Brandon Goodwin Says Covid-19 Vaccine Ended His NBA Season.

If you pay attention to NBA news, you will not miss the uproar over NETS star guard Kyrie Irving’s hesitancy to the COVID-19 vaccine. The one thing you do not hear in the debate surrounding Kyrie Irving’s stance on the vaccine is the risk a young healthy player is taking when they decide to take the vaccine. These players are young and healthy. Compared to the general population, COVID-19 is not such a huge danger to their lives. It is is for this same reason that you could argue in favor of taking the vaccine is less likely to impact them either. This later position is hard to defend, when you examine the effect of the COVID vaccine on Atlanta Hawks guard Brandon Goodwin.

What Happened?

According to Brandon, the vaccine led to him having season ending blood clots. He has still not fully recovered from this condition. To make matters worse, his former team seems to have cautioned him not to share his story. It seems the league is so invested in promoting vaccination that they do not want players or other officials to even know if there are any possible career ending side-effects.

A talking head like Stephen A. Smith needs to introduce more nuance to his crusade like activism against Kyrie. What if Kyrie becomes one of the rare cases of those who suffer career ending side-effects of the vaccine. Will the likes of Stephen A take care of Kyrie’s family? The media and the league must stop with this COVID-19 vaccine mandate insanity.

Side effects may be rare, but they do exists.

Data from Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), reveals at least 752,803 reported adverse reactions to the Covid vaccines, with some 16,874 life-threatening reactions, 15,937 deaths and over 22,342 permanent disabilities. This data is enough to cause players to pause, and take their time to arrive at a place where they can comfortably consent to putting the vaccine in their bodies. The C.D.C. in May 2021 reported cases of blood clots and deaths from the vaccines.

The covid-19 vaccines are helpful, but players should be allowed to make this decision with their doctors, not forced to take it without consideration to the effect on their careers.