Two years ago, nearly 217,000 people attended the third round of the PGA Tour’s Waste Management Open. When the tournament is next held, about four charter buses’ worth of those fans won’t be back — because they’re dead.
In Arizona, where the Waste Management is held, COVID-19 has killed more than 7,700 people — or a little more than 1 of every 1,000. That’s a little higher (but only slightly) than the national average, where in a country of 328 million people, COVID has killed more than 311,000.
In record time, medical science has produced — and the federal government has approved — two vaccines. The task of producing the vaccine so quickly has been Herculean; the task of distributing it to the world’s people will be no less so — and not the least which reason is the collection of insane, right-wing conspiracy theories surrounding the coronavirus vaccines.
By fanning the flames of those conspiracy theories, PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan isn’t making the job any easier.
On Thursday, Monahan announced that the PGA Tour would impose no requirement on fans or players to receive the coronavirus vaccines. Whether to receive a vaccine, Monahan said, was “an individual decision” with “pros and cons associated with it.”
Even for Monahan, whose reign as commissioner has been famously feckless (lest we forget Monahan’s appearance on CNBC in March, crowing over a new media deal while the world burned), giving credence to anti-vaxxer conspiracies is a new low. To be clear: the vaccines have no “cons” (although doctors have recommended against giving the vaccine to patients who have experienced anaphylaxis). On Friday morning, I reached out to the PGA Tour’s communications team for specific examples of what Monahan sees as the vaccines’ “cons.” I’ve received no response, and I’m not expecting one.
Moreover, by now the world is painfully aware that preventing COVID’s spread is most assuredly not an “individual decision,” because the coronavirus is brutally contagious. An otherwise healthy person may survive an infection — but if he passes it along to less healthy people, then they pay the price for that person’s individuality.
Monahan is, of course, in charge of a tour that is far more politically conservative than the American public — and Republicans are far more likely than Democrats to plan against receiving a vaccine. So rather than use the PGA Tour as an instrument to promote vaccines that literally will save millions of lives, Monahan would rather duck a fight.
Of course, Monahan had no problem “leading” when it benefitted the Tour’s bottom line. In June, the PGA Tour was the first major sports league to return from the spring shutdown. And Monahan happily reaped the rewards of little to no competition. “It’s a really great moment for our sport as we’ve worked through the pandemic,” Monahan said.
But now, with the end of the pandemic in sight, Monahan is finished working — because the moment might require him to stick his own neck out and force an unpopular decision on his players.
There is fecklessness. And then there is cowardice. Monahan has chosen the latter.
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