NBA media days happened this week, and, among other things, Andrew Wiggins said it's not the public's business whether or not he's been vaccinated against a killer virus that has ended the lives of some 670,000 of the public so far.
Kyrie Irving, believer in the flatness of Earth and other kooky notions, maintains it's a personal choice not to be vaccinated. Ditto Bradley Beal, who wondered why he should get the shot when he can still get the Bastard Plague if he does, even while admitting it's extremely rare for it to happen.
"Like it's funny that it only reduces your chances of going to the hospital," he says.
Well, yes. It does. Actually it reduces those chances to practically zero. Which is important given how many COVID-19 patients are going to the hospital, swamping resources and thus affecting far more than just COVID patients.
Not that Bradley Beal cares a whit about that, given his commitment to fighting tyranny and all.
"I don't think you can pressure anybody into making a decision about their body or what they can put into their body," is something the brave freedom fighter also said.
Well ... actually, you can. Just ask a pregnant woman in Texas.
Also, ask any employer about whether or not it's legal to impose workplace rules, especially if the workplace rules involve the health or safety of the workforce. He or she will look at you like you have two heads -- especially in so-called right-to-work states, which give employers the freedom to impose virtually any rules they want and to terminate employment for virtually any reason, including no reason at all.
So the NBA can say, and has, that if you're a player and you're not vaccinated (again, against a virus that has killed 670,000 Americans), you will be subject to restrictions the rest of the organization will not be. And by "the rest of the organization," we mean "all of it," because the NBA requires team employees other than players to be vaccinated.
I find this entirely sensible, given it's a matter of public health and there are public health restrictions that we routinely accommodate every day. But then I haven't lost my damn mind like Kyrie or Bradley Beal or even Dak Prescott over in the NFL, who cited HIPAA laws that don't apply in defending his "personal choice" not to say whether or not he'd gotten the shot.
Which of course means he hadn't.
I do not get this, as someone who's been riding this rock for 66 years. I do not get how being vaccinated against a killer virus became some sort of half-assed live-free-or-die issue. I do not get it because Americans routinely have been getting vaccinated for stuff that used to kill us for almost all of my life.
I also I do not get, in a country where schoolkids have had to present vaccination records to the nurse's office since I was a schoolkid, how vaccinating your kid and having him or her wear a mask to school became King George III imposing the Stamp Act.
Yet suddenly this is so, in a nation gone mad. At school board meetings in a certain district in Allen County, for instance, anti-masker goons show up to shout down anyone who endorses the system's mask policy, force the board to exit the room because it can't get through the evening's agenda for all the hollering, and follow board members out to their cars and harass them in the parking lot.
Oh, yes: They also mock students who adhere to school policy by wearing masks.
Yelling at high school kids who are only following the rules. Wow. Now there's some grownup behavior for ya.
Thankfully, as I've been reminded lately, these halfwits are not the majority. Even in the NBA, some 90 percent of players have been vaccinated.
So maybe most of America is still sane after all. Maybe most of us understand that licentiousness is not the same thing as freedom, that "freedom" doesn't mean you get to do whatever you want whenever you want. That in a free society, it comes with a measure of shared responsibility.
In other words, it ain't all about you, boys and girls. No matter how many shots Kyrie 'n' Andrew 'n' them try to block.
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