Talked to players, agents, an athletic trainer about the vax & the competitive advantage it gives teams & players. One agent said that when he contacts teams to try to get his clients jobs, he sends photos of their vaccination cards along w/ workout vids.https://t.co/KVf8oieZR1
— Kalyn Kahler (@kalynkahler) June 22, 2021
When I was 25, if I’d had a longer economic timeline and less subconscious belief in my own immortality, I’d have made better decisions about how many pizzas I inhaled. So when it comes to young professional sports-players hesitating about getting vaxx’d, as the saying goes: I don’t approve, but I understand.
Good for Defector, doing the reporting:
Player 1, as we’ll call him, had COVID-19 last season and missed about two weeks of work. The heart palpitations he got on Day 7 of his sickness scared him so badly that he called his team’s trainer to check his vitals and calm him down. “I thought I was going to the upper room,” he said.
Player 1 didn’t end up going to heaven or the hospital. He recovered, and is now going into his second NFL season. An undrafted player, he had minimal playing time as a rookie and is fighting to earn a roster spot on a new team. When he catches a ride with a teammate to the team facility, they usually just drop him off at the testing center. They’re vaccinated; Player 1 wasn’t. Vaccinated players don’t need to go in for daily testing.
When I called Player 1 to talk about the COVID vaccine, he started off by saying that he’d decided to get it, and planned to see about signing up for the shot through his team the last week before summer break. He attended an NFLPA virtual meeting about the vaccine in February, alongside what he estimated was 1,400 other players. At the time, he said, he felt like he learned everything he needed to know, so he logged off the meeting before the NFLPA leadership took questions. His mom, a nurse, encouraged him to get the vaccine to protect his toddler-aged son. His current team has informed its players about all the incentives for vaccinated players: no masks, biweekly testing instead of daily, no mandatory quarantine for being ruled a close contact, travel allowed on the bye week. “I see my teammates, they are getting it, so it’s only right that I follow that trend too,” he said, early in our call.
But then he mentioned how he found out about the Johnson & Johnson vaccine pause, on an otherwise humorous Instagram meme account. “But this day there was nothing funny about this, this was like, really informative,” he told me. “It woke me up.” He was already scared of the vaccine symptoms, and he didn’t feel like he absolutely needed the vaccine because he wasn’t hanging around big groups of people anyways. He said his worst fear is getting COVID again, and he knows from his mother that the vaccine reduces the severity of COVID symptoms, but he’s bothered by the fact that vaccinated people can still get the virus. “Whether I got the shot or not, if I caught it, [I am] still going to be out [a game].”…
… [T]he science may matter less to football players than what vaccination could mean for their team and their careers. Head coach Mike Zimmer has spent time talking to players about the vaccine as a competitive advantage, information that Sugarman says often has more of an impact on players. “It is a game of availability and you want to have these guys available. … I had a lot of guys on the fence, and they would ask me, what do I get in return? Why should I do it? How will it benefit me in this building? Not so much in life, but they want to know how it was going to benefit them in the building.”
“The unvaccinated players are going to have a hard time during the season,” Zimmer told reporters last week. “They are going to be wearing masks, they’re going to have to socially distance, they’ll have daily testing. They won’t go home for bye week and have to come back here and test every day. When we go on the road, they won’t be able to go out to dinner with anybody. They’ll have to travel on busses differently and travel on planes differently, so a lot of meetings will be virtual like we have here. It’s not only the safety part of being vaccinated, but as far as being a part of a football team.”
Other things unvaccinated players have to live with: No meals with teammates, no using the sauna or steam room, no marketing appearances, no seeing friends or family on road trips, no gathering with teammates or staff outside of the facility for any reason, including football activities, no visiting clubs, bars, house parties, concerts etc., and hefty fines (up to $50,000) for violations of the protocols…
I actually find this reassuring; once the carrot/stick balance tips, most people will get vaccinated, for ‘good’ or ‘bad’ reasons (I want to protect my kids / I don’t want to risk my job). And the further the core of anti-vaxxers shrinks down to the obvious nutters & cultists, the more incentives the merely hesitant will have to do the smart thing. Humans are social animals, so herd behavior is not necessarily a slur.
