Normally, I do not watch the Olympics, summer or winter, and I do not write about it, because the coverage is painful to watch, and because I think that it does more to foment international hostility and discord than any other mass gathering in the world.

That being said, when Covid-19 forces a 1 year delay of the games, it does take on a significance beyond sport and mindless nationalism:

A week ago, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan and Thomas Bach, president of the International Olympic Committee, were promoting the Summer Olympics in Tokyo as the balm the world needed to show victory over the coronavirus pandemic.

On Tuesday, the virus won out.

Bach and Abe bowed to a groundswell of resistance — from athletes, from sports federations, from national Olympic committees, from health experts — and formally postponed the Games, which had been scheduled to begin in late July, until 2021.

I guess that the Covid-19 pandemic now qualifies as real news now.