Fidget-spinners, Pokémon GO, the skateboard, and Covid testing for major sports events – what is the odd one out?

Covid testing in sports, of course.

Although they were all fads that ran out of popular steam within a year or two, there are still some devotees of Covid sports testing amongst the 2026 Australian Winter Olympics entourage even after all these years.

The news that ‘two staff members working with Australia’s Winter Olympics team have tested positive to Covid’ is a reminder of Covid panic while still afflicts an unfortunate few, especially amongst the ranks of our institutional authorities.

The 25th Olympic Winter Games have commenced in northern Italy and two of the Australian contingent’s support staff have reportedly tested positive for Covid and are being handled under Covid protocols (which, presumably, means isolation and the inevitable mask-wearing). Their ‘close contacts’ have also been tested and ‘anti-virals’ administered if they came up ‘positive’ (from a test that was observed to return high false positive and false negative rates).

At least the full-blown, three-act theatre of the absurd at the previous snow-and-ice games at the height of Covid derangement is absent this time.

During the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics, the Athletes’ Village bartenders, for example, wore full hazmat suits whilst robots sprayed disinfectant (what else would we have expected from the Chinese epicentre of Covid hysteria). This time around, we have been spared any demands that the 2026 Winter Olympics must be cancelled to save granny and there are no stories of panic buying of loo roll whilst they instruct us to follow the arrows, stay six feet apart and await further instructions from the WHO.

Missing, too, are the showy theatrics of yesteryear on the sports field such as when a ‘Covid-positive’ Aussie Test all-rounder had to take the field against the Windies in 2022 under ‘proper precautions’ which amounted to standing apart from all the other players during the pre-match national anthem and during play when a wicket was taken with celebratory high-fives allowed only at a distance. Not to forget all those footy players who had to train away from the main group.

Yes, it was that bizarre and stupid back then and we should never forget just how bonkers it all was.

Official Covid panic is more low-key now in 2026 but, still, the Australians’ Covid policy in Italy is a disturbing echo of the old ‘Covid’ days.

The rationale for Covid testing this time around is that it is simply consistent with routine health monitoring and isolation measures for symptomatic individuals under protocols that existed at the Beijing 2022 Winter Games and the Paris 2024 Summer Games. Others may say this is a bit overkill for what amounts to a cold.

That Australian Olympic officials are still treating ‘Covid’ as a major thing, and specifically testing for it, is bewildering.

Meanwhile, the US Olympians seem obsessed by using their gift-wrapped media platform to dump on ICE and their deportation of criminal illegal aliens from the US (which is what 77 million Americans voted in Trump in 2024 explicitly to do). Two US men’s freestyle skiers said ‘the actions of ICE agents do not reflect the country they represent’.

ICE (and Trump) Derangement runs as deep in the ‘progressive’ parts of the US as Coronamania does Downunder amongst the international sports establishment.

I had thought all the nonsense of Covid testing and isolation and sanitiser and elbow-bumps and density-limits and face-rags and vaccine passports and vaccine mandates had been dispensed with. Guess not. Covid testing, at least, is still a thing for some people and a positive test sets off screaming sirens and wailing alarm bells with the ABC running hard with it as if it was a baton in an Olympic sprint relay although even those arch Covid media maniacs at our national broadcaster seemed to tire of the whole thing after one news cycle.

Individual crazes like fidget spinners die fast because people grow out of their childish enthusiasms and move on, but when fads get baked into official policies at the institutional level they tend to stick around way past their shelf life as bureaucratic inertia outlives whatever the original rationale was proclaimed to be.

Adjusting my tin-foil hat for a moment, it could also be the case that the ultra-Covidians are keeping the Covid protocols at the ready by placing them in the pie-warmer for the next time they want to flex their institutional muscle and deprive us of our freedoms.

I readily admit to having once fallen for the crazes of the hula hoop and the flared jeans (I chose a floral pattern in paisley for the bell-bottoms), whilst the less said about my 1970s light blue safari suit the better, but, in my defence, I was young and immature. I look back on all that now with embarrassment unlike the current-day Covid nostalgics who look back with longing on their good old ‘Covid’ days.