Opinion | Aaron Rodgers is right about being targeted by COVID. Forty-five minutes of misinformation put the Packers quarterback there

I live in a world where Mike McCarthy kept his job as my boss for 13 years. I don’t trust authority.

If Aaron Rodgers had said that, maybe the rest would have been easier. But again, he may be the best quarterback in the largest professional sports league in a country where at least 775,000 people have died during the pandemic, and on Friday he spent 45 minutes pumping out the kind of misinformation that can lead to death. of people. You know what it means? Rodgers could be president one day.

All the grim and harsh jokes aside, the great Green Bay Packers has had a week. Rodgers contracted COVID, turned out to be unvaccinated, and on Friday he attended former gambler and current brother Pat McAfee’s Sirius XM show and delivered just about every anti-vaccine talking point you can think of.

“I realize that I am in the crosshairs of the awake mob right now, so before my last nail is put in my cancellation cultivation coffin, I would like to set the record straight on many of the blatant lies. that exist “, Rodgers. said.

In poker, they would call that whole sentence a story.

Honestly, Rodgers described himself as an inquisitive, rigorous, and independent mind and then hit the bingo card of almost every anti-vax forum you can find on Facebook, 8chan, or Fox News. Doing your own research? Check. Body autonomy? Check. Ivermectin? Check. Hydroxychloroquine? Check. Homeopathy, natural immunity, vaccine related sterility, why don’t doctors talk about being healthy and inhaling too much CO2 while wearing a mask? Check.

Coercion, collusion, waking up the mob, canceling the culture, Joe Rogan, and quoting Martin Luther King? That’s a double discount check all the way, bro.

“If the vaccine is so good, how come people keep getting COVID and spreading?” Rodgers asked, which is one of those questions that are really impossible to answer unless you have access to Google and a dash of common sense.

(The vaccines do not promise 100 percent efficacy, but they offer a high degree of protection against both virus acquisition and serious medical outcomes; there is evidence of decreased immunity versus transmission depending on the interval between two injections, which is where The idea of ​​third-shot thrusters come in. While we’re here, natural immunity is not superior to vaccine-based immunity. There is also no evidence that vaccines cause sterility, but the anti-vaccine community had to believe something else after their predictions of vaccine-related mass death did not materialize in reality. COVID can contribute to infertility, although.)

It was a trip to the feverish swamps. Rodgers claimed that an NFL doctor told him that those vaccinated could not contract or spread the virus, which sounds like a lie even if he accepts that a doctor employed by the NFL is like a lawyer employed by the mob; Lindsay Jones of The Athletic reported that a league source denied that Rodgers had ever spoken to an NFL doctor or an infectious disease expert employed by both the league and the union. Rodgers said he didn’t lie when he used the word “immunized” in a question about getting vaccinated, because … uh, because it was some kind of witch hunt.

I mean, maybe I’m one of the few who are allergic to an ingredient in mRNA vaccines, but when anti-vax bingo is also ruled out, it seems less likely. Rodgers declined to explain the homeopathic process he used to substitute for vaccination, which is probably for the best because that’s nothing. When asked what the NFL said when it presented its case for natural immunity about vaccination, Rodgers, who says he took both ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine, neither of which is recommended for COVID, said: “I think they thought I was a quack.” .

Well, I mean, yes. Rodgers blasted the science behind the NFL’s collectively bargained COVID safety protocols in one go: The team and league that allow you to speak to reporters without a mask is an option, and said he called podcast brother Joe Rogan to ask. medical advice in another. Rodgers claimed that every person on the left was against vaccines while Donald Trump was president, before changing his mind when Joe Biden walked in. Yes?

If you live in a reality-based universe, you would consider this an extraordinary fall from grace. His teammate, great quarterback Tom Brady, has previously touted concussion juice and the idea that drinking enough water will prevent sunburn, but he’s fully vaccinated, so he’s the reasonable one here. It’s an incredible twist.

However, most of all, this was deeply saddened. Rodgers has long been considered a thoughtful, intelligent, and simply brilliant athlete. He is funny and smart. And while Rodgers ’22-year-old fiancee actress advocates clay ingestion as part of her health regimen, it was still shocking to hear someone with Rodgers’ pedigree wandering this way.

But it shouldn’t have been like that. If Rodgers seems to live in the classic world of YouTube research and half ideas, consider that you are not alone. Only 58.5 percent of Wisconsin is fully vaccinated and the state is nearing 10,000 deaths; That’s roughly the mortality rate for Ontario in a jurisdiction with 40 percent of the population, and Wisconsin ranks 40th among US states in death rate. You can graph the states that voted for Donald Trump and the states that voted for Joe Biden, and the correlation between voting for Trump and higher death rates – and, of course, less vaccination – it’s a near perfect connection. And it should come as no surprise if Trump wins the next election.

And in the face of a reality-based risk assessment showing that vaccines are the best and safest way to protect yourself and others from a virus that has turned the whole planet upside down, Aaron Rodgers, in quarterback terms , could not interpret the defense. He was completely sure of himself, as he babbled that it is propaganda that it is mainly about an unvaccinated pandemic. Which, to a large extent, it is.

the problem with an infodemic Can anyone be a victim of it? anyone, regardless of their advantages, can fall down a hole. Aaron Rodgers has it all, more or less. It is one of the greats. And it’s a shame, but it’s lost. And he will get someone killed.