“The success in insulating the occasion from the virus and maintaining disruption to sports activities occasions to a minimal additionally mirrored the effectiveness and suppleness of China’s general zero-COVID insurance policies,” the International Occasions newspaper, which is pro-government even by Chinese language requirements, enthused.
So these “authoritarian Olympics” that human rights teams criticized and that some Western governments boycotted (at the same time as they despatched their athletes)? The bubble created to host them was, in some methods, not not like the bubble city that the Marvel character Wanda Maximoff created in final 12 months’s standard TV sequence “WandaVision.”
Just like the fictional Westview, Bubble Beijing positively had some issues in frequent with actuality, and generally you might glimpse the true world from inside. Nevertheless it was shiny and intently calibrated and — except you probably did some critical digging to search out the seams — you could not actually depart till the story performed out.
In the end, the 2022 Winter Olympics enter the books with two dominant storylines. One is the sports activities story — a story dotted with the triumphs of Eileen Gu and Nathan Chen and Su Yiming, the disappointment of Mikaela Shiffrin and the mess that’s Russian determine skating.
The opposite, although, captured from inside that bubble, is the story of the Olympic host nation. That one is a pandemic-era story of obvious medical and logistical triumph on the floor, with a special actuality floating under, sanitized for the federal government’s safety and considered, inevitably, via the COVID-flavored prism of our period — as if via a masks, goggles and a full-body plastic hazmat swimsuit.