 is forging ahead inside a host city effectively locked out of its own event. CBC senior correspondent Adrienne Arsenault brings us the view from Tokyo, where rising COVID-19 cases, a state of emergency and brewing resentment toward the International Olympic Committee is hanging over these unprecedented Olympic Games.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hi, I'm Jamie Poisson. So eight years ago, Tokyo rejoiced when it landed the 2020 Summer Games. I award it to the city of Tokyo. Yeah!

Congratulations, Tokyo. The world will be looking at you seven years from now. But now, a day before the opening ceremony, there are really few signs of celebration. Tokyo is under this state of emergency, as daily cases spike to their highest levels in months, fueling anxiety as up to 80,000 people from around the world pour in. And yet, the games are forging ahead, albeit a much different kind of games. Today, I'm speaking with my colleague, national co-host Adrienne Arceneaux, about these unprecedented times.

She joins me from Tokyo. Hi, Adrienne. How you doing? I'm very well. How are you doing? I'm very well. How are you, Jamie? Good. It's great to talk to you, and thank you so much for making the time. I know you have a lot going on right now. And I think you just came from a rehearsal for the opening ceremonies, right? Yeah, absolutely.

So always before the opening ceremony, there is at least one full dress rehearsal, and then there's another technical rehearsal where you can go and you can look at the timings and it's all very secretive and you get a sense of what's what's going to happen so yeah I just got back from that it's it looks like it's going to be a very good show just minus the humans in the stands right right and you mentioned it was secretive you can't give us any hints for what we should expect. Oh no, I'll lose my accreditation. Okay, okay. Well, we'll just have to tune in ourselves then. So I wanted to start today by asking you what a typical day

looks like for you in Tokyo right now as someone covering these games. So like, how restricted are your movements? Like what are some of the COVID protocols? What are you able to see and do right now? Well, I mean, it's really interesting. So we are in a soft quarantine for the first 14 days. So aside from, you know, it wasn't mandatory, interestingly enough, for people to be vaccinated before getting here. But certainly multiple tests before you arrive, one at the airport. getting here, but certainly multiple tests before you arrive, one at the airport. And then it's a series for 14 days of, you know, Marnie McBean, the chef de mission for Team Canada said, you're a bit like gerbils in tubes. And at first, when I heard that, I thought, well, that's a bit of an

exaggeration. She's right. So you can only go to the places that are on a pre-approved activity list that had to be submitted a month before arrival, which for news, who knows a month beforehand where you need to be. And your activity plan has to be approved. You cannot get out of a vehicle between point A and point B on the activity plan. You wake up every morning. We are, because we're in news, we are tested every day for COVID. So you wake up, you do a spit test, you have to register it. Then at CBC, we fill out our own health questionnaire. We take our temperatures. You have to take your temperature as well for what's called an OCHA app, which is the most important app you can have on your phone. It is mandatory to have it on your phone. You flash your QR codes every now and then when you were asked for them to show your health,

your PCR test results, but also your tracking. This is a big deal here. It is open surveillance of where you are. No, no hidden surveillance. It is very clear when you show up here, certainly as a visitor covering these games, you are told your phone must be on all the time, the GPS and location services on all the time. And if you vary from your activity plan and your phone varies from your activity plan, you can be removed, if you will, lose your accreditation, thrown out of the country, whatever they deem appropriate. And increasingly, Parliament has been asking, the Diet here has been asking for stronger penalties because there is this feeling that, you know, you pick up the paper here,

and I don't read Japanese, but our colleagues who do say, wow, that the paper is full every day with the idea that the foreigners who are arriving with the Olympics are breaking the rules. One of the weird rules, Jamie, is that you are allowed to go to a convenience store from your hotel once a day, but you have 15 minutes to leave the hotel, get to the store and come back. And you're tracked in terms of length of time. And so we, because you can't go to restaurants or anything like that, you know,

you're kind of eating out of convenience stores. So we went to the convenience store, our little unit. And when we got out, we were ambushed by a Japanese news crew. Where are you from? How long have you been in the country? What did you buy at the store? Why are you out? We said, well, you know, we have to be back within 15 minutes. And we got, you know, they wanted to know specifically what we bought. So it's like, okay, water and cup of noodles. And there you go. So it is restrictive. That ends on the 14 days, theoretically, that ends at the 14 days. Let's see what happens if the case numbers go up. Let's see if that 14 days gets flipped.

You know, Adrienne, like if you had told past me, like me from a year and a half ago, If you had told past me, like me from a year and a half ago, that you were going to go to the Olympics and be completely surveilled and only be given 15 minutes to go to a convenience store to get a cup of noodles and that you would be followed by a news crew to make sure that you were following the rules, I would have said, what? Like, that's crazy talk. Like, that's so crazy. And here we are a year and a half later. So you make a really interesting point, because what people get used to, in time, is really interesting. These are the conditions of being here, and you accept them. How much further does this go? At what point does COVID become cover? Not necessarily for these Olympics, but what happens in Beijing? Does the 14-day quarantine become, say, 21-day quarantine?

