Hello and welcome to the Intelligence on Economist Radio. I'm your host, Shashank Joshi,

filling in for Jason Palmer. Every weekday we provide a fresh perspective on the events

shaping your world. We all rely on that little blue dot on our phone to map to guide us,

but the satellite signals that produce GPS are surprisingly feeble. We look at what happens

when people mess with satellite navigation. And if you think you've been lazy during

the pandemic, just look at cicadas. After 17 years underground, they're emerging in

droves along America's east coast. But how do you study a group that only shows itself

fewer than six times a century? First up though. After a year's delay, the 2020 Olympics

are scheduled to begin in Tokyo on July 23rd. Yesterday, Thomas Bach, the president of

the International Olympic Committee, appeared in Tokyo by video to reassure an uneasy

public about the summer's games. I can only re-emphasize this full commitment of the

IOC to organize together safe, Olympic and our Olympic games for everybody. But in a survey

released in Japan this week, more than 80% of respondents said the event ought to be delayed

or canceled entirely. Much of the country remains under a state of emergency during a wave

of COVID infections. On the whole, Japan has avoided the worst of the pandemic so far. It's

recorded fewer than 12,000 total deaths since the beginning of the pandemic, thanks in

part to some stringent border controls that have been in place since last spring.

Noisnighter is the economist's Tokyo bureau chief. But over two-thirds of those fatalities

have come this year in 2021. The country is in the midst of what they're calling a fourth

wave, fueled by more infectious strains, particularly the B117, first discovered in Britain, and

some regional health systems have been under real strain in recent weeks.

What about vaccinations? How are they going? In a word, slowly, less than 2% of Japan's

...