The 2024 Olympic Games are serving up some less-than-subtle metaphors for how poorly we handle public health. Just after winning a bronze medal in the much-anticipated men's 200-meter race, U.S. sprinter Noah Lyles collapsed on the track in exhaustion — not just because he’d completed a brutal run in just 19.7 seconds, finishing third, but also because he was sick with COVID-19, a diagnosis that he’d concealed from others. He had been favored to take home gold, as he did in the 100-meter race a few days earlier.
But seeing an American Olympic star sprawled out and gasping on the track, and then taken away in a wheelchair, was more than a shocking image. It also represented the general “mission accomplished” attitude toward SARS-CoV-2: We think we’ve won against this virus and we haven’t.
