For all the stealth elements of the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic and issues in curbing its insidious spread, one aspect of its presence is clear and even symptomatic in its own way: Virtually anytime most of us may think we have even a slight grasp of its reach, the parameters mushroom all the more.
We've witnessed that for weeks now even in the microcosm of sports, which have played a vital role in demonstrating and conveying the harsh reality we are facing _ even as that paradoxically has deprived us of a tonic that could provide increasingly urgent diversion.
One day an eternity of two weeks ago, we were trying to get our arms around the strange image of major events played without fans in arenas. The next day, we were processing the unsettling notion of sports seasons suspended or delayed.
Then, all of a sudden, March Madness was vaporized and soon we were stranded in this bizarre place with no sports for the foreseeable future.
Emphasis on "foreseeable."
Because the sports world now is illuminating that the very idea of "foreseeable" is further out on an already vague horizon than any of us have wanted to believe with the 2020 Tokyo Olympics becoming an increasing uncertainty to begin as scheduled on July 24 ... if at all.
Because the sports world is reminding us that this is not a sprint but a marathon, featuring the cruel twist of a volatile finish line, a hard truth to absorb but also something we are all better off trying to see realistically.
As numerous nations call for at least substantially delaying the Games, while leaders of USA Swimming and USA Track & Field have urged postponement and USA Gymnastics is soliciting feedback from its Olympic hopefuls, veteran International Olympic Committee member Dick Pound told Christine Brennan of USA Today that "postponement has been decided." And that he believes the IOC soon will announce the approach to an immense process that will have to be undertaken in stages.
It's important to note that the IOC on Monday reaffirmed its stance Sunday, when it said it could take up to another month to explore scenarios. Also Sunday, IOC president Thomas Bach ruled out canceling the Summer Olympics for the first time since 1944 during World War II.
"Cancellation would not solve any problem and would help nobody," he wrote in part. "Therefore it is not on our agenda."
It's easy to appreciate Bach's inclination to try to salvage this Olympics _ the Games never have been postponed or canceled during peacetime.
For Tokyo. For the athletes. For all of us, really, in some way or another. More cynically, for the IOC itself.
And it reasonably could be asked why this needs to be decided now.
But coronavirus has its own imperceptible agenda. Science tells us the pandemic has rendered it dangerous to even visit ailing loved ones or be in crowds of more than 10 ...
Much less congregate among tens of thousands from all over the world for an event taking place in the region where this all began.
Or as Al Fong, coach of Olympic gymnasts past and budding hopefuls now, put it last week: "How many people are in that area that go back and forth that know people that know people that know people?"
This is a complicated emotional hurdle for many to climb, including a conflicted Fong. Hours after a visit from The Star last week, during which training was ongoing, he texted that he was shutting down his GAGE Center after all.
"It bothered me that everyone in the country is trying to cooperate _ and I didn't do my share," he said in a text message the next day.
Now it's time for the IOC to do its share.
Even with the Olympic torch relay still scheduled to start this week days after the arrival of the flame drew what Reuters called hundreds "in a jostling crowd," postponement needs to be imminent.
That's the best way reinforce the message that this pandemic is at least months away from any substantial reprieve ... and perhaps allow for a tentative chance at averting cancellation altogether.
Perhaps, we say, since it's hard to fathom the financial implications and the infinitely confounding logistics of that, especially as the pandemic continues to unfurl.
But it's important to immediately stop the delusion that this can be done on schedule.
For one thing, false hope does no one any good.
For another, athletes all over the world are confused and off-kilter about how to train in their unique specialties with so much shut down. And when to try to hit peak levels for trials that are becoming increasingly less likely to even happen.
Furthermore, you can't have an Olympics without the crowds that define the spirit of the Games ... and you can't have crowds anytime soon.
Most of all, because there is a world to help be saved by staving off the Games and more emphatically declaring the urgency of standing down.
Time for the entwined five Olympic rings to be separated at social distance, like you might have seen in mocked-up memes.
Wrestler J'den Cox, the Columbia, Missouri, native and Missouri graduate who won a bronze medal at the 2016 Rio Olympics, spoke with The Star recently about the emotional dilemma entailed in the prospect of canceling an event four years in the pursuing.
But Cox, who won his second world championship last year, has found clarity that gets to the core of it all.
When his friend and longtime wrestler Jordan Burroughs on Saturday conducted a Twitter poll asking athletes if they'd compete in the Game as scheduled if they qualified, Cox was part of the 18.6% of 4,807 votes to say no.
"No, not if things haven't changed by then," he wrote. "Because I possibly could infect someone else. If it were something that it would just be my burden then yes, Ex: Zika Virus in 2016.
"It's not about me not wanting to compete, it's about not wanting to possibly bring harm to someone else."
That has to be the prime directive for us all now.
It's one of the few things we really do know, after all. And it's one of the only ways to bring the world together in a year when it appears impossible for the Olympics to do so safely.
