After much consternation and hand-wringing, the Tokyo 2020 Olympic organisers have finally decided to bar all international spectators coming from coming to Japan. Some 6,00,000 tickets have been refunded for the Olympics and 3,00,000 for the Paralympics. Coming at a time when the ever-escalating costs of the game are very much a concern, this refund could not have been easy to make. The organisers have not specified just how much they are refunding. This isn't just about the ticket sales of course. It is about the Olympics being an opportunity for Japan to once again kickstart its tourism industry which has been languishing over the last year. While local spectators have not been banned, this is hardly the pay-off that Japan and the Olympic organisers were looking for when they delayed the Olympics from last year. Presently, the committee is even debating banning foreign volunteers from helping in the games. What is driving this set of decisions? Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike simply stated that the organisers were acknowledging the inevitable. Public support for the games has continued a steady drop across the last year with the prevalent fear being that the risks of creating infection hotspots far outbalance any gains for Japan due to the games. Vaccines were a clear issue as well. In 2020, the organisers had said that participants to the games would not need to have mandatory vaccination to take part and that other Covid-control measures would be adopted. This was before the vaccines were developed and released to the world. But even now with several vaccines available worldwide, the situation hasn't exactly changed. There is no abundance of vaccines to the extent that any country would be willing to spare a few thousand vaccines for the Olympics participants to inoculate them for the games. This is not just a matter of ethics but also a matter of quite simply there being critical shortages of vaccines worldwide. Or so it actually was but the matter is a little bit more complicated. You see, China did, in fact, recently make the offer of inoculating all Olympic athletes for Tokyo 2020 and Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics. When the IOC reported the offer, it declined to say just how many vaccine doses China was going to be supplying. Japan, the organiser, is not too keen on the whole Chinese vaccine provision, however. Japan has declined to inoculate its athletes with Chinese vaccines because they have not been approved by the nation's drug regulator. It does not need to be said that this is some of China's timely vaccine diplomacy at play. While Japan, a regional rival, can refuse to take the vaccine, it cannot likely ask the IOC or the other participants to do the same. Japan is currently already under tremendous pressure. Aside from flagging support from its own populace, its Olympics organisation effort was hit by further shocks with two high profile resignations over improper, sexist comments. The bad press it brought to Japan over a problem that many in the media described as endemic in Japan should be obvious. At this point, the Tokyo Olympic organisers are very much in damage control mode and are likely desperate to get the games underway in some form at all costs. Well-run games at this stage will bring Japan much international prestige despite the difficult lead-up to the moment but even a moderate-sized problem currently has the potential to blow up and become a major issue as the whole world watches on.