Breakfast Club: The Pandemic Games Begin
breakfast club
weekly running roundups
Empty chairs in Tokyo.
The pandemic games begin
Protests from Japanese citizens. Ambivalent sponsors. Empty stadiums. Sterile television coverage. Another wave of infections. Why exactly are we doing this again?
That’s the question asked by John Branch in a recent New York Times piece, probing the challenge of the Tokyo Olympics and the Games more generally. He interrogates whether the quadrennial event, plagued by scandal and bloated expenses, remains worthy of our time and money.
“The Olympics are an easy target for criticism, never more than now. Do they still matter? Or have they lost their way and strayed from whatever ideals they purport to embody?”
The topline concern in Tokyo remains the COVID-19 pandemic. As the Delta variant drives a third wave of global infections, converging thousands of athletes, coaches, and support staff from across the world into a single city is... uh, problematic.
Fortunately, most athletes are vaccinated and the numb…
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Footnotes to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.