Few things are as American as football. Sadly, public health has become a political football — in the worst way possible.
Last week, Southern powerhouse Louisiana State University announced it would require proof of Covid-19 vaccinations or a recent negative test for fans attending Tigers games this season. Somewhere around 40 percent of Louisiana residents are fully vaccinated, according to The New York Times, and new reported cases have increased sharply since July — and with them pandemic hospitalizations and deaths.
LSU mandating vaccinations is a great step, especially in a region where college football is a cultural touchstone. But why not go further?
LSU mandating vaccinations is a great step, especially in a region where college football is a cultural touchstone. But why not go further? The rest of the SEC could follow suit. And then every other conference. If you want to eat out or travel, you should have to be vaccinated, just like we require people, based on data about public health, to wear seatbelts in cars. If that’s what it takes to vaccinate enough of the population to prevent another deadly mutation of the virus like delta, I’m all in. Roll Tide.
But so far, this is not happening. In states like Alabama, the Legislature has banned the use of “vaccine passports” and specifically prohibited vaccine requirements in connection with attendance at “educational institutions.” The litany is, we live in two Americas, hopelessly divided, incapable of finding a shared set of facts even around scientific knowledge in a deadly pandemic. We have to move past that view. Because if Americans cannot come together to beat Covid-19, how are we going to restore public consensus around shared democratic values and what good government and good leaders look like?
Instead of giving up, it’s time to do what Americans have often done best when times are most difficult — dig deeper and find a way to get it done. We owe it to our bone-weary doctors and nurses, but we also owe it to our children and the future of the American experiment.
We can do this first and foremost by redefining the relationship between public health and government in this country. Public health experts have to regain their credibility in precisely the same way the Justice Department must re-establish its independence from the White House. While setting policy goals can be a shared responsibility among public health and federal, state and county executives they work with, they must have complete independence when it comes to making assessments of where the weight of scientific evidence points.
We have to take politics out of the public health equation, and protect the independence of public health experts. Agencies must establish rigid internal norms that prevent politicians from commingling facts with politics. That may not be easy. But the Justice Department recovered after the abuses of Watergate because men and women of strong character refused to give up.
As ambassador, senator and advisor to presidents, Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously said, “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts.” The ability to impose alternative facts on a large segment of the country is what has led us to the point. Sean Spicer’s news conferences don’t seem nearly as funny at a time when Americans are ingesting livestock dewormers because of the (false) belief that they will protect against Covid-19. It’s possible to connect the dots between Kellyanne Conway’s infamous 2017 “alternative facts” appearance on “Meet the Press” and the FDA’s official Twitter account plea this week: “You are not a horse.”
You are not a horse. You are not a cow. Seriously, y’all. Stop it. https://t.co/TWb75xYEY4
— U.S. FDA (@US_FDA) August 21, 2021
We need more of these no-nonsense, evidence-based narratives that ridicule fake, and even dangerous, treatment. We need more coaches like Jackson State’s Deion Sanders, who promoted vaccination in Mississippi, and Charles Barkley, who told Auburn fans that getting vaccinated is “the right thing to do. We’ve got to stop being selfish.”








