I don’t follow tennis or care that much about it, but the U.S. Open is not allowing one of the greatest tennis players in the world to compete because he’s not vaccinated.
There was a time when this might have made some sense. The so-called experts used to tell us that getting the vaccine prevented you both from getting COVID and from passing it to others. If that were true, then there’s some justification for keeping Djokovic out (although accommodations could have been made).
But it’s not true, and everyone acknowledges that. To continue to keep him out of the competition is wrong.
The choke point here is our border restrictions, it’s not really up to USTA if he can’t get into the country.
But the border restrictions are what need to be changed. There is no longer any rationale for requiring vaccination to enter the country, when vaccination has demonstrated no benefit in stopping the spread of the variants that are currently active.
What makes it doubly ludicrous is that Djokovic has had Covid, which gives him much greater immunity than the two doses of vaccine over a year ago, which is all that the border rules require anyway.
Yes, the unwillingness to admit the benefit of natural immunity is very weird. It’s almost like they’re getting a kickback for how many vaccines are produced.
Related topic: why do we keep unvaccinated Djokovic out but let unvaccinated illegal immigrants in?