Aaaaaaaaaaaaargh, no.
Sorry, I've just hit the wall with this now. I'm tired and sad and scared, I hate having no choice but to watch almost the entire northern hemisphere bending to breaking point under this wretched lurgi and its many and varied impacts, I'm fed up with watching every small interest group out there try to wangle itself loopholes and exceptions so it can carry on pretending that things are almost normal, and I'm honestly sick to death of feeling terrified every time an event is announced that this will be the one that kills one of these total strangers that I've come to care about over the internet. I just. want. people. to be safe.
Cancel the rest of the season, from Worlds on down. Cancel every nation's nationals. Cancel itty-bitty domestic kiddie competitions. Put the whole damn' sport into suspended animation for the rest of the season! It survived two World Wars and the 1918 flu. It will wake up again when things are safer. So will its audience. And it will be one less thing for me to worry about until then.
This post is going to bring out the Louis in me. I absolutely disagree with what you wrote.
First off, let me start by saying that canceling Worlds last year was the right call, as was shutting down IdF or whatever they're calling it these days. When things are out of control, sporting events are a luxury that we can do without. Where I think we differ is on what should be considered an out of control situation.
Multiple sports have successfully returned to competition - including international sports, indoor sports, and even contact sports. There is no reason to assume skaters and skating in general are at greater risk. There would have been no reason to cancel Nebelhorn, when risk was low and appropriate protocols were in place (and it turned out fine!). There's no reason to cancel NHK, essentially a domestic competition in a country that's doing well and can clearly manage things. The key is to look at the situation, see what's feasible, and implement appropriate health and safety measures. If anyone wants to opt out - skaters, coaches, fans - that's fine. But there's no reason to take a one-size fits all approach and make everyone miserable.
During the Spanish flu, healthcare was not as advanced as it is now, and it was also much more fatal to young people than CV-19 is (can we please stop using cutesy names for it?). CV-19 is bad, and we know it can be unpredictable. But its impacts are also being overstated in some ways - for example, it seems like every time there's a reinfection we get an update on it, even though that appears to be
very rare.
I realize that in Australia and New Zealand the approach is to try to stomp this thing out of existence. That's very nice, but most countries (and cities within them) are not as easily isolated, and we're going to have to deal with this without locking down entire cities/regions for months at a time. A lot of the early thinking about CV-19 was off, but the basic idea of the Hammer and the Dance was sound. Public health and societal well-being require that we don't just use the hammer; the varied impacts of
that are something many people, and societies, cannot survive. You want people to be safe; we all do. Mental health is a part of that.
So rather than taking an all or nothing approach, let's try for something more nuanced that takes into account what the situation is in any given place, and what they can handle. And let's hope for effective testing, treatment and vaccines sooner rather than later.
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