Adam Oster, Novelist

I know I’m a little late to the party here to talk about this Wisconsin favorite who has been a disappointment over the past few weeks, but, well, I write these things well before they get published, and I just wasn’t able to get my thoughts on here cleaned up fast enough.

For those of you who don’t know, Aaron Rodgers is the current star quarterback for the Green Bay Packers. At the start of the season, he told everyone he was immunized, obviously referring to the league’s requirement for being vaccinated against COVID-19, only for him to catch COVID, tell everyone that no, he wasn’t actually vaccinated, and that he didn’t lie when he said he was vaccinated originally. You can read a portion of his response to being found out here, as well as watch the interview where he responds to it.

The long and short of it is that although Rodgers does claim to have done something in order to boost his protection from COVID, it wasn’t something that even the league believed to be enough. And yes, perhaps he does truly have an allergy to an ingredient in two of the three vaccines, and sure, there might be reasons to be concerned about the J&J vaccine, but the bottom line is that he flat out said he was immunized when he wasn’t. And his explanation for how it was okay was because he claims that if anyone had pressed further, he would have gone on a long rant which basically amounts to saying he’s not an anti-vaxxer, but that he’s cool with people who are.

The bottom line here is that he’s twisting words. Maybe in some version of all of this someone can see that this isn’t a flat out lie, because he performed some form of homeopathic medicine on himself which he refers to as being immunized, but he definitely spoke with the intention of misleading everyone. The NFL rejected his ploy for an alternative to the vaccine, but he was still able to play because he said he was immunized. He withheld information that he knew was problematic, because he didn’t want to get found out. He knowingly acted in a way that would mislead people from the truth, because he knew that if they knew the truth, he wouldn’t get what he wants.

I’ve said on here before that I can understand why some people may choose to not get vaccinated. While I think everyone should get vaccinated as soon as they can, I’ll allow that there are a number of different reasons why someone might struggle with it. But, that means you need to follow the other rules that we have in place for keeping the community safe. If you’re out there breathing and sweating on other athletes who are trusting that you are telling them what they think you are telling them, risking their health and wellness because of your fears, you’re just being a self-serving jackass.

Sure, maybe Joe Rogan somehow knows more than any of our leading medical scientists and following his advice will save the world, but the people you interact with, who want to know your status with regards to this pandemic, deserve to know that horse dewormer is your choice of ‘immunization’, as opposed to causing them to believe you’ve taken the approved steps for keeping the community safe.

We see this type of doublespeak often in politics, and its one of the things that has led us to become such a divided nation on the topic of COVID in general. Donald Trump dumped a ton of money into helping getting these vaccines developed, but then spent way too much time trying to present ivermectin as a far better solution, causing our nation to not trust the very vaccinations that he was pouring our money into.

But here’s me reiterating my most important point here: As of right now, things like ivermectin don’t have any published science that supports it as an effective weapon against COVID. We do have published science that supports the vaccine. But, more importantly, if you don’t believe the published science behind the vaccines, you can’t just pick and choose what you do trust and go out into the world as though you have a bubble of protection. You are risking the lives of people around you who are trusting that you are following the rules we have developed through scientific research of this highly infectious disease. In other words, you are being terribly irresponsible with the lives and health of other people. And that’s not okay.

And you, Aaron Rodgers, fall into that boat. I guess I’m not sure if I should expect better from someone who ruined his chances with Olivia Munn.