Why rational vaccination mandates and workplace regulations are needed
To the Times:
Christine Flowers’ July 25 column concerning the NFL’s 2021 COVID policy is a head scratcher.
On the one hand, in her personal life Ms. Flowers “trust[s} the science” and made the “no-brainer” decision to get her COVID vaccination at the first opportunity and is “urging friends and family members to do the same.” On the other hand, she condemns as “vaccine shaming” and “virtue signaling” the NFL’s recent decision to enforce strict regulations and penalties against teams and personnel whose COVID misadventures jeopardize the health of others and the 2021 NFL season.
As she well knows, in Pennsylvania and most states, there is no law that prohibits private businesses from imposing vaccine mandates and vaccine-related regulations on their employees.
The NFL could have followed the example of a growing number of health care providers, universities and other private employers and required all players and staff to be vaccinated as a condition of employment during the 2021 season. Instead, it chose the regulation route, placing significant restrictions on unvaccinated players and staff and imposing financial penalties on teams whose COVID outbreaks cause serious business disruptions such as missed games. Context matters. The risk of exposure to airborne viruses in an NFL facility may be a close third only to the COVID wing of major hospitals and nursing homes.
Football is the ultimate contact support: sweat, spittle and heavy breathing is pervasive during many weeks of training camp and twenty preseason and regular season games. When not practicing and playing, NFL players and coaches hold many small and large indoor team meetings as part of their weekly game preparation. In addition, the NFL is a consortium of 32 businesses.
The NFL collectively generates more than $10 billion in annual revenue over the course of an 18 week season with very little wiggle room for schedule adjustments in the event of COVID breakouts. Last year, when no vaccines were available, some games were unavoidably rescheduled by a few days to accommodate a handful of fairly minor COVID breakouts. The rescheduling no doubt caused team owners to incur substantial additional expense, and perhaps some revenue losses.
This year vaccines are available to all, COVID outbreaks will be substantially avoidable if players, coaches and staff are uniformly vaccinated. The NFL owners’ business decision to minimize the risk of outbreaks during the 2021 season is understandable.Ms. Flowers apparently last attended an NFL game as a child in 1973, and professes to be totally disinterested in the modern NFL game.
If anything, her uninformed screed is a case of reverse:”Vaccine shaming” and reverse “virtue signaling” to all of the rabid anti-vaxxers and “no brainers” in the online social media world she makes frequent reference to. In their dystopian libertarian world, a private business that takes proactive steps to protect itself and its players, coaches and staff from harm caused by unvaccinated employees must be condemned and shunned for invading the uninformed employees’ sacred personal space.
Given the reluctance of legislatures to enact universal vaccination requirements, it falls to employers to protect their employees, their businesses and, indirectly, the rest of us from the surging delta variant, using rational vaccination mandates and workplace regulations.