Apparently, to compete in the Boston Marathon which took place last Monday one had to be vaccinated against COVID-19. It was not enough to be in good enough shape to run - which pretty much guarantees you are not experiencing symptoms severe enough to massively spill viral particles, nor was it good enough to present a negative test. It has to be the vaccine - useless as it seems to be, especially if it has been a few months since you got your shot. If you are vaccinated, you are free to run - and infect whomever you get to infect.
What's behind that? At this point, it is beyond naive to believe this is dictated by public health concerns. It may be virtue signalling, it may be a drive to establish totalitarian control, it may be psychological conditioning, it may be a mix of all three. But once again, it has nothing to do with public health. And it takes a massive bite out of the athletic value of the whole race as it has excluded those athletes who may be most attentive to their actual health, and likely are high-quality contestants.
References
One Of Many Marathon Runners Who are Segregated from Monday's Race
Dan O'Neil, Patch.com, 17 April 2022
Outdoor Transmission of SARS-CoV-2 and Other Respiratory Viruses: A Systematic Review
Tommaso Celeste Bulfone, Mohsen Malekinejad, George W Rutherford, Nooshin Razani, The Journal of Infectious Diseases, 15 February 2021
US COVID vaccines: their power fleeting, their usefulness limited
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