Cole Beasley has been the NFL’s most outspoken critic of vaccination around the league, and on Wednesday, he further tried explaining his stance on vaccination.
Beasley blames someone — it’s unclear who, exactly — of withholding information from players in order for the player to get a vaccine.
Beasley’s statement in full:
MORE: The NFL is taking a hard stance on players who don’t vaccinate
With regard to our overall safety, we have to know we are armed with full knowledge and understanding that those who are in position to help us will always do that based on our individual situation. Some people may think that I’m being selfish and making this a “me” thing. It is all about the young players who don’t have a voice and are reaching out to me every day because they are being told if they don’t get vaxxed, they’ll be cut. Agents are being told by teams that if they have unvaccinated guys, they will not be given the opportunity as of now to be seen in workouts. So once unvaxxed players get cut, they’re losing a dream they have worked their whole lives for over a vaccine that is proven to not keep people from contracting COVID as we’ve seen. Every doctor I’ve gone to with questions begins every sentence with, ‘From what we know now,’ which tells me we don’t know enough. The NFLPA is working to have vaccinated players tested more frequently than what the NFL initially stated. A lot of players got the vaccination with the idea that these rules were already set in stone and they’re not. It is common sense that if a vaxxed or unvaxxed player’s tested less frequently, the likelihood of a player being pulled for COVID drops dramatically.
In regard to player safety, I will conclude by saying we all want to be safe. For so many players around the NFL, safety does not solely mean avoiding the COVID virus. Our health is the now and years beyond which we are trying to protect with our personal choice by doing all the things we did in our protocols during the very successful 2020 NFL season.
The vaccines, in fact, do not prevent people from contracting COVID universally, as Beasley said: Rather, they offer proven protection against severe illness, hospitalization and death, and have also been proven to help reduce the rate of spread of the virus from person to person.
Current data indicates that breakthrough cases — symptomatic cases of COVID-19 among vaccinated individuals — currently sits at 0.098 percent in the nation. Infections across the country have been on the rise with the spread of the Delta variant.
Vaccines are still effective against the Delta variant, and have shown no sweeping, long-term adverse side effects.
Beasley has ripped the NFL and their protocols surrounding COVID-19, so his claims of being pro- or anti-vax seem to be a bit of a deviation from prior comments.
