In 2013, 80-year-old Kohei Jinno was evicted from his home in Tokyo so that Japan could build a new stadium to host the 2020 Summer Olympics. The Olympics regularly raze the homes of people like Jinno , who alongside his wife lived in a public housing complex. What sets him apart from the millions of others like him is that it was the second time it had happened : When the Olympics came to Tokyo in 1964, Jinno was evicted then too.

Jinnos story, which he told Reuters this week , is a reminder that the Olympics are a moral disaster even in normal circumstances. The games are less a sporting event than they are a scheme to transfer public wealth to private coffers a budget-busting monstrosity that diverts billions of dollars in public money away from actual public needs, destroys the environment , and dramatically alters the lives of countless numbers of poor people and racial and ethnic minorities , whether by stealing their homes, criminalizing their livelihoods, or simply booting them out of town .

But this year, the games are taking place amid an ongoing pandemic that risks converting these Olympics from a mere disaster into an outright atrocity.