For months, fears about the Rio de Janeiro Olympics have been hogging the spotlight.

There are concerns about safety amid a surge of murders in Rio and extremist attacks in Europe and the United States. Polluted beaches and other waterways could make athletes and visitors ill, and the Zika virus has scared some competitors away.

If all that wasn’t enough, the state of Rio is so broke that months ago it stopped paying thousands of public employees; Angry police have periodically been greeting tourists in the international airport with signs that say, “Welcome to hell!”

If history is a guide, however, a focus on the problems is all part of the script in the run up to the games. Once the competitions start, most if not all of the problems fade into the background — at least for the athletes, tourists and millions watching around the world.

Such negative coverage has a “very simple explanation,” says Michael Heine, director of the Center for Olympic Studies at Western University.

“The event is about sports, but you can’t find sporting material because the whistle hasn’t gone yet,” said Heine. “So what else do you write about?”

Coverage ahead of the 2012 Olympics in London included stories about terrorism fears and concerns about civil liberties in light of increased military and police presence. The run up to 2008 Games in Beijing put a spotlight on authoritarianism and extreme air pollution in China. In Athens 2004, there were myriad questions about whether the venues would be done in time.

Many Brazilians feel frustrated that the expectations are overwhelmingly negative, especially when the country has pulled off big events like the 2014 World Cup.

They argue that such accounts don’t take into account Brazilian “jeito,” or way of doing things, which includes an easy-going nature and a penchant for successfully pulling things off at the last moment.