If Irving Refutes Vaccine Science, He Should At Least Heed Own Words About Spreading Community Love
Sports science has come a long way from the days where Keith Hernandez smoked cigarettes in a corridor outside the Mets dugout.
The Nets have taken body maintenance to the extreme, with one player after another swearing by all the data generated by Brooklyn’s vaunted Performance Team, even if to our untrained eyes the Nets don’t seem to be any less impervious to injuries than other NBA clubs. The fact is that I have never heard even one former member of the team disparage the system.
Somehow, though, there could very well be at least one holdout to the Performance Team’s protocols on perhaps the most vital health issue of the day, if the Rolling Stones report on Saturday that Nets superstar guard Kyrie Irving will refuse to take the COVID-19 vaccine in advance of this season is to be believed.
Bear in mind that neither the Nets (in compliance with HIPPA privacy laws) nor Kyrie Irving have confirmed the report, whose source was Tyki Irving, his aunt. However, author Matt Sullivan was embedded within the Nets for a published book and noted that Tyki Irving runs the family foundation and is one of a few people in Kyrie’s “inner circle.” She said that Irving, whose use of sage and a walking stick last season could have easily set in motion a religious exemption, deems his protest as “morals-based.”
It's no leap of faith to believe that Irving is an “anti-vaxxer,” as he is well-known as one who floats his own boat. Unfortunately, unlike other conspiracy theories (such as his since-amended “flat earth” comments), this one has consequences beyond his own train of thought.
New York City and San Francisco have instituted regulations that would ban unvaccinated performers who live in town. According to his aunt, Kyrie could conceivably skip all Nets home games while the rule is in effect.
I have defended Irving on many occasions when I was on the Nets beat, but in this case, he is one of many in this country who have been blinded by misinformation. For someone who is typically so in tune with spreading love in his community, his vaccine obstinance would be shameful. The legendary Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, no friend of the status quo, decried such behavior in the report.
For those of you who sympathize with Irving, let me give you a crash course on the coronavirus, specifically on the difference between “disease” and “infection.” The vaccine was NEVER intended to eliminate the transmission of the virus; it was always to reduce the risk of contracting SEVERE COVID-19.
And it has. Look up any state’s breakthrough statistics. In my home New Jersey, of the approximately 5.4 million fully-vaccinated citizens as of September 7, just 457 have been sick enough to require hospitalization for COVID-19 and 111 have died, according to NJ.com. The state’s total death toll has topped 27,000, and a high percentage of those that were vaccinated had contributing health factors.
Unfortunately, confusing messaging from government authorities, and I would put the aforementioned city rules that somehow allow unvaccinated visiting performers to work alongside the locals (ka-ching!) as if the threat of bringing outside variants into the area wasn’t a real risk, have muddied the waters. Some of that is simply new science, which, by definition, is the learning of new things.
One of those new things is the Delta variant, which, depending on the study, is somewhere around 50% more transmissible than the original strain. That’s because the “viral load,” which is the amount of virus in your body, can be about 1,000 greater in delta variant infections. That is why this variant has increased INFECTIONS of vaccinated people, but not so much the SEVERE DISEASE to date.
So, you may ask, why bother getting vaccinated if I’m a young, healthy athlete who is less at risk of severe disease anyway? The answer is that we live in a society. Even though studies have shown that vaccinated and unvaccinated infections carry similar viral loads, what happens after the virus enters the nasopharynx makes all the difference in the world, according to a New York Times report. The vaccine triggers a powerful immune response to the infection, allowing the body to shed the virus much more quickly and thereby limiting the damage to yourself--and to OTHERS.
By the way, what determines “moderate” disease is in the eye of the beholder. Who wants to be sick, be it for a few days or extended periods with so-called “Long COVID” symptoms? Your freedom does not extend to my face.
I’m not sure why it’s been so hard for so many people to comprehend this. Some of it has been due to flat-out lies from people with ugly agendas (don’t get me started on that!) and the lack of a clear roadmap for how we end this pandemic once and for all.
Still, the idea that the Nets might not be able to find a way to use either their advanced proprietary science or Irving’s own commitment to preach love and understanding among all people to sway him to get vaccinated is deeply disturbing.