I grew up in Missouri, next to McBaine, Missouri, where I rode Bus 57 to school. On Bus 57, there is no Missouree–there is only Mizzou-rah. Riding this bus required learning to understand a little bit of rural Missouri redneck culture—to survive. If there is anything good to be said about redneck rhetoric, it’s that straight talk was generally appreciated and valued. Indeed, Missouri is still called “The Show-Me State” referring to the native demands for actual evidence to back up any far-fetched claims.

I bring all this up because The British Journal of Medicine published an amazing editorial Reconsider this summer’s Olympic and Paralympic games on why Japan should not be hosting the Olympics this year. The editorial goes into clinical detail and is backed up by multiple sources. It’s a brilliant essay but slightly obtuse and the people who should read it, won’t, and the British fondness for diplomatic wording detracts from the message. 

So, in order to make the points a little more palatable (easy to understand),, I have channeled my inner redneck to bring you their excellent editorial in plain American, with only slight transgressions from the main text. I am not a 100% real redneck so please pardon any inauthentic phrasing here. I’ve done my best.

The original article is above and the “translation” is below. I hope that you find this elucidating and if you don’t, you are probably just an ignoramus (dumb-shit). 

Thank you

Reconsider this summer’s Olympic and Paralympic games

BMJ 2021; 373 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.n962 (Published 14 April 2021)Cite this as: BMJ 2021;373:n962

Serious questions remain about managing the games safely

The government of Japan and the International Olympic Committee are determined to hold the Olympic Games in Tokyo this summer. In February 2021, G7 leaders also supported Japan’s commitment to holding the Olympics and Paralympics in Tokyo (Tokyo 2020) “in a safe and secure manner … as a symbol of global unity in overcoming covid-19.”1 While the determination is encouraging, there has been a lack of transparency about the benefits and risk, and international mass gathering events such as Tokyo 2020 are still neither safe nor secure.

Tokyo Olympics? You can’t fucking do it–No way. Don’t be an asshole

The Japanese or rather their government and the IOC which stands for international Olympic Committee are hell-bent on holding Olympic Games in Tokyo this summer, no matter what, not matter how dangerous, come hell or high water or a tornado or a volcano or this deadly fucking virus. It sounds pretty goddman dangerous to me. The leaders of G7 which are the really wealthy countries, that includes the USA (U-S-A!) they support Japan’s efforts to hold the Olympics and I’m quoting here, “in a safe and secure manner”– as a symbol of global unity and overcoming COVID19. Yada Yada.

Well that gung ho spirit is mighty fine but it’s totally unclear if this is going to be a clusterfuck or whether or not its actually going to be safe. A big international gathering event like the Olympics is “neither safe nor secure” and I’m not sure what the differences between these words is but in other words, it’s pretty goddamn dangerous. It would be like fucking Fern Granger without a condom while everyone knows that Fern will sleep with anyone and she’s not particularly careful and God knows if she had an STD test in the last year. Also I’m not slut-shaming here, because there are guys like Dave down at the Redhill Lounge that are total sluts and bad news, and sexually-transmitted diseases are serious problem and one should always use a condom before engaging in casual sex. I hear you can also get the rona from fucking which I guess makes sense. These Olympics needs a condom and Japan wants to ride raw.

The world is still in the middle of a pandemic. SARS-CoV-2 variants are an international concern, causing a resurgence of covid-19 globally.2 We must accelerate efforts towards containing and ending the pandemic by maintaining public health and social measures, promoting behaviour change, disseminating vaccines widely, and strengthening health systems. Substantial scientific advancements have occurred over the past year, but vaccine rollout has been inequitable, reducing access in many low and middle income countries. Huge uncertainty remains about the trajectory of the pandemic.3

The whole world is in the middle of a pandemic which is like an epidemic that is a pansexual: it will fuck anyone, anytime, anywhere. Just when you thought you had kicked its motherfucking ass, it turns out to have some mean ass cousins that you didn’t know you have to deal with. We call these cousins “variants”. It’s like the Greenhills who live past the railroad near where there used to be a post-office. It’s all one family with different people and they’re all mean and will fuck you up. But in less metaphorical terms these variants keep bringing back the virus like a zombie. 

