What it's like to fly into Beijing's Olympic 'bubble'

The Beijing Winter Olympics is being hosted inside a veritable fortress -- known informally as the "bubble" -- that takes weeks of careful planning to successfully penetrate. Designed to prevent the spread of Covid, the bubble is the most ambitious quarantine attempted anywhere since the start of the pandemic.
The journey inside the bubble starts with a copy of the "Playbook," an 83-page rule book described by Olympic officials as a "way of life."

The guide instructs participants to upload their daily temperature readings into an app 14 days before the Games and to isolate during that time to avoid infection. As Omicron cases are surging in Tokyo, where I live, I didn't take any chances.

By the time I departed for Beijing, I was fully vaccinated, had tested negative for Covid twice, and had stocked my suitcase with face masks and snacks to eat if I failed a test and was forced to isolate alone for the entire Winter Games.

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