Aside from watching NBA games these days, it’s been tough changing the channel away from CNN, as I’ve been keeping a close eye on the ongoing COVID-19 vaccine rollout. According to the Centers for Disease Control, as of this writing, over 29 million doses have been administered, thus about 59% of the near-50 million doses that have been distributed. While we are seeing some progress in terms of getting people vaccinated, there is still ongoing discussion as to whom should be prioritized as to get vaccinated. There’s no question that frontline health care workers and senior citizens should be first in line. But who comes next?
Most of us will likely have to wait until the spring or summer to receive our dose … including professional athletes. Charles Barkley recently advocated that professional athletes should be among the first to get vaccinated simply because they pay higher taxes. He had since backed off those comments and apologized for what he says “came off stupid.”
Charles’ comments made it sound like professional athletes are more important than other people. So yes, probably not the right words to say. Having said that, I do agree with Charles that pro athletes should receive the vaccine as soon as possible. So let me throw out the taxes argument and explain it this way: Right now in this country, there is great reluctance to receive the COVID-19 vaccine and there are several roots to why people are so reluctant towards it. The continued spread of misinformation that can easily be found online, the large anti-vax contingency that fights getting a flu shot every year and is now moving over to fighting the COVID-19 vaccine, and an understandable distrust among people of color (particularly African Americans) because of what was done to them during the 1932 Public Health Service Syphilis Study at Tuskegee. So we are dealing with several barriers while working toward getting herd immunity.
So where do professional athletes fall into all this? We’ve seen how much weight an athlete can carry when it comes to their fans – when it comes to the shoes they wear, the video games they play, fighting for social justice or most recently, the importance of voting. We all want to get back to normal sooner than later. So my call to action is for athletes to use their platform to publicly get vaccinated, and have a (socially distant) open forum to talk about why the vaccine should be trusted. Health care professionals would be on hand as well as the people who have been vaccinated should be encouraged to discuss how they decided to do so. It should be a day of dialogue and not simply “watch me get the vaccine, and you should get one too.” No. We should listen to each other and have a healthy dialogue about where there is distrust about the vaccine and what information it is that they’re seeing online that may or may not be true.
I recently partnered with the Roots Community Center in Oakland, a nonprofit organization that helps bring preventive and comprehensive health care to advance health equity for the residents in East Oakland. I plan to talk to people in the community and hear their concerns about the COVID-19 vaccine. If I can, I’d like to receive the vaccine in front of as many people as possible so they can see that it is safe and can be effective.
For NBA players, I’m recommending they use All-Star Weekend as an opportunity to raise awareness, get vaccinated and talk to their fans back in their respective communities. While we still don’t know if there will be an All-Star Game this year, we do know there will be an All-Star break. So I’m not just calling for all active NBA players but all professional athletes to use that break and commit at least one day of service to go to their communities (be it their team’s community or their hometown) and talk about the vaccine, while getting vaccinated themselves.
When Charles Barkley said he wasn’t a role model back in the 90s, he was one whether he liked it or not. The same goes for today’s NBA players. Like it or not, they possess a heavy influence among fans. Why not give back to a game that has given so much to them and their family.
So yes, Charles Barkley is right that professional athletes should receive the COVID-19 vaccine, but for reasons worth more than millions of dollars in taxes.