The hygiene theatre persiste et signe

I think that the french expression in the title is the best adapted one.  If I were really forbidden to use anything but english what I would have opted for is "The hygiene theatre is alive and well". Be that as it may what I am going to write about here are the ridiculous lengths to which the IOC is willing to go in order to respect totally unfounded infection-avoiding directives. 

I have written already in my article, where I was wondering whether the Games were going to be held, about the laughable World Athletics rules, with their obsession on cleaning, among which one find gems like 

the use of hand sanitiser should be recommended before each attempt in vertical jumps

But this time the instructions come form the very summit of the olympic hierarchy. 

“The medals will not be given around the neck. They will be presented to the athlete on a tray and then the athlete will take the medal him or herself", said IOC president T. Bach during a conference in Tokyo. And he segued, "It will be made sure that the person who will put the medals on the tray will do so only with disinfected gloves, so that the athlete can be sure that nobody touched them before”.

And he confirmed that “there will be no handshakes and there will be no hugs during the ceremony”.

What utter nonsense!

It has been known almost since the outset of the epidemic that the probability of being infected by touching a contaminated surface is trifling. In my article cited above I linked to the piece by D. Thompson in The Atlantic on "the hygiene theatre". He writes, epigrammatically, "People are power scrubbing their way to a false sense of security". How true! Thompson links to an article of E. Goldman, a professor at Rutgers, published in the Lancet, where the author debunks the myth of fomite (i.e. contaminated object) Covid transmission. Even if you do not have scientific training I suggest that you track down the article of Goldman and read it (it's just one page long). After that you will avoid the absurd, obsessive gel hand cleaning.

The Tokyo podia are particularly large so as to ensure distancing between the medalists!

So now, in the name of a derisory practice, the athletes will be deprived of that unique experience of the medal award ceremony. They will not be allowed to share a few moments of camaraderie, of those moments where they can share a feeling of having reached their objective.

But, not to worry. The IOC, mindful of the depressing atmosphere of the deserted stadia, is going to feed into the arena crowd noise recorded from each event at previous Olympics. I don't know why, but this reminds me of the canned laughs of american comedies of the early tv days. But perhaps this is it: the Olympics have become a huge (money-motivated) comedy. I think that it is high time they bowed out.