No one can trace exactly where the rumor started (though there is a theory below), but people in the usual “anti-vax” community, namely the strong MAGA-types, have started talking about professional athletes dying on the field, the court, whatever, due to the vaccine and we’re not talking about a half-dozen, the number is put over one-hundred. (One would think that “2” would be noticed.)
Just in the past week, NBA legend John Stockton temporarily lost his season tickets to all Gonzaga University basketball games for his refusal to wear a mask and, when interviewed by the Spokesman-Review, said:
“I think it’s highly recorded now, there’s 150 I believe now, it’s over 100 professional athletes dead – professional athletes – the prime of their life, dropping dead that are vaccinated, right on the pitch, right on the field, right on the court,” Stockton said in the interview.
As impossible as it is to believe that a world traveler, college-educated, and sophisticated athlete, author, businessperson, could have such beliefs, we are now forced to report that a United States Senator has used the same strange story (again, near untraceable as to where it started). Brianna Keilar utterly destroyed that Senator, Ron Johnson (surprise!):
Quoting Mediaite:
“So there’s a new Covid lie that is making the right-wing media rounds and now a U.S. senator is spreading it,” she said on Friday’s New Day. “On Wednesday, Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson said this.”
New Day then played a soundbite of Johnson saying on The Charlie Kirk Show, “We’ve heard story after story. I mean, all these athletes dropping dead on the field. But we’re supposed to ignore that. Nothing happening here. Nothing to see. This is a travesty. This is a scandal.”
It would be a travesty and a scandal if Sen. Johnson could simply name one of them, just one.
Keilar went on:
“That is a U.S. senator saying something that is easily verifiable, totally untrue, and also dangerous.”
Cillizza explained that the conspiracy came about courtesy of the far-right Gateway Pundit in December when they “linked to a study from a site called Good Sciencing” about athletes with “myocarditis and pericarditis, issues with their heart and they took the vaccine.”
Cillizza went on to explain how the study simply wasn’t accurate and that it seemed to include athletes like “Hank Aaron” (One of the greatest athletes and heroes of all time), who died at age 86 of natural causes, not the vaccine.
It is just further proof of a lack of common sense. It doesn’t matter if it is a second-string cricket player in India, an Aussie Rules Football player, a Chinese badminton player, or a fairly mediocre professional bowler in Greece. If professional athletes started dying on the court, pitch, field, lanes, track, air, ice, snow, ring, octagon, balance beam, or trampoline, the world would notice. One would think that someone could point that out to Sen. Johnson and John Stockton and get them to tilt their head for a moment and eventually agree.
You can’t.
Jason Miciak is a political writer, features writer, author, and attorney. He is originally from Canada but grew up in the Pacific Northwest as a dual Canadian-American citizen, which he grows increasingly thankful for every day. He now enjoys life as a single dad, writing from the beaches of the Gulf Coast, getting advice from his beloved daughter and teammate. He is very much the dreamy mystic that cannot add and loves dogs more than most people. He also likes studying cooking, theoretical physics, cosmology, and quantum mechanics. He likes pizza.
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