The NBA is scrambling, along with much of the world, to get a handle on the latest COVID-19 variant that is spreading like wildfire.
LeBron James knows this all too well when he was placed in the league’s health and safety protocols and, while he only missed one game, James used the words “confused, frustrated, angry” to describe his feelings. A few weeks later, he made social media go nuts when he took to Instagram and posted a Spider man meme that compared COVID to the cold and flu.
After that post, NBA legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar used his platformand blasted the Lakers superstar for his dangerous meme.
“With 106 million Instagram followers, making such a post is automatically politically impactful because he questions the validity of the efforts to get the country vaccinated. As is evident by some of the comments that cheer LeBron’s post, he’s given support to those not getting vaccinated, which makes the situation for all of worse by postponing our health and economic recovery.
“The CDC reports that those who are unvaccinated are 9 times more likely to be admitted to the hospital and 14 times more likely to die from COVID than those vaccinated. The number rises to 20 time more likely when compared to someone who’s gotten a booster shot. By posting the uninformed meme, LeBron has encouraged vaccine hesitancy which puts lives and livelihoods at risk.”
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He also presented numbers showing COVID-19, the flu and the common cold are significantly different when it comes to mortality:
“To directly address LeBron’s confusion, no one thinks colds and the flu aren’t serious. In the 2019-2020 flu season, 400,000 people were hospitalized and 22,000 people died. In 2020, 385,428 people died of COVID-19, while so far in 2021, 423,558 have died in the U.S., for a total of 808,986 deaths. Experts agree that COVID-19 is at least 10 times more lethal than the flu. As for the common cold, death is extremely rare.”
Following Tuesday’s victory over the Houston Rockets — LeBron had nothing to say back to Kareem, but he did try and explain his Spider Man meme.
“No, I don’t have a response to Kareem at all,” James said, via Harrison Faigen of SB Nation’s Silver Screen and Roll. “And if you saw the post and you read the tag, you know that I’m literally, honestly asking, ‘help me out.’ Help me kind of figure it all out, like we’re all trying to figure this pandemic out. We’re all trying to figure out COVID and the new strain. And the flu, I think people forgot about the flu. People like literally forgot about the flu during these times, like that’s still going around. It’s flu season, so people have forgot about the flu. People have forgot about common colds. That happens, especially with a lot of our kids that’s in school. My daughter is in first grade, so a lot of these kids are getting like common colds and getting the flu. But no, I don’t have any response to Kareem. No. At all.”
James had 32 points, 11 rebounds and 11 assists for his third triple-double this season against the Houston Rockets to help the Lakers finally end their dreaded losing streak.
