Tag Archives: vaccine

The New Dunce Confederates

Novak Djokovic (Photo by Darrian Traynor/Getty Images)



The great thing about professional sports is that they allow for vilification. Only in sport are we permitted to assign a name, number, even identifying color to help put a human face on villainy.

Yankee pinstripes. Celtic shamrocks. How ‘bout them Cowboys?

Now, say hello to the new knave: the unvaccinated jock. No need to hate them for their mascot. Now you can hate them for their mindset.

Normally, we cut these wont wits some slack. After all, they bounce balls and hurl sticks for a living. Find one that isn’t raging on steroids, beating on a loved one or selling their soul for home, life and auto insurance, and we’re talking political office.

Which may explain the latest degradation in American athletics. Because there’s no other way to describe the corrosive effect these athletes are having on the the very sport they claim to love and represent. Never mind the health of fans who cluster to watch them perform Stupid Human Tricks — or the “teammates” trying to do the same thing. The unvaccinated have become the new libertarians of the sports world.

In the spirit of ferreting fools, here are some of the most notable unvaccinated athletes:

Aaron Rodgers

Rodgers is the most recent famous athlete to make headlines because of being unvaccinated. After saying that he was “immunized” against the virus despite not receiving the vaccine, he tested positive in early November. So Aaron: Don’t think of yourself as having gotten your ass kicked in the playoffs Sunday. Think of it as being immunized from the Super Bowl again.

Novak Djokovic

Currently ranked the No.1 player in the world by the Association of Tennis Professionals, Djokovic has refused to disclose his vaccination status. He was deported back to his home in Serbia after trying to compete in the Australian Opening this month despite the country’s pandemic protocols. Hopefully France sends him packing again for the French Open.

Anthony Rizzo

When he played with the Chicago Cubs, Anthony Rizzo chose not to get vaccinated because he was “taking some more time to see the data.” He then tested positive for COVID in August after having been traded to the Yankees. When he was asked about his vaccination status again at the end of August, he said, “I just had COVID, so they say for three months I’m kinda in the clear, so I think after that it will be the time to really make the decision again.” The MLB doesn’t currently have a vaccination mandate for players.

Kyrie Irving

The NBA doesn’t have a mandatory vaccine policy either, but New York’s vaccine policy requires players be vaccinated in order to play or practice indoors. Brooklyn’s Irving, who refuses vaccination, can only play in away games in cities that do not have COVID mandates. Desperate for success, the Nets use him as road show attraction. Kind of like a carnival without the wisdom of carnies.

Cole Beasley

Cole Beasley has had A LOT to say — on Twitter and in person — about the NFL’s vaccination policy and COVID protocols, but it all boils down to the same thing: He’s unvaccinated and wishes to remain as such. He eventually deleted his Twitter account after posting, “I may die of COVID, but I’d rather die actually living.” Wait, what?

Much has been made about whether the unvaccinated — particularly vociferous anti-vaxxers — should be ridiculed when they fall to the virus. The question became contentious after the death of GOP figure and anti-vaxxer Kelly Ernby died from COVID earlier this month.

Former Orange County GOP Assembly candidate Kelly Ernby
Orange County GOP figure Kelly Ernby died last week of COVID after disparaging anti-pandemic measures.
(Ben Chapman)

And it’s hardly just athletes and politicians. Celebrities from Jim Carrey to Charlie Sheen to Alicia Silverstone proudly wear the anti-vax sash. Carrey once said he does not opt into “the C.D.C. agenda.” Do all of those people — and nearly half the nation, by most accounts — deserve scorn, ridicule, mockery?

Sadly, yes.

There are only two types of Americans who are not vaccinated in this pandemic: People who cannot get a vaccine, for economic or physical reasons; and those who will not.

Those in the first category deserve our sympathy and help, at all costs. This is America, goddamnit.

Those in the second category, misled by disinformation and misinformation, simply must be shunned. Were this, say, leprosy, would we be so welcoming of those willing to put the populace at existential risk?

America’s unvaccinated are the equivalent of smokers demanding the right to light up at the daycare center. Only worse: COVID is lung cancer you catch in a cough and die in a sneeze. If dimwits don’t want to vaccinate their kids — against COVID, polio, mumps, etc., — that’s their choice. Americans have a right to be wrong.

Just don’t visit your wrongheadedness upon the rest of the nation. If you’re a science-denier mid-pandemic, maybe America isn’t for you. So, if you’d be so kind, please let the door hit you in the ass on your way out to the grave, because my boot won’t reach that far.

COVID-19: The New Smoking

Only in a Trump America would curing a disease widen ts spread.

I call it a Trump America because his presidency, like herpes, was apparently a permanent infection that could return at any time. His slackwittery continues to echo in the halls of Congress and the backwaters of the nation’s collective intellect.

Need proof? Just look at the country’s COVID numbers. Despite a vaccine, conservatives treat the cure like the metric system: ‘Not in my school or home, smartass college boy.”

This is what that thinking looks like.

The reaction to four million dead worldwide (two-thirds to legit genocide!) has given news outlets the vapors. Fox News suggests wrapping yourself in a flag and punching a tree for symptoms of a pandemic. CNN and MSNBC recommend fucking a celebrity.

I propose something simpler: treating COVID for what it has become, America’s new smoking.

Need proof? That, too, is in the numbers. According to the CDC, 480,000 Americans still die from smoking every year. Another 42,000 die annually from second-hand smoke.

Yet, is there an American alive today who does not know that smoking is a deadly behavior? This despite the advent of vaping, which has led to a total of 60 deaths since its creation. It suggests that people are addicted to the ritual of smoking, not the nicotine.

We are choosing to die.

It’s what this country is great at. Suicides outpace homicides every year three-to-one (about 45,000 suicides a year compared to about 15,000 murders). Approximately 100,000 people die annually in drunk driving crashes. One in 10 Americans has adult-onset diabetes.

Welcome to the Actuarial Club, COVID. You join some heavy hitters.

So let’s start treating the pandemic like other American killers: as a matter of choice, a macabre decision exacerbated by political charlatans and medical hucksters who know the cash in conspiracy. Those who roundly reject the vaccine — and the science behind it — are telling us clearly they’d rather live in flavor country.

You got it. You have that right, just as you have the right to smoke in the car with your infant strapped down. And, like your smoking, you’ll have to practice breathing in your own space. Just as we bar smokers from theaters, hospitals and nursery schools, we’ll have to separate the unvaccinated from the vaccinated.

And that couldn’t be easier. It won’t require banning a soul, castigating a fool, or suffering a moron.

Simply treat vaccinations like organ donation. Just as you can indicate that you want to be an organ donor on your driver’s license, we need the option to indicate we’ve taken the vaccine. The government needs to formally recognize vaccinations beyond the record you received that somehow is not wallet sized. Corporate America would welcome and enforce it: Unless you’re a gun shop, lethal stupidity is bad for business.

To placate critics, you’d have an opt-out choice identical to organ donation: do nothing. That’s what you’re doing anyway.

More importantly, there is an opt-in clause, which is really the only option for clarity in a Trump America, where you have the god-given right to be wrong.

So don’t worry, Gov. Ron DeSantis. No one is going to Fauci your Florida.


We have a new medical expert for you. One even Dr. Fauci would admit is more qualified to speak on the pandemic.

Say hello Dr. Charles Darwin.


https://youtu.be/wSnsTUCU7K8