Japan Wins "Gold"

Following the Olympics, Japan has experienced a Covid-19 spike so severe that they have run out of hospital beds.

I really do not understand why governments compete against each other to host the Olympics.

It's kind of like competing for a case of the clap:

Japan’s worst Covid-19 outbreak yet has thrown a spotlight on the inability of the country’s otherwise highly regarded medical system to adapt quickly to emergencies and its lack of reform to meet such needs.

As new cases surged to more than 25,000 a day this month driven by the delta variant, the number of medical emergencies nationwide that required an ambulance dispatch, but had difficulty finding a hospital to accept the patient, rose for six straight weeks to a historic high, according to data from Japan’s Fire and Disaster Management Agency.

Defined as cases where emergency medics were turned down by more than 3 hospitals and at the scene for more than 30 minutes, the figure jumped to 3,361 in the week of August 9-15, said the agency that oversees the ambulance system nationally. The case number ticked down slightly last week, but was still the third-highest ever recorded in Japan. About half the patients were suspected of having Covid-19.

The ambulance quandary has resulted in a handful of high-profile Covid deaths, sparking a debate over the efficacy of what is widely recognized to be one of the world’s most successful health-care programs. While the Japanese system has nurtured the world’s longest-living citizens with preventative care, the pandemic has laid bare the long-standing dysfunction in emergency care, where private hospitals aren’t required to take in Covid patients and don’t coordinate with local governments and ambulance services.