Does a soft quarantine become a hard quarantine? At what point do particularly autocratic regimes around the world decide they like the cover of COVID to restrict the movements of people. This is in the back of my mind as I spend time here. Everybody understands, you know, Japan's anxiety. That's about the future. At what point do other regimes look and say, well, that's interesting. You can pen people in like that. And then maybe they don't ask the hard questions. I am really worried about COVID as cover going forward. Yeah, I was thinking about that when you're talking to it all. It all has like a very 1984 vibe to it. In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection.

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Tell me a little bit about the Olympic Village. What does it look like right now for the athletes who are living there? It is at the heart of this experience because the athletes are at the heart of this experience. As you walk into the gates, it's, you know, the heat hits the wood and it smells wonderful. And just when you think you're going to get closer and see all the buildings where the athletes hang out their flags, the reality of COVID hits you. In past games, you could go in. Now there's a gate. And it's treated like a mixed zone in a competition. So, in other words, it's like a pen.

like a pen and we, the journalists who have to make an appointment to go there, can stand in one part of the pen and with an absurdly long mic pole, if we're lucky, see an athlete can ask a question. They're all very nervous. Nobody wants to be quarantined or thrown out or unable to compete. So they are being very careful. But it's weird for them. You know, for a lot of them who've been to past games, this is weird. For the newcomers, it's the Olympics. You know, it's fantastic. This is the only experience they know. But for the others, it's weird.

And what we understand is because they can't mingle, they're making the most of their mealtimes, which is really quite sweet because, you know, when you eat in the village cafeteria, there are these partitions, you know, you have to face in one direction. You're not allowed to talk excessively or much, or maybe even at all during the meal. And so just the act of being together, we keep hearing that they're kind of dragging the puck just so that they can, you know, get the feel of being with each other. I know that you and I are talking on a Wednesday morning at 10 a.m. Toronto time, and I believe the latest number,

and it's changing, it's changing, is about 70 COVID cases that have been reported that are connected to the Olympics. Some of those cases are athletes. Five U.S. Olympic athletes have tested positive for COVID-19. Tennis star Coco Golf is out of the Olympics. Inside the Olympic Village, two South African soccer players are now in isolation. And so how concerned are people right now? It seems like the bubble in the Olympic Village has to some extent burst here. I think that's probably true. I also think that was always going to be the case. COVID-0 as a concept, whether you're talking about, you know, an Olympic bubble or just life in general, does not seem like a realistic proposition. I think the World Health

Organization, among others, has said we may never get to COVID zero ever. So let's not panic too much when you see some cases. There is an inevitability to it. The trick is how do you deal with it and how do you contain it? The problem is there are two worlds, two distinct worlds here. So you have the Olympic bubble in which, while you don't know for sure how many people are vaccinated, you do know that many of them come from countries where the vaccine has been available. In addition, the IOC made vaccines available to the athletes in advance where that was possible, that they had the option to get the shot. We know that people are being tested there every single day.

And the procedures and the mechanisms are extremely tight. That's the story of the Olympic bubble. Then you have the story of life in Tokyo outside the bubble. So Tokyo just recorded 1,800 cases. That is the highest by far since January. So they are in their fourth state of emergency heading into their fifth wave, it looks like. More than a thousand new cases per day for several days running. Dr. Annie Sparrow says she and other medical experts gave the IOC safety recommendations in recent weeks that she says the IOC didn't take. It's like the IOC is the drunk guy in the bar who is determined to get behind the wheel of his car. And all that we

have been trying to do is to get him home without killing anybody on the way. And yet, when you drive through the streets of Tokyo, because I can't get out of the car, when you drive through the streets, they're pretty full and the restaurants seem pretty full. And while the suggestion through the state of emergency is that alcohol, for example, not be served in restaurants, there's a lot of it being served in restaurants or some underground bars. And so it's confusing to see that. And because of Japan's constitution, it can't decree that places close, it can suggest. And in the beginning, people were very scared of the pandemic and they adhere to that. Now they've lost so much economically, they're fed up. And I think that's a sentiment people around the world can relate to, but they are largely unvaccinated. Maybe 35% of the population has had one shot. The testing rates are pretty low. Japan has among the lowest vaccine confidence rates in the world. And so which side of the bubble is the threat? You know, there is a real

fear about the people who have arrived with the Olympics, but is that really where the threat is? And how is the Japanese population as a whole responding to having the Olympics there? You know, I know, certainly at some point that the public polling around this was very low, right? Like a lot of people didn't want the Olympics there. You know, I know certainly at some point that the public polling around this was very low, right? Like a lot of people didn't want the Olympics. On Monday, the Asahi Shimbun newspaper published a survey of more than 1,400 people and found two-thirds do not believe Japan can host a safe and secure Olympics. But what's your sense of how the Japanese public is feeling now?