On The Road – randy khan – Springtime in Paris – Canal St. Martin
opiejeanne
After listening to some of the hesitant who have gotten vaccinated, I think many of them are simply afraid of the needle, and the worry about side-effects is not the real story. The reason I think this is that the men, and it’s mostly men that I’ve heard but a few women, they all say with a little surprise: It didn’t really hurt that much.
Suzanne
@opiejeanne: I believe you’re right: dudes scared of needles and trying to cover that with masculine chest-thumping about FREEDUMZ.
Saw that Yang conceded the NYC mayor’s race…..
Ohio Mom
Suzanne:
Thanks for relaying this good news.
I am not following the NYC mayoral race, know next to nothing about most of the candidates but have been very invested in Yang losing and disappearing. Halfway there!
BruceFromOhio
I appreciate the unspoken parts: get the shots already and quit being a dickhead.
ETA: Cheryl Rofer, I share your annoyance. Not even three comments in.
Another Scott
Relatedly, … GovExec:
(Emphasis added.)
Seahawks, Bears, Panthers, etc., wouldn’t seem to be too much of a stretch…
Cheers,
Scott.
lurker
@BruceFromOhio: not sure what the annoyance thing is about … off-topic comments?
Anyway – fear of needle, squeamish about shots in general, lots of things can come from people masking why they really do not want a shot.
I went years off and on without getting flu shots. Finally committed to getting the shot each year some time ago. While not liking needles had some effect, other factors came into play as well. There were years when I got a tetanus shot due to something stupid (e.g. stepping on an unseen nail) but did not get a flu shot.
I got a shot for covid as soon as I legitimately could. Live and learn.
lurker
@Another Scott: vaccinating against bears and panthers is easy. protection against seachickens is a totally different story…
; – )
Royston Vasey
@lurker: it’s the Seamonkeys I worry about… ;-)
oldgold
A lot of the reluctance/ refusal to be vaccinated stems from what Ron “Tater Salad” White correctly diagnosed years ago about certain people.
opiejeanne
@lurker: I totally understand the fear of needles, and am a needle-phone myself. I do not like pain, I do not like needles, but I am an adult, 71 yo, and I get my flu shot every fall. Maybe I’m becoming tolerant of a little more pain, since last year I gave myself an injection every morning every day for a year. Now it’s only once a week. I wear a little button on my arm with a tiny needle that reads my blood sugar, that gets changed every two weeks and sometimes hurts like hell. I can’t really apply it properly so my DH does it for me.
The only time in twenty years that I didn’t get the annual flu shot I got the worst case of the flu that I can remember, and I have had some doozies, the kind where you almost wish you could die because you feel so awful. The reason I missed it is because the shot wasn’t available until September 1 in 2014, and we were already on the plane heading to Europe. Caught it from a little boy in Italy who was coughing and had a runny nose and kept following us around at a farm demonstration. We really could not shake this kid. My husband started feeling sick about 3 days later, in Amsterdam and was very sick on the flight home to Seattle. And a couple of days later I got sick.
Tthere’s a possibility that whatever that little boy had might not have been included in the 2014 flu shot. We were in the heel of the boot of Italy and there were refugees from North Africa everywhere, so it may have been an unanticipated strain for the US.
opiejeanne
@oldgold: And that would be…?
Ruckus
@lurker:
I’ve gotten very ill from the flu shot so stopped taking them. I’ve gotten ill enough to be hospitalized for 9 days from vaccines so I’m very cautious about that as well. Along comes covid and I’m all in, this one could easily kill me, too much health crap going on. The VA had me wait 30 min on the first Pfizer shot but nothing. Second shot, that night and next day was crap, following day not as bad, next morning it felt like nothing had happened.
opiejeanne
@Ruckus: David had a terrible reaction to a flu shot in the early 80s. Got the shot at work at city hall, came home at lunch and didn’t crawl out of bed for 3 days, except to use the facilities.
