Sports Tidbits on Aaron Rodger’s decision to stay woke and away from the Covid-19 vaccination.
This week The Green Bay Packers were missing their mercurial Quarterback, and reigning NFL MVP, Aaron Rodgers because he tested positive for Covid-19. It was revealed that he was never vaccinated.
This caused a media whirlwind because of a press conference Rodgers did in the summer where he said that he was “immunized.” Many took that to mean that Rodgers was vaccinated.
Some might see that Rodgers mislead people to believe that he took one of the 3 FDA approved vaccination shots. Some say he outright lied. I would say that the Green Bay and NFL media didn’t do their due diligence to ask further questions.
Aaron Rodgers did say this in his defense “I believe strongly in body autonomy and the ability to make choices for your body, not to have to acquiesce to some woke culture or some crazed group of individuals who say you have to do something.” Rodgers continued “Health is not some one size fits everybody and for me it involved a lot of studying in the offseason.”
I actually agree with Aaron Rodgers that taking the vaccine is a person choice, and nobody should forced to take shot. But I also believe in public health measures meant to keep us all health and safe.
If one makes the decision to not take the vaccine they should live with the consequences. Rodgers actually did, he went to the NFL saying that he took antiviral treatments instead of getting the vaccine to give himself some protection or immunity from the virus, and he asked for a waiver and to be considered and treated as a vaccinated player.
The NFL declined and he was treated as unvaccinated.
While I didn’t care for some of Aaron Rodgers rhetoric about “woke culture” or a “crazed group of people” creating a mandate of sorts to get the vaccine. Vaccination, mask wearing and social distancing are not about woke culture.
The public health officials at NIH, FDA and the CDC aren’t a crazed group of individuals, they are respected scientists, doctors, and specifically epidemiologists that have studied infectious diseases for decades and understand the spread of these types of diseases far more than any of us care to know.
I appreciate that he did do some research and later stated his case about why he didn’t want to take the traditional vaccines. He thought he might have an allergy to ingredients in the MRNA vaccines (Pfizer and Moderna), and when looking at the alternative Johnson and Johnson vaccine he had concerns.
The Johnson and Johnson vaccine did temporary go off line and it wasn’t distributed for a short time because of issues with pregnant women and blood clots occurring. So, Aaron Rodgers did more research and found drugs that he thought would give him some protection immunity.
Despite my vehement disagreement with how he handled this, kudos to him for caring about what goes into his body and actually doing some research. We expect athletes to know what they are putting into their body when it comes to performance enhancement, but that expectation is supposed to go away during a pandemic?
There’s an ugly history with athletes and pharmaceuticals. Including the usage of pain killers, whom Aaron Rodgers predecessor Brett Favre became addicted to. Toradol a common pain reliever given via injection, is now considered very dangerous and the NFL has owned teams and players not to use it or to use it very carefully because of the cases of bad side effects of that drug.
I’m sure Aaron Rodgers knows that story and is only trying to monitor foreign substances coming into his temple. A-Rod gets a demerit for not being 100 % honest with the media to avoid a firestorm, but I’ll give him credit for doing research, and being mindful of what he puts into his body as a professional athlete.
Sports and Travel Blogger