Well, I mean, I keep thinking back to when Tokyo won the bid. Tokyo! Yeah! It was really emotional. That was a really big deal. The last time Tokyo held the Games in 1964, deal. The last time Tokyo held the Games in 1964, this was Japan's coming out after the devastation and the defeat of the Second World War. They rebuilt the city for those Olympics. You drive on roads right now that happened because of the 64 Games. Here's the picture at National Stadium

as the United States and the Soviet Union joining hands for the Olympic Games. Very inspiring sight, ladies and gentlemen, here this afternoon. And you would have to be here actually to see it, to really understand the friendship that is prevailing between East and West. So Tokyo 2020 was going to be this rebirth, you know, and they were so excited. It was sort of rebuilding after the horror of Fukushima, you know, and they were so excited. It was sort of rebuilding after the horror of Fukushima, you know, earthquake turned tsunami turned nuclear accident after, you know, a lot of economic stagnation. This was going to be there in 1964. Again, there was like so much writing on it and they were so excited. And then, and then of course the world stopped spinning,

right? And then you started to see this anti-Olympic sentiment. And usually, and then of course the world stops spinning, right? And then you started to see this anti-Olympic sentiment. And usually, you know, there's a pattern to the Olympics. The week before everything is terrible, but once the cauldron is lit, it gets really busy, you know, and it's the stories of the athletes that take over, but something feels different about this one. And I spoke with Dick Pound last night. He's the most senior member of the IOC. He's a Canadian. And he said this is the thing that keeps him staring at the ceiling at night, which is that this time, that feeling will linger. Well, I would be worried if my expectation that once the games start, public opinion is going to shift. I'm worried that that might not happen. The social media saying this is going to happen, this is going to happen, and that's not going to shift. I'm worried that that might not happen. The social media saying this is going to happen,

this is going to happen, and that's not going to happen. If people see, they're just totally uninformed and they can become irrelevant. Jamie, there's no touchstone for people. I went to the rehearsal for the opening ceremony and there aren't going to be any Japanese spectators in there at all. This huge, beautiful stadium built on the site of the 1964 stadium. Everything is so poignant and it's pretty quiet in there. But there are little rings. There's an Olympic rings right

beside the entrance on a patch of artificial turf. and people are lining up to take their pictures beside it. And I find it very sad because what will be the cauldron that people love to go and visit has now been blocked off because they don't want people gathering there. They can't go into the stadium. They have to watch on television. So their one touch point is just the rings. They're paying for these Olympics. I'm just not sure what they're getting out of them at this point. I actually do hope that at some point in the coming days, we will at least get to hear some other narratives come out of this because, man, I love the Olympics. Yeah. I mean, I am really privileged. This is my sixth Olympics to cover. And I love it for the moms and dads. You know, I love it for watching families who have invested everything, time, money, heart, a lot of heartache into their kids.

their kids in that moment, standing there and watching, watching helplessly, but so lovingly in that moment, it is an extraordinary thing to watch. And while the moms and dads are going to have to be watching on television and connected by Zoom, I mean, think these athletes, you've got Christine Sinclair who played this week, 300 caps for Canada 37 years old behind Beckett it'll come to Sinclair it's off the post and the opening goal it's Sinclair again it had to be Christine Sinclair people need to talk more about Christine you've got softball women's softball it is back after 12 years there are four veterans from 2008 who lost in that heartbreaking bronze match. They are back in Tokyo and they're only back in Tokyo. It's gone in Paris. You know, Skylar Park, Taekwondo, maybe she'll be the first medal for Canada. She's got 16 black belts in her family.

There are stories. You've got this amazing swim team. The veteran Brent Hayden is right now acting as like a mentor and a bit of a big brother for 18-year-old Joshua Leando, who's his first time. And I tell you, I spoke with Joshua's parents. They are so excited to have Brent looking after their son and watching out for him. And this young man is an extraordinary swimmer. He broke the national record in the 100-meter butterfly. Watch out for him. These athletes who gave everything for four years to prepare had to give another year's worth of preparation alone,

strange circumstances, lonely, and they did it. And they're here. And for all the chaos of it, and they did it. And they're here. And for all the chaos of it, this is their moment. And it's about to happen. Yeah, that feels like a much more hopeful note for us to end on. So thank you. And I also cannot wait. You've also given us a couple good people to watch out for in the coming weeks.

So thank you. Thanks, Adrienne. You bet. You take care. So it is expected to be the hottest summer games yet. Japan issued a heat stroke alert for the fifth consecutive day on Wednesday as temperatures reached dangerous highs. That and the thick, relentless humidity will be yet another challenge these athletes will be navigating.

That is all for today. I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks so much for listening, and we'll talk to you tomorrow.