The second Pfizer shot reaction was similar to yours, but Tylenol helped a lot, as did going to bed early and just sleeping. Started about 2 hours after the shot, About 24 hours later we were both fine but we were totally wiped out in the interim.
oldgold
@opiejeanne:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=UQv7Tr8HbGE
gene108
@oldgold:
Everybody’s a little bit gay?
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mY711HJK7pg
Danielx
I kinda sorta get the dislike of needles, it’s certainly not like any sane person enjoys it.
However…
Speaking as someone who has endured a lot of periodontal work, I can testify that there is no comparison between….
an intramuscular shoulder shot that lasts about a second if that – or
a shot in the gum or goddamnit the upper palate that feels like it’s going on for several seconds or several hours
which is why you wanna be sedated, as the song goes….but to the point: fear of a shot in the shoulder? Really? Come to my inevitable next appointment, see something to fear.
I totally apologize in advance and beg jackals’ pardon, tough evening tonight.
HumboldtBlue
Watching The Spy on Netflix and Sasha Baron Cohen is a really fucking talented.
lurker
@gene108:
@opiejeanne:
@oldgold:
my recollection is that Ron White often says variations of “you can’t fix stupid” but gene108 has a good one there too. Clarifying for the uninitiated (namely people with even a smidgen of a life).
VeniceRiley
@Another Scott: Now THAT is interesting! Thanks for posting it.
lurker
@opiejeanne:
@Ruckus:
that sounds particularly rough. glad I have been getting the flu shot for a good number of years now. clearly it is not for everyone. Traveling from the boot of Italy to Seattle is not for everyone either, so congrats on even completing the trip.
@opiejeanne: (reactions) – think I mentioned in a thread some time ago that my vax was the j/j. I got the shot roughly a day or two before they announced the pause. (Timing is probably off, but it was a friday evening shot.) Getting it on Friday in case I had side effects was wise. Saturday started ok, but the same feeling I have when a cold/flu is coming on. By Saturday evening I had chills and lots of other fun symptoms. Family was not sympathetic. Sunday was pretty well shot, and I steadily got better over the next couple of days. Probably went two weeks without being able to get enough sleep and being exceptionally overtired (more than normal) before it really faded.
Anoniminous
Reportedly SARS-CoV-2 B.1.617.2 aka “Delta Variant” is highly contagious and has some resistance to monoclonal antibody therapies. Good news is Moderna and Pfizer mRNA vaccines seem to be still effective.
This may change as further research is conducted, concluded, communicated. I seriously doubt the virus can get around the mRNA vaccines, tho. To do that it would have to change the amino acid sequence of its spike protein which would change its spike protein conformation which would change its biological activity and render it unable to invade and hijack endothelium cells.
lurker
@Another Scott:
@VeniceRiley:
agreed – and not the kind of research that big pharma is well prepared to pursue – lack of certainty of any payoff and potential long term wait for that uncertain payoff. All the more reason to support more basic research that we have turned away from in the last 20-30 or more years.
lurker
@Anoniminous: it’s prolly gonna try to swap some dna with HIV. jus’ you watch…will be an AIDS delta force virus
[don’t think too hard about it – the comment falls apart with minimal, really any, scrutiny … ; – )]
lurker
@Danielx: dental/periodontal shots are terrifying to experience, but have had just enough of them to be able to get through them now.
Anoniminous
@lurker:
Gene 108? The one that encodes a member of the family of adenylate cyclases, which are membrane-associated enzymes that catalyze the formation of the secondary messenger cyclic adenosine monophosphate? The one that, when it goes whack-a-doodle*, is highly correlated with schizophrenia?
* apologies for the technical terminology
ETA: since SARS-CoV-2 is a positive-sense, single-stranded RNA virus swapping DNA would be a neat trick. :-)
lurker
@Royston Vasey:
@Another Scott:
having watched the seachickens from the early years, they can sneak up on you.
I remember one event where we watched a play something like 4th and goal at the 6. Result of the Zorn to Herrera pass was a gain of 4. Details may be a little off, but the key was that Herrera caught the pass, managed some forward progress, and was tackled (possibly out of bounds) at the 2 yard line. And before anyone objects, I remember it was near the sideline, but it was a legal tackle, not a late hit. It was disturbingly bad seachicken performance.
