The NFL’s COVID-19 rules are an incoherent mess. They aren’t going to make anyone safer, but they could end up ruining the 2021 season.
The league boasts that 93% of its players and nearly 100% of team staff have been fully vaccinated. You would think that this means the league would have little, if any, rules or restrictions on players and coaches. Surely any restrictions the league had would be limited to the few unvaccinated players remaining.
But no, the NFL decided to treat COVID-19 nearly as harshly now as it did last year, when no vaccine was available.
Unvaccinated players who test positive must enter a 10-day quarantine and must sit out five days if they are considered to be a close contact. Overbearing, sure, but it makes sense for liability purposes if nothing else. But vaccinated players who test positive must miss two days and test negative twice, 24-hours apart, before they can return.
If vaccinated players or coaches don’t reach that threshold, they are forced to isolate for 10 days. That’s right — vaccinated people could miss 10 days if they test positive for COVID-19, even though vaccinated adults are at little risk from serious symptoms of COVID-19 and even though the people whom the league is worried about spreading it are nearly all vaccinated.
What’s more, the league now wants to shorten the testing window, testing vaccinated people every week as opposed to every two weeks. The NFL Players Association wants to take that even further, asking the league to test vaccinated people every single day.
Watching players forced to miss games last year over positive COVID-19 tests was understandable. Watching unvaccinated players forced to miss games this year is a little silly, but it still makes sense. But watching vaccinated players be forced to miss games over positive COVID-19 tests would be unforgivable. It is illogical and unscientific.
But this is what the NFL is inviting.
Breakthrough infections do happen. But NFL players were already at little risk to be hospitalized due to complications from COVID-19 before the vaccine became available. The vaccine makes that possibility even more unlikely, and nearly the entire league has been vaccinated. The NFL is overreacting to the recent uptick in deaths and hospitalizations, which is made up almost entirely of unvaccinated people. The league should change its unnecessary policy before it interferes with the 2021 season.