The whole world is in the middle of a pandemic which is like an epidemic that is a pansexual: it will fuck anyone, anytime, anywhere.

Although a special scheme for vaccinating athletes—marshalled by the International Olympic Committee4—may help save lives, it could also encourage vaccine diplomacy, undermine global solidarity (including the Covax global access scheme), and promote vaccine nationalism. Full transparency and clear lines of accountability are critical in any scheme to vaccinate athletes. Furthermore, prioritising athletes over essential workers at high risk in low and middle income countries raises ethical concerns that must be addressed.

We gotta lockdown this sucker by thinking about public health and doing all that stuff we have been doing, like washing our hands, wearing a mask, not spitting at people and not chewing tobacco or blowing smoke in people’s faces, or going to crowded bars getting fucked up. And if you’re one of those no maskers and no vaxxers, fuck you. Fuck you and the station wagon you rode in on. 

We have got to VAX as many people as possible. We have got to improve our healthcare. Thanks to science there have been a lot of great things done in the last year but the vaccine rollout has been piss pour and unfair. If you are a poor country, you are like white trash or a minority in the United States and you are not given that vaccine. Nobody knows how this pandemic thing is going to play out.

Although a special scheme for vaccinating athletes—marshalled by the International Olympic Committee4—may help save lives, it could also encourage vaccine diplomacy, undermine global solidarity (including the Covax global access scheme), and promote vaccine nationalism. Full transparency and clear lines of accountability are critical in any scheme to vaccinate athletes. Furthermore, prioritising athletes over essential workers at high risk in low and middle income countries raises ethical concerns that must be addressed.

The Internationl Olympic Committee could do a lot more than just vaccinating athletes but they don’t give a shit about ordinary folk. If you ask us, essential workers which is like doctors and nurses and farmers and stuff should be a priority in getting vaccinated. Giving these coddled athletes the vaccines before other people in poor and middle-class countries is pretty shady and pretty shitty. It’s an ethical problem. It ain’t right. In case you don’t get it, the IOC are a bunch of assholes.

Poor control

Unlike other countries in the Asia-Pacific region, Japan has not yet contained covid-19 transmission.5 Despite its poor performance,6 Japan still invokes exceptionalism and continues to conceptualise covid-19 within previous planning for pandemic influenza.5 The second state of emergency in the Greater Tokyo area was lifted in late March7 despite early indications of a resurgence and an increase in covid-19 patients with variants of concern, which have now spread across Japan.89

The country’s limited testing capacity and sluggish vaccine rollout6 have been attributed to lack of political leadership.5 Even healthcare workers and other high risk populations will not have access to vaccines before Tokyo 2020, to say nothing of the general population. To properly protect athletes from covid-19, Japan must develop and implement a clear strategy to eliminate community transmission within its borders,5 as Australia did before the Australian Open tennis tournament.

Suga Couldn’t Even Drive A Tractor With Training Wheels

Unlike their Asian neighbors—hey Taiwan, nice job!—Japan has not licked this virus. In fact they are getting their ass kicked. Despite doing a shady job in handling the virus. Japan still thinks they are so so special and they keep treating this virus like it’s the flu which is pretty stupid. Stupid is as stupid does. Japan had a second state of emergency in the greater Tokyo area which is like Tokyo in places around Tokyo. It did not accomplish jackshit. They lifted the emergency while infections were rising and the weird mutant viruses were showing up all over Japan. Any dumbshit could see that there would be another resurgence like the Taliban in Afghanistan. Anyway, these killer mutant bad ass viruses are now all over Japan.

