Covid vaccines are safe, but not taking one is not reason to keep the tennis star out of the U.S. Open.
Covid vaccines are safe, but not taking one is not reason to keep the tennis star out of the U.S. Open.
L ast week, it was announced that President Joe Biden had contracted Covid-19. The president, who has been fully vaccinated and has taken virtually every precaution possible, has traveled overseas, including a recent trip to Saudi Arabia. With his numerous public events over the past several weeks, his viral exposure could have occurred almost anywhere.
Thankfully, Biden has suffered only very mild symptoms. And there is no shame in contracting coronavirus, particularly at this point in the pandemic. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that approximately 70 percent of the American public has contracted the virus at least once since the beginning of 2020. The simple reality is that most of us will get it, with or without the vaccine. The only question is how severe it will be.
So Biden’s Covid diagnosis largely is irrelevant, except inasmuch as it helps demonstrate the futility of many of our current public-health policy rules and recommendations, especially regarding vaccination requirements for foreign travelers.
Consider the awkward case of tennis superstar Novak Djokovic, presumably barred from playing in the upcoming U.S. Open due to government vaccination rules for non-citizen visitors. Djokovic has unwittingly become one of the world’s major voices for freedom of choice over forced Covid-19 vaccinations. He is not technically an anti-vaxxer, opposing vaccinations across the board. In fact, he is vaccinated against all other major diseases. He has simply argued that, because of the novelty of the mRNA vaccine, he, as a high-level athlete, would prefer not to take it. He is not alone in this claim. Other professional athletes, including the NBA’s Kyrie Irving, have made similar arguments.
The medical community largely disagrees with this opinion, and I include myself in that group. However, Djokovic’s defense will sound familiar to many people on the left. After being prohibited from playing in the Australian Open earlier this year, Djokovic stated that he was never against the vaccine, per se. “And for me as an elite professional athlete, I’ve always carefully reviewed, assessed everything that comes in from supplements, food, the water that I drink, sports drinks, anything that comes into my body as a fuel,” Djokovic said. “Because the principles of decision-making on my body are more important than any title.” The party of bodily autonomy, the Democrats, apparently isn’t really interested in defending it in this case.
Like most things in America these days, Djokovic’s case has become a political dispute. Senator Ted Cruz (R., Texas) issued a clear demand: “Let Novak Djokovic play.” Senator Marsha Blackburn (R., Tenn.) stated, “It is absurd that Novak Djokovic is not allowed to enter the USA. No one should ever be punished directly or indirectly for not being vaccinated.”
In this case, they have a point. The scientific rationale for any immigration restrictions based on the Covid vaccine at this point are weak at best. The virus is now virtually endemic. Barring entry of unvaccinated individuals is, at this point, only a performative gesture, with only imaginary protective value. If there were any logic to screening visitors, a demand for a PCR test could alleviate most of the concerns that an individual is actively carrying the disease. In fact, a negative PCR test is more likely to exclude actively infectious individuals than simply having taken the vaccines.
The hypocrisy of these policies doesn’t end there. Illegal immigrants crossing the southern border are neither required to have the vaccine nor forced to obtain the vaccine before getting probationary entry into the United States. If the science were absolute, would this also not be a requirement for this cohort of immigrants? The Biden administration itself has for two years made it quite clear that the risk of disease from unvaccinated non-citizen illegal immigrants was not great enough to bar them from entry into the country. So why throw up the drawbridge when it comes to unvaccinated, temporary visitors — like a professional tennis player?
The political complaints were predictable, but the greater sports community is standing up for Djokovic as well. American tennis star and commentator John McEnroe publicly urged the president to reverse his position. “These politicians are getting in the way too much — they did it in Australia. Let the guy come in and play in the U.S. I mean come on. This is ridiculous,” McEnroe said. “You can agree to be tested. There’s got to be a way around this.”
In the same interview, McEnroe made another key point to which the White House hasn’t responded: If the vaccine is so essential, why are visitors to the U.S. Open no longer required to have proof of vaccination? The risk of disease spread is much larger among the masses of people crisscrossing the grounds at Flushing Meadows during the tournament than it is from any single player. Furthermore, New York City as well as New York State have exempted politicians, actors, athletes, and other performers from vaccine requirements for over a year. So why is accommodation for this specific tennis player, who plays outdoors, no less, a line we cannot cross?
This is largely virtue-signaling from people angry that the likes of Novak Djokovic refuse to take the vaccine. I, for one, disagree with Djokovic’s decision. I believe the vaccine is safe and everyone should choose to take it. But the last point is essential: Everyone should choose to take it. In a free society, we all accept that some people will disagree with our personal opinions about such issues. And violating that choice should be a decision we do not take lightly. Violating such choices should be restricted to times when lives are inarguably at stake, and this is not one of those times.
At the beginning of the pandemic, the risk of viral exposure and severe illness was more likely, which made barriers to entry more reasonable. Even after the vaccine was initially released, a serious argument could have been made to maintain those restrictions. But now, with the vaccine widely available to the highest-risk among us, and the disease appearing to become endemic, that argument is exceptionally weak. The fact that the almost 80-year-old Biden has contracted the disease and appears to have only suffered mild illness is a medical success story. But it also means the risk from the virus is now largely (but not totally) limited to those unwilling to choose to take the vaccine. The scientific defense of harsh restrictions at this point is exceptionally weak and indefensible.
Furthermore, the White House itself is playing a game when talking about its concerns about the virus. Upon announcing that the president had contracted Covid, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was asked, “Where exactly was the president infected?” Her tone-deaf response: “I don’t think it matters.” If you are a thoughtful, intellectual person, it matters a great deal, as it helps reveal whether our current policies are effective or not. If the current policies aren’t working, shouldn’t we rethink the value of those policies? Instead, Jean-Pierre tried to brush it off and ignore the topic entirely. This tells you how much deep thinking this White House is using on this issue.
Biden and others advocating this policy are simply playacting, falling into the theater of fake security instead of relying on science and evidence-based medicine for their decisions. Risk stratification is essential at this point in the course of the pandemic, and the risk of any immigrant (vaccinated or not) to the population of the United States above our baseline risk for Covid is miniscule. Punishing Djokovic or anyone else for refusal to accept the vaccine is a moral, faith-based position at this point, and not a decision that keeps a single American safe.
This is yet another in a long line of events that undermine the public’s trust in our public-health policy-makers. The hypocrisy of picking and choosing which individuals should be blocked from entry into the United States largely based on their political value is a terrible precedent. It leads many Americans, who are already suspicious of their government, to believe that many of these health decisions are being made for political ends, and not health-safety reasons.
Novak Djokovic should be allowed to enter the U.S., and should play in the U.S. Open. Djokovic is no hero for taking this position, but his argument at this point is more scientifically based than the argument being made by the Biden administration. Anything other than a basic testing regime to allow him to enter the U.S. is unscientific nonsense, only promoted by the most partisan among us. Our health policy leaders can and should do better.