The COVID-19 pandemic changed our whole life in a very short period of time. Things that seemed normal before – coughing in public, talking to people without a mask on, gathering in large crowds – seem weird now, and it’s not clear when or if we will be able to go to our pre-pandemic lives. The vaccines against COVID-19 were developed amazingly fast and are now being distributed in many countries, so it kind of feels we might be seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. However, there are still many unknowns when it comes to the vaccines – for example, we don’t know for sure that they will stop transmission of the virus by asymptomatic carriers. I live in the country that is now becoming a de-facto large clinical study to test whether the vaccines can bring our lives back to normal and I guess we’ll see in a few months. But vaccines can’t be multiplied by magic; their production and distribution take a long time and the whole world definitely won’t be vaccinated by the summer of 2021.
Which is when the 2020 Olympics are supposed to happen in Tokyo. An international event of this scale has the potential to create the biggest and most dangerous outbreak of COVID-19 and spread it to multiple countries across the globe. A bubble strategy with multiple tests for all the participants could potentially work but that requires that absolutely everyone follows the rules. As we’ve seen throughout this year, people are really bad at following the safety rules even when their lives depend on it. Every single gymnastics competition during the pandemic, even the Friendship and Solidarity meet in Tokyo that had the highest level of observance, was still not at 100% in terms of following the rules. Put one superspreader at such a competition and you’ll have an outbreak that will reach multiple countries. With the latest mutations of the virus that evolved to spread better and faster, you don’t even need much contact with the carrier, only a few minutes in the same room can easily be enough.
The IOC understands quite well that none of the current safety measures are foolproof and so they suggested Olympics athletes be vaccinated ahead of the Games. They claimed that they don’t want athletes “to queue jump” but still want them high up on the vaccination list. It is not clear, though, whether vaccinating all the athletes is possible and an article by The New York Times suggests that the IOC does not expect it to happen.
However, if it were to happen, what would it mean for the Games to require the participants to get vaccines? I’ve given some thought to the potential problems that might arise.
IOC’s Dick Pound dismissed the concerns about allocating doses to athletes, claiming that, for example, giving 300-400 doses to Canadian Olympic athletes is a tiny drop in the entire number of the vaccines Canada requires. But would it be only 300-400 doses for the Canadian delegation? First of all, in sports that qualify teams or non-nominative spots, the final selection might take place only a few weeks before the Olympics. But the immunity takes time to build. The Pfizer vaccine, for example, has to be given in two doses, 21 days apart, and the fully immunity is only achieved around 10-14 days after the second dose. That means that all athletes that can potentially go to the Olympics need to be vaccinated no later than June. But it’s not only athletes. For the whole thing to work, everyone who will be at the Olympics – whether competing or working, needs to be vaccinated. That means coaches, support staff, medical staff, delegation managers, and even journalists coming out of Canada would have to be vaccinated. We are probably talking about a few thousand doses now. That’s a bigger number although maybe still small for Canada.
But let’s talk about the whole world. In 2016, over 11,000 athletes participated in the Olympic Games in Rio and over 4,000 – in the Paralympic Games. If we’re adding all the prospective athletes and their coaches and all the delegation members that will go to the Games, we’re talking about a population of a small city. Add to this the 6,000 journalists that will be in Tokyo, tens of thousands of workers, and the 80,000 volunteers that were recruited for Tokyo 2020. If the Games take place without spectators, it might be possible to slightly reduce the number of workers and volunteers. On the other hand, there will be a need for positions that did not exist before like disinfecting all surfaces, conducting PCR tests, ensuring that everyone wears masks and so on. But in any case, we are already talking about hundreds of thousands people getting ahead in the vaccination queue. That’s equal to a population of a small country.
When it became clear that the pandemic was not going to be stopped without vaccines and that the majority of the world’s population would have to be vaccinated, people became concerned with the ethics of vaccine distribution. For example, Gupta and Moraine (2020) talk about five potential approaches to vaccine distribution. The first one is prioritizing those especially vulnerable to the virus, such as the elderly or people with chronic illnesses and, thus, reducing mortality and the load on the hospitals. Regular Olympic athletes do not exactly fall into this category although some of the Paralympic athletes and people working at the Olympics might. The second strategy is prioritizing by life-cycle – basically, vaccinating people who potentially have the most years to live. This would include young and healthy athletes but this is probably not a strategy modern societies will adopt as many will find it inhumane. The third strategy is prioritizing people who provide instrumental value – basically, essential workers without which a society can’t run. Healthcare and supermarket workers, people who ensure that our infrastructure is running and that we have electricity and running water? Essential. Athletes and coaches? Societies can probably exist without them for a while. The fourth strategy would aim for equal access to the vaccines for all categories of people. It might sound nice in theory but won’t really work in practice due to existing societal inequalities. And the fifth strategy aims to reduce the spread of infection, for example, by vaccinating people in confined communities such as prisons or nursing homes. Potentially, vaccinating all the participants at the Games would reduce the infection spread but it could also easily be reduced by canceling the Games, while nursing homes can’t exactly be canceled.
