The North Koreans are coming, and the Russians, too

What a total nonsense.  The typical journalist with his had in the sand, or in this case, in the snow.  Do you really think only the Russian athletes took and take doping ?  And did you really not know they did in Sochi until they got caught ? 

Many journalists are close to a number of athletes, managers, organisers and knows what goes on...and plays the game with the rest of them. Until suddenly some get caught and the journalist demonize the athletes and wash their hands in innocence. Despicable. Or , at best, incompetent.

If they want to argue it was done on a national level and that is why the Russians should be banned, what about Nigeria, the USA, the UK , Jamaica...

A doping cheat must be banned. Agreed. But anyone can so NO. There can be repercussions to that NO in some countries but still, the choice is there. Russia as a nation should not be banned, even if for only 1 clean athlete. He or she should be able to compete under his or her countries flag, more so even, because for him or her to get there, will have been much more difficult

Russians won 33 medals in all, a number that has officially now been reduced to 20 after Olympic officials stripped many medal winners for their participation in the doping scheme.

That's a lot of medalists tainted (13 out of 33 medals is ~40%, almost half their athletes who medalled!) - they went from 1st place to 4th place in one fell swoop

And that's with only the medalists. All medalists are automatically tested for doping - but for the rest of the non-medalled athletes, it's random testing. So who knows how many more didn't get caught

A doping cheat must be banned. Agreed. But anyone can so NO. There can be repercussions to that NO in some countries but still, the choice is there. Russia as a nation should not be banned, even if for only 1 clean athlete. He or she should be able to compete under his or her countries flag, more so even, because for him or her to get there, will have been much more difficult

The issue in Russia is that it goes beyond just on the individual level - it goes all to way up to the system level

So many medalists wouldn't had been doping and thus caught if they were doing it just by their individual selves - it's hard enough for any top-rank athlete in the limelight to try to evade the doping system, that so many top-rank athletes to even try.............. unless the system itself was in on it

So not only does the cheating athlete deserve punishment, but so does the cheating system as well, agreed. But how does one punish a cheating system, unless one bans it like cheating athletes are banned - and banning entails not using the system's flag and anthem

The clean athletes should be able to compete - they should not be punished. But the flag and anthem of the doping system being punished just cannot be used