The NFL’s coronavirus policies are a mess, which is exactly what you’d expect from a league that is trying to please a frantic media. And hilariously enough, the NFL Players Association is actually trying to make it even worse.
The NFLPA is now recommending to the league that vaccinated players and staff be tested for COVID-19 every single day they enter their team’s facility. After all, we wouldn’t want fully vaccinated players to risk breakthrough infections and have mild, cold-like symptoms, would we?
After agreeing with the league to essentially mandate vaccines for players with a series of restrictions on unvaccinated players, the NFLPA’s new message essentially amounts to saying that the vaccine just isn’t very trustworthy. The truth is that the NFL doesn’t really need COVID-19 protocols at all. But the league and the players’ union’s commitment to vaccinations should mean that vaccinated players and staff don’t need to be tested ever. Vaccines do work, after all.
Instead, the NFLPA would have the league take the opposite approach. The vaccine dramatically reduces the chances of contracting COVID-19 and dramatically reduces the severity of symptoms if a breakthrough infection does occur. Regularly testing vaccinated players and staff is pointless. Doing it every single day they report to work is absurd.
What’s more, as long as the NFL and NFLPA are doing this now, then why won’t not insist on COVID-19 testing for years to come? COVID-19 isn’t just going to vanish, after all.
