Djokovic not playing in the US open shows how public health failed
The Biden Administration's Covid policy is not following science
Novak Djokovic is not allowed to play in the US Open. Why? Because he is unvaccinated and cannot enter the US (as a non citizen) by air.
The US Open has no rule against unvaccinated players, and the audience will include unvaccinated fans. Instead the Biden's administration’s rule (And it is their rule) is keeping Djokovic out.
In case they don't know, vaccinated people can spread the virus readily. And in case we have forgotten, there is enough Covid19 in the US to ensure it will circulate for a thousand years.
You could airdrop a million Novak Djokovics in the US, and the pandemic will proceed exactly as it otherwise would.
Using a vaccine to exclude people is not justified by benefit to others. Vaccinated people are not safer to others than unvaccinated people.
Perhaps some may argue it is justified by personal health benefit. Of course, this is problematic. By this logic we could check blood pressure at the border and exclude hypertensives. It's for their own good they get their pressure under control before they visit the US of A. After all, watch our news and your blood pressure will go up!
But even if you held this view, it's not clear it is in his best interest. Djokovic has had and recovered from COVID-19. It is not clear he would even derive a personal health benefit from vaccination to the old ancestral strain of Covid19. Moreover, it's not the job of the US president to decide.
Nonsense covid policies have a real cost. They mean this years tennis match will have an asterisk, but worse: they mean that public health has lost Americans' trust.
I fully expect that the next few decades Americans will work to dismantle rules that have given public health this power. Many will happen at a state level, but some may happen nationally. Pushing rules that don't keep us safe, but anger people is the opposite of good public health. It's just stupid.
Why has this administration made so many errors? Answer is simple. They have chosen to surround themselves with bad experts. People who subscribe to groupthink, and political tribalism. They need to find some different voices to get broader feedback. They have consistently failed to do so. I suspect their problems will grow in the winter months.
I can only hope that public health dies a very public death. In my decades of practice, never have I seen more abuse of the (some of us consider it sacred) "first do no harm" basis of medical practice as well as the foundational "this is between you and your doctor that knows something about YOU".
Public health has become nothing but a mouthpiece for regime change, pharma enrichment, and creeping government control over the rest of one's life. I, like you Vinay, have become much more strident about this over the past two years as the enormity of the hoax and the deception has become clear.
I have always thought public health should be important, but having seen what it can do, we are all better off with it being guillotined. We all would be healthier than what these despots would like to do to us all. Deborah Birx's new book notes that "we knew it wouldn't work but made you do it anyway ha-ha". And that says it all.
Good riddance to them all. I hope it happens and it could not happen fast enough.
He should fly to México, then entre by land. México does no require vax.
That would be fun.