If you are an athlete or a performer in New York City, the vaccine mandate does not apply to you.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams may have made Brooklyn Nets ownership and Nets customers happy by freeing Kyrie Irving. Kyrie Irving can now play games in Brooklyn and in Manhattan because Adams has decided that athletes and performers are special people and should not have to adhere to the New York City’s COVID-19 vaccination mandate for private businesses. No vaccine might you get fired. Adams may have also saved the city’s two baseball teams some problems as well. The Yankees and Mets have 81 home games each and the two teams play one another four times in Queens and in the Bronx. That means unvaccinated players could have missed 83 games. The oddity in the law is that visiting teams were able to use non-vaccinated players in Brooklyn and in Manhattan and that was baffling to National Basketball Association Commissioner Adam Silver who spoke out against the city ban.
Adams was worried about competitive balance in sports, and he didn’t like that players had to sit if they were not following what public safety experts suggested as a way to protect people. Previously, Adams said giving Irving an exemption would send the wrong message. The city let go about 1,400 workers who refused to take a vaccine. But Adams wants to see Brooklyn do well in the playoffs. Meanwhile, MLB, the NBA, Major League Soccer and the National Hockey League still have a problem with players who aren’t vaccinated against COVID-19 as those players are still unable to enter Canada to play games because of that country’s current coronavirus restrictions. Canadian border rules don’t allow unvaccinated foreign visitors to enter the country without special exemptions. The unvaccinated special status for athletes, which gave them permission to enter Canada in 2021, expired in January, COVID-19 problems are not going away.
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Evan can be reached at evan_weiner@hotmail.com
