The US Open tennis tournament has begun in Queens, and one of the world’s best players will finally be allowed to compete again.
Novak Djokovic, who’s declined COVID-19 vaccination, was barred from entering the United States for nearly two years, forcing him to miss multiple major tournaments including the 2022 US Open.
Like many others, Djokovic suffered under public-health decision-making that did everything but follow the science.
Joe Biden, by presidential proclamation, banned the entry of unvaccinated noncitizen air travelers into the country starting Nov. 8, 2021.
Apparently unvaccinated citizens and land travelers did not pose any risk.
He finally lifted the restriction May 12, 2023.
But the ban never made much sense for Djokovic or anyone else who could document recovery from COVID infection.
Djokovic tested positive for COVID twice, in June 2020 and December 2021.
Before the pandemic, most infectious-disease experts said natural immunity usually confers better protection than vaccines.
Multiple 2021 studies, here and abroad, found this is true for COVID-19 as well.
A large Cleveland Clinic study concluded that individuals with previous COVID infections are “unlikely to benefit” from vaccination.
And a systematic review and meta-analysis published in early 2023 in the British journal The Lancet confirmed what I and many others had long said: Natural immunity following COVID infections is real, and “the level of protection afforded by previous infection is at least as high, if not higher than that provided by two-dose vaccination using high-quality mRNA vaccines.”
Public-health officials in other places — such as the United Kingdom, the European Union and Israel — created certificates to document vaccination or recovery from COVID-19 infection to facilitate travel and entry into public places.
But the Biden administration experts were so intent on pushing vaccination that they refused to acknowledge the existence of natural immunity following infection.
They instructed everyone, regardless of earlier infection, to get fully vaccinated and penalized those who were unwilling.
One result of this single-minded focus on vaccines is that in the early months of 2021, when vaccine supplies were severely limited, shots were being used to vaccinate people who were already immune instead of being directed to people who had no immunity.
Some of the latter were likely unable to obtain a vaccine and went on to infection and, quite possibly, severe illness and avoidable death.
Another result was misguided policies that led to unnecessary travel restrictions and employment and educational losses.
Djokovic was deprived of the right to play, an injustice but not a catastrophe in the overall scheme of things.
But many first responders such as firefighters, police and medical personnel who could document earlier infections but refused vaccination also lost their jobs, and society as a whole suffered.
And schools that mandated vaccination regardless of prior infection ensured some of their students — who were never at high risk from COVID — unnecessarily lost valuable education.
The experts pursued this policy even though, as Anthony Fauci admitted in a journal article, vaccines against respiratory viruses like the one that causes COVID-19 usually provide “decidedly suboptimal” protection against infection and rarely produce durable protective immunity.
In other words, there were always good scientific reasons to believe that COVID-19 vaccines would add little or no protection to people like Novak Djokovic and the fans who would watch him.
At this time last year, blood-bank data showed that nearly everyone had immunity resulting from vaccination (26%), infections (23%) or a hybrid of both (48%).
There was no reason to continue the misguided travel restrictions for another nine months.
I and other tennis fans are thankful we can see Djokovic, one of the all-time best, play again.
It’s also great the Biden administration and public-health experts are finally following the science.
Dr. Joel Zinberg is a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute and director of the Paragon Health Institute’s Public Health and American Well-Being Initiative.
This story originally appeared on NYPost
