COVID Masks Are Back At Winter Olympics, Thanks To Two New Cases

It's 2026. It's been nearly six years since global governments abandoned science, reason, data, and evidence with COVID lockdowns. All because they believed in "health experts" and that the Chinese Communist Party was telling the truth when it claimed that it'd discovered a new virus in the Wuhan wet market and controlled it with a brutal lockdown.

Obviously, those lockdowns were not successful. 

A highly infectious respiratory virus did not disappear in a matter of weeks, shockingly. Lockdowns outside isolated island countries didn't work because society has to continue functioning, even if white collar workers are at home on their laptops. Masks, which had never worked successfully to control any airborne virus in the history of the world, did not work against COVID. And the mRNA vaccines, hyped up by pharmaceutical companies as "100% effective" at preventing transmission, were laughably useless at preventing infection or stopping transmission.

With these lessons in mind, along with the now-widespread knowledge that COVID poses little-to-no threat for virtually all healthy young people, you'd assume that society would have realized by now that there is no point in having "COVID protocols." That preventing transmission is impossible, and that any mild illness will quickly resolve. 

RELATED: COVID Lab Leak 'Pretty Close To Certain,' Linked To Creation Of Lockdowns, Mask Mandates

But that assumption relies on society to have common sense, awareness, and an interest in sanity. And as a new report out of the 2026 Winter Olympics indicates, sanity is still very far away.

(L-R) Kjeld Nuis, Jenning de Boo and Femke Kok of Team Netherlands skate during training on day minus two of the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympic Games at Milano Speed Skating Stadium on February 4, 2026 in Milan, Italy. (Photo by Dean Mouhtaropoulos/Getty Images)

Team Netherlands Instituting COVID-19 Protocols Over Two Positive Tests

Per a new report from the Daily Mail, members of the Netherlands Winter Olympics roster were photographed wearing masks when arriving at the airport in Italy this week. Two speed skaters, Jenning de Boo and Femke Kok showed up wearing a mask, despite years of evidence and common sense showing that masks do not work. 

The two skaters are expected to compete for a gold medal in speed skating events, and are current world champions in the 500m speed skating event. 

The head of the Netherlands Olympic delegation, Carl Verheijen, was asked about the masking, saying that it was a precautionary measure to stop potential COVID cases. Even though masks have quite literally never once served to protect anyone from becoming infected or transmitting COVID.

Dutch athletes have also been told not to "shake hands," with further warnings that protocols could become even more draconian if there are confirmed cases. Oh, and that's the best part; the Dutch team hasn't even had any confirmed cases. That's correct, the only cases thus far have come from staff on the Australian team. Perfection.

Verheijen told local Netherlands media that "We're currently in phase 2, and if anything really happens, we can scale up to phase 3 or 4." 

"We're not shaking hands anymore, but we're giving fist bumps," he continued. "We're wearing face masks in crowded areas and making sure we wash and disinfect our hands thoroughly."

Just like the good old days, isn't it? 

Again, there is no evidence that masks stop COVID cases. There is an overwhelming amount of evidence that they don't. There is no evidence that avoiding handshakes will stop COVID cases, and plenty of evidence that the virus is primarily transmitted through aerosols. Which, of course, has nothing to do with handshakes and cannot be avoided by fist bumping. Handwashing and disinfecting may have some marginal benefit, but the best systematic review of evidence on such programs, from the Cochrane Library, found that there was no "statistically significant reduction" in influenza-like illness and lab-confirmed influenza-like illness were analyzed separately.

This isn't complicated, it isn't hard to find. COVID protocols didn't stop infections because they don't work. We've known this for years. The Cochrane evidence review was published years ago. Not knowing this, or ignoring it, is indefensible in 2026. But the best part? They're going to keep doing this forever because they refuse to learn or accept what the data and evidence actually shows.