The leaders of Japan can’t tell there assholes from their mouths. Japan has a crappy capacity to test people for the virus. Their vaccine rollout is so goddamn slow that you would think the space time continuum in the country is in slow motion, like when you film something in slow motion on an iPhone, if you can afford an iPhone, or you have a friend who has an iPhone. Maybe you can also film things in slow motion on an Android phone but all i have is this old flip phone and that’s fine with me. Healthcare workers and old people and people who really need that vaccine are not going to get it before the Tokyo Olympics starts. And everybody else, they’re pretty much fucked. If Japan is going to protect the athletes that come there to play in these games, they need to get their shit together. They need to have a plan to stop the transmission, in other words, the spread of this virus within its own borders. You know who did this good? Australia did this. Australia did it before the Australian Open Tennis Tournament. They handled the virus really good if you don’t mind me saying.

Japan and the International Olympic Committee must also agree operational plans based on a robust science and share them with the international community. Waiving quarantine for incoming athletes, officials, broadcasters, press, and marketing partners10 risks importing and spreading covid-19 variants of concern. While international spectators will be excluded from the games,11cases could rise across Japan and be exported globally because of increased domestic travel—as encouraged by Japan’s official campaigns in 2020.51213Entrants will be asked to download Japan’s covid-19 contact tracing app,10 but this is known to be unreliable.14

The maximum allowable number of domestic spectators is still pending,11 but an overwhelmed healthcare system combined with an ineffective test, trace, and isolate scheme51213 could seriously undermine Japan’s ability to manage Tokyo 2020 safely and contain any outbreak caused by mass mobilisation.

Japan and the international Olympic Committee must create plans that are based on solid science and they need to share them with everyone in the whole wide world. By not requiring quarantines for athletes officials broadcasters press and marketing partners, there’s a pretty good chance that they are going to import some nasty mutant killer viruses into Japan. That will really suck.

Sure there will be no spectators at the Olympic games, that don’t mean it’s safe. There are 8000 ways this could get fucked up. You could have the virus go crazy in Japan and be exported on a global level—like they did with Pokemon, but you don’t want to catch them all. You don’t even want to catch one of these Pokemon. Japan has done this sort of fuck-up before and they are going to do it again. Japan had this dumb ass domestic tourism promoting program in the middle the pandemic called Go To Travel and the country has Gone To Hell. Those who are participating in the event are asked to download Japan’s shitty contact tracing app but it doesn’t work and you can’t count on it and it’s doubling down on stupidity

Sure there will be no spectators at the Olympic games, that don’t mean it’s safe. There are 8 millions ways this could go sideways. You could have the virus go crazy in Japan and be exported on a global level—like they did with Pokemon, but you don’t want to catch them all. You don’t even want to catch one of these Pokemon.

Nobody knows how many people will be watching or participating in the games but when you have an healthcare system that is overloaded and a worthless system for tracking testing and isolating people with the virus, you have a recipe for disaster. When you got a lot of people moving around you got a lot of ways to spread this virus. That should be pretty obvious to anyone who doesn’t have their head up their ass.

Safety first

Plans to hold the Olympic and Paralympic games this summer must be reconsidered as a matter of urgency. The whole global community recognises the need to contain the pandemic and save lives. Holding Tokyo 2020 for domestic political and economic purposes— ignoring scientific and moral imperatives—is contradictory to Japan’s commitment to global health and human security.

Assholes and Athletes First, Common Folk Can Suck A Donkey Dick

Is this really so-I’m-going-to-shit-my-pants-if-I-don’t-go-to-the-bathroom-now urgent do we have to have the Olympics this year? The whole world except the IOC and Japan cares about saving lives and kicking the ass of this pandemic. If Japan actually gives a shit about the health of the world and human beings in general, they should not be ignoring science and being nice to other people, just because a bunch of old bastards want some glory and some money. When you think about the whole spiel about Olympic values, world unity and the human spirit and all that, holding the 2020 Olympics is a bunch of hypocritical bullshit. Fuck that. When we say ‘reconsider’, we mean get your head out of your ass and postpone it or cancel it, you bloody bastards. Thank you! I hope you got that.