Covid logic suggests Tokyo 2020 shouldn’t go ahead but there may be some undimmed joy in staging it after all this horror
The American poet Edgar Allen Poe wrote a short story called The Masque of the Red Death about a prince who holds a fancy costume ball in his castle, even though a plague – the Red Death – is running through the world outside.
Prince Prospero isn’t worried. He can pull up his drawbridge. His friends are wealthy and glamorous. Probably the Red Death is, like, a hoax or something. So the ball goes ahead and is a great, if slightly spooky, success.
