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Dak Prescott declines to disclose his vaccine status, citing HIPAA

If you won’t talk about whether you’ve gotten the COVID vaccine, chances are you haven’t.

Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott continues to decline to say whether he has gotten vaccinated.

He did it last month, and he did it again on Friday.

Via Clarence E. Hill, Jr. of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Prescott declined to say whether he got vaccinated, pointing to the HIPAA law.

Of course, the HIPAA law doesn’t become a shield against answering health questions. Especially in the NFL, where the health of players has always been an important question.

Indeed, HIPAA has nothing to do with questions asked and answered (or not answered) by individual players. HIPAA makes health-care providers responsible to the federal government for disclosing private medical information, and that’s it.

Now that the NFL has tied potential forfeitures directly to COVID outbreaks among unvaccinated players and also made it clear that unvaccinated players who test positive will miss at least 10 days no matter what, whether any given player (and specifically whether a franchise quarterback) has gotten vaccinated becomes as relevant as whether that player is healthy.

So, basically, if Dak is willing to talk about his ankle, he should be willing to talk about whether he got vaccinated. Both issues relate clearly and directly to his ability to play games in 2021.