The NFL and NBA’s latest protocol adjustments are just an extension of what’s going on elsewhere in the economy. The CDC’s decision to shorten quarantine times came six days after Ed Bastian, the CEO of Delta Air Lines, sent a letter begging the agency to reduce the isolation period for those who contracted the virus. Commercial aviation has been hit especially hard by the Omicron surge. Personnel shortages caused by positive tests have caused the cancellation of thousands of flights during a busy holiday season. According to The Washington Post, top health officials decided to reduce quarantine times because they feared far too many essential workers would otherwise be unable to work and industries would be crippled. Yet the new CDC breakthrough-infection guidance—which recommends the same isolation period for unvaccinated and vaccinated people and asks neither to get a negative test before ending their isolation—was even more permissive than many business leaders and sympathetic public-health experts had urged.

From that standpoint, it’s hard to blame the leagues for following a murky, complicated path. However, the shame is that these revised standards show that unvaccinated people will ultimately pay no penalty for adding so much chaos. Anti-vaxxers and right-wingers deemed Irving a martyr for his stance against vaccine mandates, and now he’ll get to play on his terms. As long as Wentz remains asymptomatic, Wentz will get to play, despite not doing his part to end this pandemic. Brown is back on the field and wants the public to forget that he selfishly jeopardized the safety of everyone around him because he lacked the discipline to adhere to the stricter protocols for unvaccinated players.