Turfster

Immediately after winning the bronze medal, Lyles needed medical attention. He was taken off the track in a wheelchair and news later broke that he tested positive for COVID-19 prior to the race.
“It definitely affected my performance," Lyles said after the race, adding that he stayed in an offsite hotel and tried to keep his illness "close to the chest" after testing positive on Tuesday. His teammates and opponents did not know he was sick.
Lyles does suffer from asthma, which can make respiratory illnesses worse.
"Why would we give them an edge?" He said when asked about the secrecy, adding they also didn't want everyone to go into a panic and wanted everyone to be able to compete.
There are no restrictions on competing at the Paris Olympics with COVID-19.

this is a horrifying fucking failure on every fucking level.

first of all, i don't care how competitive you are, as one person with asthma to another, doing any kind of athletic event with COVID is a fucking terrible idea. what a delicious easy-bake recipe for long COVID, just rolling the dice to maybe never professionally race again. i am always concerned when athletes talk about how they just had to push themselves harder through injuries, and this is among the most horrifying examples of that mindset.

except it's worse because lyles put everyone else in that race at risk of infection too! what lyles (and I guess Team USA trainers, probably?) is framing as Way Cool Athletic Willpower to Fight On kinda feels like reckless disregard for the health of every single person in that race! including himself! he knew hours before the event and kept it quiet because he was thinking about Strategy? did it occur to him that someone else might have preferred not competing to competing with COVID? cool that he wore a mask while talking to the press i guess. horse, barn door, etc.

but then, is it even fair of me to chide lyles in particular for pulling this shit and using this defense when....this is pretty much what the IOC encourages with its total lack of precautions! it's just another institution unwilling to prioritize the health of thousands of people over its own bottom line. we don't even know how many cases were spread so far in the crowd. why should I even be surprised or especially mad in this case? it's not like the IOC is some bastion of ethics. (eta: lyles was also likely facing pressure to compete anyway on a scale i can't personally understand!)

maybe it's just the framing, the inspiration-pornification of a COVID diagnosis. noah lyles got a bronze with covid, what a man. don't think too hard about the wheelchair part immediately after. why are you people so afraid? covid is basically over. only like forty athletes got it at the games so far. it's just the flu.

it's just the flu.

i really hope everyone is gonna be okay.

this kinda shit is why im pretty sure i will never participate in public life again

not just that it happened, with reckless disregard for his own health and the health of everyone around him, but the way this is being presented as almost a triumph rather than recklessly dangerous behaviour

like fuck, this is just how everyone out there thinks now. how am i supposed to ever feel safe around people again

are making the manufactured consent machine go brrrrr to turn The Fucking Blood Plague into "just a cold we have to live with, like the flu" so that the sheeple will just be docile and Work In Silence, Creating Value And Money For Them, and if some of them get sick, well, that's their problem isn't it? Good thing humans are a renewable resource. Better encourage them to breed while we're cranking the machine, tho.

Remember in March 2020 when the WHO was reassuring everyone COVID was not airborne and so washing your hands was enough?

And how we're still fighting against this idea because the only fucking preventative measure any public health official mentions when covid is surging is to use hand sanitizer and cover your face when you cough?

It took them until December 2021 to quietly update their page on COVID to include it can spread through airborne transmission. Hey, our understanding of the facts change and we update our guidelines to match, right?

Except by May 2020 they were already recognizing COVID was airborne in their plan to go back to the office:

In the context of COVID-19, the measures recommended
by REHVA are to run ventilation systems with no air circulation and to run the ventilation
units at maximum capacity to ensure that 100% fresh air is injected into the ventilated space.
This measure reduces the spread of all air-borne viruses

United Nations Geneva (where the WHO operates from) Back to the Office plan

Wear a well-fitting mask, we need to keep us safe because they won't. They never did.

Maybe the fact that the moment a threat is recognized as "airborne" then a lot of money needs to be spent to actually keep people safe: respirators, updated HVAC systems with MERV-13 or HEPA filters, negative pressure in patient room in hospitals and that would salt the vibes for capitalists and the states that serve them. Better wait until you have absolutely no choice but to concede and then do it as quietly as possible.

Same reason it took the CDC until the exact day the public health emergency ended to include "improving ventilation in buildings" as part of their COVID-19 guidelines

No public health emergency means the government can't actually force employers to do this.

You do you :) (by wearing a mask because these fuckers will see you die and then complain there's a "worker shortage")

The "official" messaging in many places around the world is still:

• it's not that bad¹, don't pay attention to the whiners
• if you do get it, it's just like the flu², just rest for a few days and then go back to work
• just keep your 1.5m distance from infected people, you'll be fine³, no reason to mask at all, weirdo

The people perpetrating these fucking falsehoods should be tried for crimes against humanity.

Alas, Capitalism.

Anyway, keep fucking masking.

Oh my god those poor athletes, they worked so hard and now some of them suddenly have covid which popped back up out of the blue, so they can't go to the olympics!

Wow yeah weird how that "just" magically happened, huh?
It's almost like it never went away and pretending it did was bad, actually.

If only governments hadn't told people everything was fine and to party it up.
If only people had taken precautions.
If only.

But don't worry!
They're going to reintroduce masks for athletes at the olympics!
And the 1.5 meter distance!

That'll fix everything and keep everyone else safe!

Oh, and if the symptoms "aren't too bad", they'll still get to compete!

It's like they didn't fucking learn anything in the last half decade.

Edit: If one more person tells me "it's just a flu, we'll just have to live with it seasonally", I will explode

The CDC notes that another factor in the decision [to shorten the isolation period to 5 days] was how the pandemic could affect society, explaining that the "spread of the Omicron variant has the potential to worsen staffing shortages and increase supply chain challenges, which jeopardize industry, education, and other systems that are essential to maintain a functioning society and economy. The pandemic has also had a negative impact on the mental health of adults in the United States, largely due to economic and social concerns."

From a news article from January 2022, right after the CDC changed their isolation guidance after covid infection from 10 days to 5 days

Like I remember the CDC and everyone that supported this saying, basically: Omicron is spreading too fast our vaccines are shit against this variant, so many people are getting sick it's disrupting industry.... we should force people to go to work sick

And I remember being so angry and upset and looking around to see if anyone with any power would push back and then despairing when they didn't.

Now? I'm even angrier. Looking at where that led us, I'm even more furious. Knowing the results of this line of thinking, seeing the numbers of dead and newly disabled, the new variants, and even the almighty economic fucking cost of "early retirements" and "work absenteeism" and "worker shortages" and "people dropping out of the workforce because of disability"? I'm enraged. These are all things we saw coming, these are all things I talked about until I was hoarse and so did so many activists and disabled people and public health experts and epidemiologists and researchers and then nobody listened and here we are. But Biden, currently on his third (at least) covid infection, "ended the pandemic"

Wear a mask. They were fine killing you and your loved ones why would you follow their lead.

It's amazing how Capitalism and Most World Governments (which, to be fair, is just Capitalism But With Its Arm Up A Bunch Of On Average Geriatric Puppets) managed to say "But think of the poor landlords not making rent from all those empty offices" with a straight face, and the majority of people fucking didn't bring out the guillotines but went "you know what, yeah, these masks mildly inconvenience me from spitting straight into the faces of those I demand make my double triple flipjump frappamoccachino on a little terrace, so we should do that, thank god my hellish ordeal is finally over!" while stepping over all the dead and permanently changed they didn't see, because they weren't them.