"Living with Covid" is a peculiar euphemism, espoused by those who would drop any of the remaining threadbare mitigation efforts against the virus in favor of making it endemic within the population.
This is not a viable or scientifically based approach in any sense, since it will cause mass suffering and death, but instead an articulation of discredited reactionary ideologies such as social Darwinism, sometimes expressed as "survival of the fittest" -- all in service to the interests of big business.
In fact the idea of intentionally making Covid endemic -- first articulated within the state by no less than President Trump -- is merely a repackaged embrace of eugenics, the discredited concept of selectively thinning out the human gene pool to favor the seemingly healthiest, strongest, and most attractive. We can't stop the virus, this "logic" goes, so maybe we should just let it kill off as many of the elderly, sick and poor as possible, since they are a drag on the coffers of the system.
Most crucially, this policy was formulated amid a virus- and wage-induced labor shortage, where increasingly fewer people are willing to risk their lives and livelihoods for poverty wages. Though many states have gone higher in recent years, the federal minimum wage is still just a paltry $7.25 in the year of our lord 2022.
In response to the labor crisis, the business classes of the developed economies have decided that, after two years of largely ineffective half-measures which did little if anything to stop the spread of the virus, the appropriate move now is to force all workers back into unsafe workplaces by ending benefits and fully reopening all schools, thereby accelerating the spread of the virus until mass infection -- "herd immunity."
With already more than 800,000 dead in the US, the toll in sickness and death from this grotesque calculus is potentially staggering, and it's the most vulnerable -- the disabled and chronically ill -- who are especially being thrown to the wolves. It also must be pointed out that the modern precedent for this sort of callous elimination of "undesirables" was set by the Nazi Party.
Big-time sports was at the forefront of the pandemic response in March 2020, when the NBA was one of the first major US businesses to shutter its doors due to the virus. The league was lauded for its initial response but has since joined the rest of the business community in dropping any pretense about concern over the virus spreading among its players, fans, and beyond.
Amid the Omicron-variant fueled national surge in recent weeks, both the NBA and NFL responded by easing both testing requirements and the required isolation restrictions for players who have tested positive, all in keeping with newly revised CDC guidance.
In a phenomenon mirroring the larger labor situation, many teams have seen massive Covid outbreaks affecting their players, leaving some with too few players to even field a competitive team and forcing them to dig deep into free agency, the minor leagues, and practice squads just to find warm bodies.
The timing couldn't have been much worse for the NFL, with the legitimacy of several late-season games suddenly coming into question amid the league's playoff push. The league -- which infamously pushed ahead with games only days after the assassination of President Kennedy but suspended Week 2 games in 2001 following the terror attacks of 9/11 -- has remained resolute that it will not cancel any contests due to Covid outbreaks.
The changing of the CDC's guidance at the behest of big-business interests was largely met with outrage and scorn from people living paycheck-to-paycheck, which constitutes about 80% of Americans. Sadly, many athletes were also said to be in favor of the revisions, some of them frustrated by quarantine mandates despite feeling mild or no symptoms.
Of course, the new protocols transcend sports, but certainly the leagues play a role both in driving and normalizing national policy.
The relative absence of live sports in spring 2020 was eye-opening to the powers that be, many of who are also titans of business and industry. Not only did they see a sharp decline in their sports revenues (and in other sectors), but they were also reminded of the importance of sports as a tool of social control and propaganda.
It's not a coincidence that the largest protest movement in US history came while millions were unemployed or still underemployed from the massive economic contraction caused by the first wave of the pandemic.
But the leagues resolved then that nothing could ever be allowed to threaten their profits or power ever again -- even if it means there's no players left to play, or fans left to watch, because they're too sick.
The leagues should know better than to participate in what very well may amount to a social crime -- it was former Nationals pitcher Sean Doolittle who accurately described pro sports as the "reward for a functioning society."
But instead, they've cast their lot on the wrong side of history, with potentially devastating repercussions foremost to the broader population, not to mention their own players and brands. Shame on them. If and when the pandemic is brought under control, their role in prolonging and exacerbating it won't soon be forgotten.
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