The media obsession with Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers not publicly disclosing that he was unvaccinated has led to some truly bizarre reactions, but Carrie Friedman takes the cake for the most hysterical, least logical one so far.
Writing in the Los Angeles Times, Friedman demands to know how the NFL could even let Rodgers play unvaccinated. This hard-line stance is absurd because the NFL played an entire season in 2020 in which no one was vaccinated. The NFL tried to strong-arm all of its players into getting vaccinated, but naturally, it was going to let unvaccinated players play (if they weren’t cut because of vaccination status) because there is no way it could be less safe than last season.
In her hysteria, Friedman makes several claims that are either extreme logical leaps or simply factually wrong. She starts off by saying that this news “could effectively end our fantastic season” because Rodgers is “expected” to suffer worse and longer-term COVID-19 symptoms because he is unvaccinated. But there is little evidence that this is true for NFL players who contracted the virus during the 2020 season. The Tennessee Titans and Baltimore Ravens were among the teams who experienced outbreaks last year: They both went to the playoffs.
What’s more, she claims that “the virus doesn’t care if you’re young or old, a world-class athlete or not.” That is simply wrong. The virus is far more deadly for people who are older, and statistically, it is less lethal for children than the flu. The virus is far more deadly for those who are obese, but NFL athletes between the ages of 22 and 40 are at little risk due to both their age and their physical condition.
On top of this, she claims that Rodgers was “allowed to endanger his fellow teammates and coaches.” Again, his teammates were at little risk of severe cases of the virus even if they were unvaccinated. Being vaccinated, their risk of contracting serious symptoms from the virus is dramatically reduced even further, even if Rodgers personally coughed in their face every day in the locker room.
Rodgers claims he was allergic to an ingredient in the mRNA vaccines and that he didn’t want to receive the Johnson & Johnson vaccine because of concerns about blood clots, which is a good reminder that the Biden administration’s Johnson & Johnson vaccine pause did more harm than good. Whether that’s true or not, he is right that the NFL’s protocols were more about shaming players than they were about science, a fact that Friedman was happy to illustrate in her fact-free screed.
