Olympics Poisoned by Arrogant Bacteria

Dear Paoletta,
I have never hidden my aversion to the sea, in whose waters I do not dive for reasons of hygiene. The same ones that prevent me from eating fish, which lives in the sea and feeds on the excrements of humanity, therefore, in spite of itself. But the filth that we can find in the seas is nothing compared to that which is concentrated in the Seine, which overlooks a metropolitan area, that of Paris, populated by over twelve million people. We know that over a billion euros have been invested to make that waterway suitable for swimming and therefore allow athletes to compete without endangering their health. However, this investment has not been useful and I cannot understand how the organizers could first suspend the competitions, precisely because of the pollution of the river, and then, suddenly, authorize them, as if the Seine were no longer poisoned and contaminated from one day to the next, or rather from one hour to the next. It was all a bluff, a farce. Do we really believe that the Seine had suddenly become clean, bacterially pure? Common sense and logic prevent us from convincing ourselves of this. It is not a question of bad faith. After all, the effects of the risky dive were immediately evident and these are not suppositions. Numerous athletes have suffered from nausea, vomiting, dysentery and I will stop here. The Canadian Tyler Mislawchuk, as you report, had repeated bouts of vomiting in front of the cameras. The stories of those who have been in the water seem to be taken from a horror film. There are those who say they have seen things impossible to explain, there are those who say they want to forget. I do not want to appear exaggerated but I believe that these athletes have suffered violence: they were forced to choose between participating in the competition of their dreams and their health. A choice that, although for different reasons, our female boxing champion Carini also had to make, who decided not to fight against her Algerian opponent, in fact a man.

Returning to the athletes who entered the waters of the Seine, they also suffered damage, or at least potential damage: a slight fever or even a slight weakness is enough to compromise the outcome of a race. And in this case the repercussions of a defeat or a modest performance, due to a temporary malaise, are devastating from a professional and financial point of view. A bathing ban should have been in force, since those waters are full of fecal bacteria and concentrated chemical agents, elements that cause, when all goes well, acute gastroenteritis, with symptoms such as fever, nausea, vomiting, dysentery, muscle pain, abdominal cramps and spasms, exhaustion, depression. Other risks, according to doctors, are skin rashes, skin infections, eye infections. Without considering the harmful effects that will manifest themselves later, perhaps after an incubation period of the viruses.

The organizers are well aware of these dangers, but for organizational reasons they neglected the supreme duty to protect public health, namely the health of hundreds of athletes who bathed in the sewer and inevitably ingested that toxic water. These Olympics were disastrous. Let us only hope that the triathlon athletes who came into contact with the putrid French river will not later contract diseases even more complex than gastroenteritis.

I really think that France, which seems to suffer from an irremediable syndrome of superiority, cannot give lessons in respect, hygiene and civility to its neighbors.

Just consider the fact that the French, who seem to have invented the bidet, do not use it, so much so that homes are devoid of them. In short, it is easier to catch cholera in the Seine than to find a bidet in Paris.