It seems that governments in many countries are using a combination of several approaches. Most vulnerable people are at the top of the queue but so are healthcare professionals and some other essential workers like teachers or police officers. Young people who are not essential workers are way down the line. But the vaccine distribution is not uniform around the world. Israel, for example, is vaccinating really fast and with the majority of the vulnerable populations and certain categories of essential workers already vaccinated, athletes are likely to get their shots quite soon. In fact, some already have, like Alexander Shatilov. Others still have a long way to go to vaccinate even the elderly. For example, Ukraine will only get the first doses of the vaccine, enough for less than a million people, in February and for four more million in the spring but are unlikely to get more doses until the end of the year. This is not enough to vaccinate even their vulnerable populations and medical staff. If the country decides to vaccinate its Olympians, regular Ukrainians might be unhappy that a healthy gymnast is prioritized over their grandmas.
Countries with non-democratic regimes, of course, might not be too concerned about their citizens’ opinions on vaccine distribution. For example, UAE is reportedly offering vaccines to wealthy tourists. Russia announced they are planning to start vaccinating national team athletes, especially Olympic-bound ones, quite soon, despite not being even close to vaccinating the elderly and the essential workers.
With Russia, another potential problem might arise. If an up-to-date vaccination is required to participate in a competition, what is considered a real vaccine? Russia currently has only one COVID-19 vaccine approved – it’s home-made Sputnik V. This is the vaccine that will be used for vaccinating the athletes. However, the vaccine trials have been controversial, it has been approved and started being distributed to the general population before Phase III trials and the results of the first two phases of the trials still haven’t been published. Some of the data that has been published on the vaccine might potentially be fabricated. The creators of the vaccine claim it’s 92% effective but it is not clear whether this number can be believed based on very limited information about the trials that are still ongoing. The vaccine was approved for emergency use in some countries like Argentine, Belarus, and Serbia but it is very unlikely to be approved in any of the Western countries any time soon, especially since other vaccines that have gone through proper trials are available. So, if Russian, or, say, Argentinian, athletes get shots of Sputnik V, will they be considered vaccinated? If any vaccine approved by the athletes’ country counts, then what about getting injected with a saline solution and claiming it’s a real vaccine?
Another issue is giving vaccinating populations that vaccines have not been tested on. For example, the Pfizer vaccine is currently only approved for people 16 years old and older, Moderna and Astra-Zeneca— for 18 and older. Trials in younger children are currently underway but it will likely take a few months – too late for the youngest athletes, such as some WAG gymnasts who can potentially still be 15 by the start of the Games or even younger athletes like skateboarder Sky Brown who will only turn 13 by the start of the Games. If all participants were required to be vaccinated, would the IOC make an exemption for the kids? Or would they have to take a risk and get the shots that weren’t approved for their age?
Vaccines might not save from having to withdraw from the Games due to a positive PCR test – none of the vaccines offers 100% protection from contracting the virus or even from developing a serious illness. In the past, people sometimes would compete while infected with common colds or flus. For example, Andreea Raducan famously was stripped of her gold AA medal from Sydney due to a banned substance in her doping test. She claimed it was from a flu medication which she took for fever and cough. There was a lot of controversy about whether she should’ve lost her medal but zero outcry regarding her competing while sick and potentially infecting other competitors. In 2018, when a norovirus outbreak hit the Olympic village, the Swiss delegation opted to isolate their two ill athletes from the rest of the team. There wasn’t, however, anything in the rules about disqualifying them and they could potentially still compete if they felt well enough. These viruses were not as lethal as COVID-19 but could potentially kill or at least put someone in the hospital. So, if all participants will be vaccinated, the potential danger of getting infected with the coronavirus will likely not be bigger than getting a flu or a norovirus. Will then an athlete that tested positive have to withdraw or will they be still allowed to compete?
If the Olympics proceed without vaccination, the question is whether it’s ethical to hold the Games in a country whose people do not want it. A poll by NHK showed that 80% of the respondents want the Games postponed or canceled, up from 71% in December and less half of the respondents in October. The Olympics have a history of negatively affecting large numbers of people in the host city. For example, 3,000 were relocated in Rio against their will in order to clear space for Olympic buildings. In Moscow in 1980, many people from “undesirable” categories of population were forcefully resettled or sent to labor camps, while parents were told to send their kids to summer camps outside of the city. The Olympics are important for the athletes, it is the ultimate career goals for many, but is this goal more important that health and lives locals (and not only locals) can lose as a result of an outbreak? Japan also seems to be a victim of the Sunk Cost Fallacy – they’ve already invested large sums of money into the Games and, according to this decision-making principle, the more we invest into something (in terms of time, money, or effort), the harder it is to move on from it.
It seems that the situation might not be fair for the athletes in any case. Elite athletes already have limited body autonomy – they need to worry about what vitamins and medicine they take, they’re touched and prodded by coaches, doctors, and physical therapists, and they often have strangers watching them pee. Now they might potentially be required to get vaccinated whether by the IOC or by their governments. I strongly believe in vaccinations but the idea of forcing people to get vaccines, especially the ones that weren’t properly tested like Sputnik V, does not sit right with me.
Athletes have also been waiting in limbo since the start of the pandemic and they still have to keep training, even through interruptions caused by lockdowns. Some planned to retire after the Games and had to prolong their careers for another year. A year of training, especially during the pandemic, is a year of sacrifices – not just the training costs and potentially missed work and study opportunities, but also potentially being far away from family in order to stay near the training facility. This year took a tool on everyone, of course, but constantly worrying about whether the biggest opportunity of your athletic career will happen and what kind of safety protocols it will require is probably adding some extra pressure.
