Donna Shalala isn’t your normal Washington D.C. politician. She’s the former president of two football-playing juggernauts, Miami and Wisconsin. She knows football. And so she knows just how difficult the coronavirus makes playing football this fall. Specifically, she understands the obstacle presented by contact tracing, which requires athletes to quarantine for a mandatory 14 days if they’ve contacted a person who tested positive. Like, for instance, hitting one another in practice or flying on a plane together.
“Have you been on an airplane with football players?” asks Shalala, a rookie member of the House of Representative for South Florida.