I AM not a prophet of doom. I hate to be like that. Nor am I an alarmist. I despise that to high heavens.
To be a prophet of doom is to champion darkness and despair. To be an alarmist is to scare people and drag humanity to fear and unrequited pulse-pounding.
What I am saying is, the Tokyo Olympics is in dire straits. Like thunder amid a storm, the Covid-triggered cry of anguish can’t be stilled even by sorcerers steeped on withcraft.
The virus panic gnaws at the heart, searing a spirit about to melt in the midst of desolation. Seems like a cobra is about to spit venom at a hapless victim. Us all.
Ah, the feeling of hopelessness while the plague-like phenom creeps in steadily, unstoppably it seems, is as valid as the public’s rant against hideous moves to silence ABS-CBN.
The specter of a sad scene portraying the vicious virus as wiping out the Games inscrutably has become as vivid as Trump’s hatred of immigrants pouring into US shores.
What option is left for us, mere mortals, to reverse the tide of dejection, if not monstrous mutation?
It can’t get any crueler than this.
Even face masks are getting scarcer by the day.
Gosh, Mercury is running out of alcohol.
With no cure in sight, bye-bye Olympics?
Where the hell you came from—Wuhan in the China province of Hubei they say, on Dec. 17, 2019—get lost, Covid.
You seem to be at every doorstep now, like Lalamove, a threat like a nuclear war suddenly erupting, leaving only the cockroach as the lone survivor if and when it happens.
But who cares?
The Covid covets our Games like an adulterous bastard.
Aren’t there 84 countries already infected by it as of last count?
And aren’t these 84 countries all qualified to go to Tokyo in July?
But, hey, vulnerability lurks.
Disrupted now are training, preparation and the mental focus of not only our Olympic-bound athletes—almost 12,000 of them—but officials as well who are virtually as helpless as a kitten up a tree.
God bless America?
God save the Queen?
I say, God bless us all—Olympics or no Olympics.