**to clarify – Jim Zorn was the starting qb and placeholder for field goals. Efren Herrera was the placekicker. So this was a fake field goal try. And the kicker caught the ball. And still got tackled short of the end zone, giving the ball away on downs. Maddening. I think this happened after they switched to the AFC, but that first NFC season was horrible too.
lurker
@Anoniminous: like i said – falls apart under any scrutiny. (I realized the Sars-cov-2 virus is single RNA strand, among a million other problems with that idea.)
Gene108 came from a username though.
lurker
ok, who’s next. my goal is to fill up the comments in this thread, ‘cuz that may give some discerning blog readers a thread full of pie…
; – )
Anoniminous
@lurker:
I know. I was just burnishing my Bio-nerd street cred.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@lurker: I’ve met Efren(he’s a Bruin); in fact, I spent a few nights in his house. He was my college roommate’s BIL.
VeniceRiley
@?BillinGlendaleCA: saw this and thought of you
https://www.wired.com/story/an-insane-view-of-the-milky-way-from-the-edge-of-new-zealand/
lurker
@?BillinGlendaleCA: that’s cool … and disturbing … not sure of why it’s disturbing. Have heard he is a nice guy, along the lines of most NFL guys from that time – competitive, but not that different from the general public.
Largent famously turned off the PR as a football player the day he retired, only to turn it on in a different way when he ran for Congress and stayed there a while.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@lurker: Only time I’ve seen a Superb Owl ring.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@VeniceRiley: Actually, he’s blown out the highlights(it’s pretty common with folk shooting at too high an ISO), you should see some pink nebula in those shots. You’ll be seeing some Milky Way pics in tomorrow morning’s OTR.
ETA: He did get a nice reflection in the bay, the water must have been very calm. That’s my next quest, a good reflection, I have a plan.
Chris T.
@Ruckus:
Meanwhile, I’ve gotten very ill from flu, so now I’m much better about actually getting my flu shot. (One year’s flu, I got so dehydrated that I went to the ER and they put three liters of fluids into me by IV before they could read my blood pressure. Another year wasn’t as dangerous, but I had severe headaches and digestive issues for about two weeks.)
Geminid
There was a lot of criticism of the NFL when it played last season. Aggregating players and coaches certainly was not consistent with the general push for social isolation. But I thought there was a positive side. Fans who might have taken the virus lightly got to see how seriously the league took testing and reporting. Enforcement was pretty tough. Two weeks into the season, at least four coaches had been fined $100,000 each for not masking properly, and their teams were fined $250,000. Hefty fines for violations large and small continued throughout the season, although compliance with league rules was fairly good overall. Players still caught Covid, and fans could see how infectious it was. Even the most unaware fantasy football geeks had to take Covid into account as infected players got taken off the board.
Of course, none of these measures mitigated the damage done to players from brain injury, which has made many fans turn away from the sport.
NorthLeft12
After reading the requirements that the NFL is placing on unvaccinated players it kind of blows my mind that any player would go through that rigmarole rather than get two jabs.
Especially with the potential impact on your career both short term and long term. Just effing crazy.
opiejeanne
@lurker: You must have missed when I said we were in Amsterdam when he started getting sick. We flew out of that airport on Iceland Air, with a stop of a couple of hours in Rekjavik.
The flights back to the US from Italy either went through Florida and cost 3 times what we’d spent getting to Paris, or they routed through Moscow and cost twice what we’d spent, with a layover at a time when Russia was truly pissed off at the US. And all of those flights were terribly long flights, like 22 hours just to get back to the east coast.
So we took Ryan Air out of Brindisi to Amsterdam, stayed 4 days there in a very nice little hotel, and flew home on Iceland Air for less money and a much shorter flight,
opiejeanne
@?BillinGlendaleCA: I’m pretty sure Jim Zorn went to Cal Poly Pomona when I was there. A real pity because we had such a bad football team. I don’t remember them winning a single game the whole time I was there.