BEIJING, China — If you’re going to freeze to death at a Winter Olympics in China, do it early, is what I always say. And so, as the Games began, I took a train, a bus, a cab, another bus and a gondola to the men’s downhill, where temperatures were rumored to be in the negative four-millions. As it turns out, it actually wasn’t that cold. But it was apparently too windy to race down a mountain like an insane person, and so the downhill was postponed.
Andrew P. Scott/USA TODAY Sports
We are three days into the Olympics, and despite a few logistical mishaps, a lack of snow not made by humans, a host country with an atrocious human-rights record, and the strong suspicion that everybody here knows when we poop, I am happy to report that countries are bonding over the one thing that unites us all: stupid COVID protocols.