In case you thought COVID-19 restrictions and mandates were going to fade away over time, bureaucrats and health officials are already preparing for the next phase of mandates. The NBA is already there to help them.
The NBA is now telling players that they will no longer be considered fully vaccinated if they don’t get a booster shot six months after their second dose, or by Dec. 1 for those who received the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. While the NBA has not mandated vaccination for players, it has handed down several restrictions to unvaccinated players. Individual teams have gone further, with the Brooklyn Nets effectively suspending guard Kyrie Irving until he gets vaccinated.
The NBA is just getting the ball rolling here, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention won’t be far behind. After all, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky telegraphed as much when she said, “We may need to update our definition of ‘fully vaccinated’ in the future.” Walensky also tweeted out a video supporting masking for the flu and the common cold, calling masking an “important step that you can take to keep us all healthy.”
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is one of the many who correctly predicted that fully vaccinated people will have their status downgraded as boosters become available. The CDC has already trimmed the recommended waiting period for booster vaccines for some groups from eight to six months, and President Joe Biden has suggested that it should be trimmed further to five months.
Meanwhile, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy has suggested that the Biden administration’s vaccine mandate for businesses with more than 100 employees could be extended to smaller businesses as well.
As Kaylee McGhee White has reminded us all, the point of COVID-19 restrictions in the first place was to prevent our healthcare systems from being overwhelmed. Now, the vaccine is readily available for anyone who wants it, and it has been for months. Using a sample size of 30% of the population, the CDC has the death rate for those who are vaccinated at 1.2 per 100,000 at its highest point. That is lower than the 1.8 per 100,000 death rate for the flu.
This administration has no endgame for COVID-19 — something it has in fact admitted. It’s allowing its strategy to be created by health bureaucrats whose first instinct is to impose mandates and more restrictions without any consideration of the trade-offs. The NBA is only the first to start rolling back the definition of “fully vaccinated.” This “new normal” will never end until people stop tolerating this disjointed hysteria.
