At the Olympics: Closed loop preserves safety, at the cost of humanity

ZHANGJIAKOU, China — Here is a non-comprehensive list of objects I have observed hazmat-suited Chinese Olympics workers disinfecting in an effort to halt the spread of COVID:

The top of doorframes. The outside walls of buildings. The inside walls of buildings. The base of poles that hold retractable rope lines. The massage chairs that some blessed soul installed in the local media center. Restaurant tables, and the partitions between them. The floors, walls and buttons of elevators. Bus seats. Bus tires. Bus parking lots.

Here is a comprehensive list of the locations where I have observed hazmat-suited Chinese Olympic workers: Everywhere. Every-freaking-where.

More than 12,000 athletes, journalists and Olympic officials are now living inside China’s “closed loop” system, a total lockdown enforced by fences, bars, concertina wire and security guards. Every single one of the individuals now in the bubble tested twice before he or she arrived in China, underwent an agonizing and rigorous test at the airport, and every single one of us now lives in a state of morning swabs and perpetual uncertainty.

China declared from the start that its intention was to isolate, contain and stamp out COVID outbreaks at the Olympics. The goal was not to keep individual athletes or others happy and comfortable; the goal was to keep the Games moving, no matter how many parking lots had to be pointlessly sprayed with disinfectant. No matter what the cost.

So far, China’s plan is working. Every day brings fewer and fewer positive tests, fewer individuals getting pulled from the closed loop and cordoned off into their own isolation rooms. But the cost is a heavy one.

Your morning throat swab

Each morning, everyone within the bubble gets up, gets ready to leave his room, sighs as they put on the mask they’ll wear for the next 12 or 15 or 18 hours, and opens the door. Before visitors leave their building, they’ll stop by a station to do their daily throat swab.

Some of the stations are set up in hotel lobbies. Other more dystopian ones are outdoor kiosks, where hazmat-suited technicians reach out to you with thick rubber gloves that extend through holes in a glass wall.

Sometimes the swabs are a gentle swipe across your throat. Sometimes you’ll gag a bit. Sometimes it feels like the technician is carving their initials into your tonsils. However it goes down, it generally goes down quickly, and you’re on your way. You spend the rest of the day hoping that you don’t get a phone call that says your test results came back the wrong way.

For the rest of the day, you’ll wear your mask, except for when you’re eating, and so will everyone else. And these aren’t wispy little thin paper masks or kitschy Baby Yoda Etsy masks; everyone is wearing the full-strength N95 or KN95 surgical masks. I have not yet won a gold medal at the Olympics, but I’ve got to imagine it feels almost as good as pulling off the mask at the end of the day when I’m back in my hotel room.

Little interaction

The closed loop is working with brutal, relentless effectiveness. But along the way, it’s crushed one of the finest elements of the Olympics: the cross-cultural connectedness that arises when you bring the entire world together in one place. Those living inside the loop have little chance to interact with each other — you’re limited to your own hotel, the venues, and that’s it. Many of those working for the Olympics inside the loop are swathed head-to-toe in plastic and face shields cover the only part of their body that’s visible: their eyes. Those outside the loop have no chance to interact with anyone inside.

So we all do our best to get by, with lots of genial waves — no one can see you smile under that mask, remember — and other mimed expressions of greeting and gratitude, bowing heads and putting hands on hearts, and so on. This is the Olympics, after all, and we’re all damn lucky to be here, regardless of the chaos.

Every day, the Olympic workers wave merrily and graciously acknowledge my woeful Western attempt at saying “xièxiè [thank you]" and the bus drivers, deep in their plexiglass-enclosed cocoons, often nod as you climb off your 14th shuttle bus of the day. The workers inside the loop are unfailingly polite, a lot more polite than I’d be if the world showed up in my country, and I had to swaddle head to toe while they wore only a mask. Everyone’s making the best of it, despite the circumstances — it’s what humans do — but it’s a damn shame the circumstances are so dispiriting.

This is an Olympics where Chinese politics and policy are literally inescapable, where questions about the host nation’s woeful human rights record collide with the perpetual scandals that laugh in the face of the flailing IOC. All the while, athletes who weren’t fortunate enough to test their way to (relative) freedom are in agony in isolation, watching their dreams evaporate as they pick through sub-hospital-grade food, meal after meal.

We all make peace with it as best we can. Some of you back home have tuned out what they call the “Genocide Games” altogether, and that’s your right. Some focus only on the exploits of the athletes … though, as the skating scandal has shown, even that’s no refuge from the ugly politics of the real world. Some bear up as best they can, mask on, looking for whatever sparks of joy they can find in these Games. Soon enough, it’ll all be over, and we’ll all head back to our home countries, remembering what we went through and wondering what could have been.

For China, an Olympics that ends on time, with little COVID disruption, will be a complete political and public relations success. For the rest of us, it feels like a life’s opportunity missed.