If you want to get the Chinese coronavirus vaccine, get it. If you don’t want to get the Chinese coronavirus vaccine, don’t get it. That’s how things should be moving forward for all people.
While the NFL hopes that all the people involved in their league — players, coaches, staff and the like — will get vaccinated, the league is apparently not making it mandatory fo get the vaccine in order to participate in the upcoming 2021 season — kinda.
“What we are focusing on is education. We want everyone to have the facts and we believe that this is an important step forward,” Dr. Allen Sills told NFL Network on Thursday. “We hope that everyone gets vaccinated. That would be our hope.”
According to a NFL Management Council memo from Thursday, which was tweeted out by NFL Network insider Ian Rapoport, individuals who are fully vaccinated will encounter fewer restrictions than those who aren’t vaccinated.
The NFL sent this memo to all club personnel today, with updated new guidance for the NFL Draft regarding those who are vaccinated. 👇🏽👇🏽👇🏽 pic.twitter.com/6Wo5fLpITG
— Ian Rapoport (@RapSheet) March 25, 2021
However, when talking about the war rooms for the upcoming 2021 NFL Draft, fully vaccinated staff will be allowed to have 10 people per room with relaxed restrictions, and staff that aren’t vaccinated will be allowed to have 20 people per room with the restrictions laid out by the league.
NFL.com reported the following:
The memo also allows for a maximum of 10 fully vaccinated individuals in the draft room. If all individuals are fully vaccinated, masks will not be required, physical distancing measures will be relaxed, and eating and drinking will be permissible.
The league also stated draft rooms in which any non-vaccinated personnel are present will be subject to a maximum limit of 20 individuals, and those individuals must comply with the protocols outlined in the March 12 memo, which requires physical distancing and mask wearing, and prohibits eating and drinking.
In the end, the NFL not making getting vaccinated a requirement sounds a lot like making vaccinations a requirement in order to get things done during a multiple-day process, like the NFL Draft. While it won't be mandatory for NFL personnel to be vaccinated, the league is certainly incentivizing getting fully vaccinated.
Again, vaccinations are not a requirement for people working in the NFL — kinda.
H/T: OutKick