If you’re in western New York, you might want to steer clear of anyone in a No. 11 Cole Beasley jersey, because that’s a decent sign that the person wearing it is supporting the deadly idiocy of vaccine denial.
Grabbing the torch of anti-vax stupidity in Buffalo from Rachel Bush, the wife of his teammate Jordan Poyer, Beasley complained on June 17 via Twitter:
“The players association is a joke. Call it something different. It’s not for the players. Everyone gives me the 98 percent of people who are vaccinated don’t get covid again. The odds of me getting in the NFL and playing for 10 years are lower than that and I’m here.”
The logic of this is dizzying. Is Beasley saying that because he’s a natural odds beater, he would get COVID even if he got the vaccine, and that’s why he doesn’t want it? Actually, don’t even bother trying to parse it, because the next day, Beasley explained himself — sort of — in a Notes app tweet.
“I may die of covid, but I’d rather be actually living,” Beasley wrote.
That makes no sense whatsoever. Just… get the shot. Like you got the polio vaccine. And the measles vaccine. And lots of other inoculations that help prevent what we like to call “preventable illnesses.”
“I’m not going to take meds for a leg that isn’t broken,” Beasley wrote.
Okay, but do you wear pads to help prevent broken bones? Yes? That’s what vaccines do!
“I’d rather take my chances with Covid and build up my immunity that way,” Beasley wrote. “Eat better. Drink water. Exercise and do what I think is necessary to be a healthy individual.”
You don’t build up your immunity by exposing yourself to large concentrations of a virus. Eating better, drinking water, and exercising all are great, but they have nothing to do with the novel coronavirus, which has killed more than 600,000 people in the United States.
“That is MY CHOICE based on MY experiences and what I think is best,” Beasley wrote.
Cool. If you make YOUR CHOICE to not wear a helmet on the field based on YOUR experiences and what YOU think is best, the National Football League will tell YOU to GET LOST because you’re clearly a danger to yourself.
It takes a real idiot not to grasp this by now. Cole Beasley is that idiot.