For all their fame, they are like the rest of us, trying to make sense of a horrific situation. Is it possible to have sympathy for Rodgers and other athletes suggesting doubt about the vaccines? (Thinking of you, Kyrie Irving.) Well, sure. So now when I’m in front of that reluctant patient, they have these conflicting things that they’ve heard. “But Aaron Rodgers is someone everybody knows, and he’s someone whose views are listened to. “If I can establish a rapport, I might be able to get some science, some actual facts in front of the patient,” Dr. Physicians are the ones dealing with this calamity in real-time, and a lot of their work these days centers on convincing the reluctant that there’s one tool available to help curb the mass spread of Covid - the vaccine.
It’s not clear he truly understands the ripple-effect damage caused by a sports star of his magnitude sowing doubt. He also said he stood by his position on vaccines.
punter - he trotted out a half-baked apology and claimed to take full responsibility for what he had said the week before. In Rodgers’s latest interview - well, more like a staged appearance with questions spoon-fed by the host, Pat McAfee, a former N.F.L. The Coronavirus Pandemic: Key Things to Know Remember last year, when frontline workers were heroes? These days, according to one Wisconsin health official I spoke with this week, anti-vaxxers have been known to show up in front of hospitals, spewing venom at doctors and nurses heading in to do the work of saving patients. He might get a taste of how the doubters of science-based medicine have poisoned the well. Or, more common, funeral home workers carting coffins out of the I.C.U. He would see patients in cramped emergency wings, traditionally meant for quick triage, sometimes stuck there for 24 hours because there are not enough beds in intensive care units. He would see patients pleading for a first dose of the vaccine, even though at that point it would be too late to help them recover. Rodgers would see patients, young and old, gasping for air, wracked with pain that scorches the chest. “He would see how Covid is now not just in urban centers - it’s ravaging rural Wisconsin,” the doctor said. To have him questioning the vaccine and sow vaccine doubt “undercuts what we’re trying to do as a health care system. “Rodgers is an icon here in our state,” Dr. If the typical cycle continues, deaths will rise in a state that is currently losing about 19 people per day to the virus. And our health system, it’s stressed to the max.”Ĭovid-19 burns hot in Wisconsin, where it is now primarily a disease of the unvaccinated, many who clearly take their cues from celebrities like Rodgers.Īfter a period of decline, case numbers are spiraling up, and with them, visits to emergency rooms and stays in intensive care. “People are still dying in large numbers. Mary’s Hospital in Madison, Wis., and he also works at two hospitals in rural parts of the state. He’s the medical director of emergency services at St. Rodgers has been spewing other falsehoods about the virus and its treatments.