The winds of change are blowing in the sports world, and for the better.
Major League Baseball’s minor league system will no longer require players to be vaccinated to lace up during the 2022 season. While it remains to be seen whether the MLB will have a season this summer (the league is in the midst of a heated lockout), the league is waking up to the fact that it does not need to jab everyone in order to have a thriving and success full season.
All other team personnel will have to be “up to date” on the vaccine dosages, but you’ve got to celebrate the victories – even when they are small.
But the small victories are piling up more and more in the sports world in recent weeks.
The NFL – which has been the most consistently rigid American sports league with their COVID policies – will no longer test asymptomatic players, regardless of their vaccination status. With the relatively harmless Omicron variant showing that people can test positive for the virus regardless, the NFL actually made a rational decision based on “following the (actual) science” and not inventing their own.
Likewise, the NHL is taking incremental – yet still positive – changes to their COVID protocols. Players and team personnel who are fully vaccinated now do not have to quarantine for 10 days should they test positive; they will only have to quarantine for five. While most other aspects of their nonsensical protocols will stay in place, it is still a sign that they realize that some of the most physically in shape players on the planet don’t need nearly two weeks to recover from the mild disease.
For nearly two years, sports leagues around the country have tried their best to limit the spread of COVID-19 amongst their teams, but to little avail. Now, it seems they are beginning to realize that they are powerless to stop the spread of it, and are slowly but surely letting life go back to normal.
Sports leagues, keep the winds blowing.