The normalization of massive police presence targeting the working class in Paris during the 2024 Olympics has been accompanied by the normalization of mass COVID-19 infection. At the Paris Olympics, all public health precautions have been thrown out the window.
Millions of people, including 2 million foreign tourists, are expected at the various competition sites in France to watch the 48 sporting events of 11,310 athletes from 206 countries. More than 45,000 police and gendarmes are deployed on land, sea and in the air, with helicopters, drones and snipers ready to intervene, placing Paris in a state of siege.
Before the Games began, five Australian women’s water polo players tested positive for COVID-19. Several members of the Belgian Olympic delegation, whose identities have not yet been revealed, have also tested positive. Workers are therefore concerned that the Olympics could be the source of a massive spread of the virus, especially as mutations of the virus have accelerated transmission.
A group of Olympic volunteers have issued a public statement on the Mediapart website They threatened to resign en masse if public authorities did not respond to the threat of COVID-19. They called for mask-wearing, vaccination, ventilation and air purification policies and wrote: “Denial of the threat of the COVID-19 pandemic is not an antidote to infection.”
They added:
We have enthusiastically participated in the preparation of the Games as international volunteers. However, we are increasingly concerned about the lack of action by the organizers in the face of the Covid-19 epidemic that is still raging in Europe and around the world. We demand effective health measures against the virus, to protect the inhabitants of Paris and Seine-Saint-Denis, the athletes, the public and the volunteers. If no measures are taken, we will collectively resign from our missions and will not show up at the Olympic and Paralympic sites where we have been deployed.
While French authorities and Olympic organizers have failed to acknowledge the threat of COVID-19, the summer wave of infections in France is well underway, as has the wave that has hit neighboring countries since June, including Germany and Italy, due to declining population immunity. The impact of the virus during the recent Tour de France, which ran from late June to July 21, should be seen as a warning of what awaits us at the Olympics.
The event was marred by COVID-19 infections among elite riders, four of whom had to withdraw to recover from their infections, while others continued to ride and endangered other competitors. No protocols were established prior to the multi-day event. It was only at the end of the event on July 14 that Amaury Sport Organisation, the main organizer of the cycling event, asked journalists to wear masks when interacting with riders and their support staff.
Yet the Paris Olympics are taking place without any meaningful public health protection measures, even after the disastrous experience of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, postponed to 2021 due to the pandemic.
At the time, amid mass protests and concerns about the potential consequences of allowing the Games to be held, Olympic organizers held the event with very few spectators to attend the Games, costing $6 billion in public money. Still, Japan experienced a massive wave of infections in the late summer and early fall. The Tokyo COVID-19 Supervisory Committee meeting on August 20, 2021, warned: “Infections will spread throughout the country at a disastrous level. This is an emergency.”
Indeed, after the 2021 Olympics, the wave of infections accelerated in Japan and health authorities quickly abandoned any attempt to prevent the Omicron strain from spreading through the population. More than 80% of the 75,000 official COVID-19 deaths in Japan occurred after the Olympics. This is in line with the official practice, promoted in the United States by Anthony Fauci, of using the Omicron strain as a “live virus vaccine.”
The pandemic has claimed over 27 million additional lives, and the number of people with long Covid is in the hundreds of millions. The authorities’ complete disregard for public health threatens to have disastrous consequences. Beyond the obvious implications for the population, elite athletes who have come to Paris to represent their countries at these sporting events face the daunting risk that an infection could end their hopes of competing or winning a medal.
Indeed, a 2023 study in the Annals of Medicine The researchers found that elite soccer players’ aerobic performance remained reduced for weeks after COVID-19 infection, noting that “SARS-CoV-2 infection induces capillary flow disruptions, which shorten blood transit time through the remaining capillaries, thereby limiting oxygen uptake. These capillary disruptions are therefore expected to reduce the endurance capacity of elite players.”
The disregard for the health and well-being of athletes and the general public is inseparable from the grotesque social inequality of contemporary society. The world gave an overview of the state of siege imposed on the population before the opening ceremony, writing:
More than 40,000 barriers lining the streets of Paris, security perimeters prohibiting any access to the Seine without a QR code, hundreds of police and gendarmerie patrols and closed metro stations: rarely in peacetime has the French capital experienced such a high level of security.
The two-week sporting event will cost between 9 and 10 billion euros, of which only a third will be financed by sponsors. The rest will be borne by the public, that is, the vast majority, workers who will be forced to spend their income on a spectacle to which they were neither invited nor welcomed.
Marie Leon, 38, a mother of two who lives near the Stade de France in the working-class suburb of Saint-Denis, told AP: “You’ll see, there will be police officers who will stop us from going there anyway. From my window, I will be able to hear the roars and cheers of the Stade de France. That will be the only way for me to be included in the Olympics.”
Much has been made of the unprecedented nature of the setting for the Paris Olympics, which are largely taking place on the Seine or in temporary facilities and stands built around the river. In reality, this choice also reveals the authorities’ total contempt for the population.
Breaking with the tradition of opening the Olympics at sporting venues, the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games took the form of a parade of boats on the Seine. Around 10,500 athletes boarded an armada of 85 boats at the Pont d’Austerlitz, named after Napoleon Bonaparte’s military victory over Russian and Austrian forces in 1805. The boats sailed west for 6 kilometres before reaching the Trocadéro esplanade across the river from the Eiffel Tower, where official protocols took place and the Olympic cauldron was lit.
Along the picturesque route, with the iconic Notre Dame and the Louvre as a backdrop, 320,000 spectators filling 124 stands crammed in for hours on Friday, despite rain that left them soaked.
After an evening at the Élysée, more than 100 heads of state welcomed the athletes arriving amidst performances by Céline Dion and Lady Gaga. US President Joe Biden, who was recovering from his third Covid-19 crisis at home under close medical supervision, was replaced by his wife Jill. In total, more than 15,000 artists and behind-the-scenes technicians put on a grand spectacle for a budget of 120 million euros for the evening’s festivities.
For athletes, however, the reliance on the heavily polluted Seine River for the swim portion of the triathlon poses a major health threat. The $1.5 billion spent to build a sewage treatment facility to treat storm-polluted water has failed to clean the river, with rain forcing officials to cancel a training session Sunday. The Seine continues to harbor dangerous levels of bacteria, including E. coli and enterococcus, that could cause dangerous illnesses in swimmers, but officials plan to go ahead with the triathlon Tuesday.
The Australian, Chinese and other teams have announced they will design special treatments for their swimmers to minimise the risk of serious illnesses after competing at the Olympics.