Ex-Dallas Cowboys, Buffalo Bills’ WR Cole Beasley has ‘Idiocracy’ COVID stance | Opinion

Cole Beasley made an NFL career out of his 5-foot-8 frame because he’s never been afraid to go over the middle with his body, and now he’s done so with his mouth.

The pride of Little Elm and an SMU alum spoke for millions of Americans on Thursday with his “Twitter Take” about the COVID vaccinations, and in doing so exposed a major problem for the NFL and the country.

He responded to this Tweet from CNN, “Dr. Anthony Fauci says that people vaccinated against Covid-19 do not need to wear masks outside.”

The Centers for Disease Control made a similar announcement.

Beasley responded, “I do that without being vaccinated. Is this illegal now?”

Wonder if SMU wants that degree back.

This is not what the NFL, nor medical officials, want to hear.

It is, however, how millions of Americans feel.

After the responses poured in, he asked rhetorically, “Until we all share the same opinion or belief we are considered ignorant. I don’t understand. You feel how you feel and I respect that. It doesn’t always make me wrong or a bad person cause I don’t agree with you.”

He then asked, “If you get vaccinated you are good? So if I don’t I shouldn’t pass it on to you regardless, right? That’s a serious question. I don’t really know how these things work I’m not a doctor.”

Cole is right — he’s not a doctor. Fortunately, we know some, and they say that there are about 6,000 documented cases of fully vaccinated people contracting COVID-19.

Six thousand is not 60,000 or 600,000, nearly the number of Americans who’ve died of COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic. But it does reveal another issue.

What Cole did with his Twitter posts on Thursday is further expose the large portion of Americans who think just like he does. For what we really want isn’t medicine, or to learn a thing, but for someone in a position of authority to tell us we are right.

And what passes for a position of authority is being on TV.

Cole may want to take a few plays off.

His playing career may depend on it.

The NFL wants players to be vaccinated, but, like Beasley, there are going to be people who resist taking their medicine.

A player like Beasley, who has been in the NFL for nine seasons and is currently a productive receiver in Buffalo, may be able to get away with it.

But he’s 32. If he shows signs of slowing down, and won’t take his shots — well, you do the math.

A player who is near the bottom of the roster who takes some anti-vax stance will make himself more vulnerable to being cut.

Beasley is not near the bottom of the Bills roster, but he’s also not Josh Allen.

For more than a year we waited for a medicine, and now that it’s available — for free — large numbers of people still won’t take it. Because a person of authority, i.e. the other side of a screen, says getting vaccinated is stupid.

Our country is now sitting on a surplus of COVID vaccinations because people, like Beasley, think it’s stupid.

Or, for people doing the two-shot regimen, they took the first one but were so spooked by the potential symptoms that they’ve rejected getting the second one.

The NFL makes the vaccine available to players, staffers and family members with the target to return to full training camps, and stadiums, in the coming months.

Much like taking a flu shot, the COVID vaccines do not guarantee you won’t contract the virus. It just gives you a much better chance of preventing any illness, and it all but wipes out the possibility of a hospitalization or death.

The plan is that the more people who take the shots, the better our odds of ending all of this.

There are many flaws, inconsistencies and contradictions to the protocols and procedures that we have been asked to follow for the past year. Many of them made of us laugh, or fight the urge to throw a brick through stacks of toilet paper.

I wasn’t crazy about taking both shots, but math is math and I liked the odds. So I took both. The second one made me feel sick for about two days, and that was that.

There was no full-proof way to navigate this, and in a few years we will all look back and see with 20/20 vision what we got right, and wrong.

Mistakes were made. This was not some giant conspiracy.

We have a vaccine to improve our odds, and better our chances. That’s typically what medicine does.

Beasley said he has a serious question, because he said he doesn’t know. Because he said he’s not a doctor.

He doesn’t want to hear from a doctor because a doctor is going to tell him he’s wrong.