In a wide-ranging interview with podcast giant Joe Rogan on Monday, Green Bay Packers quarterback and reigning NFL Most Valuable Player Aaron Rodgers candidly spoke about some of the events surrounding last year’s controversy regarding the QB’s Covid-19 diagnosis. Among other things, Rodgers revealed how the NFL attempted to coerce players into receiving the shot.
Prodded by Rogan about the NFL’s one-size-fits-all approach to the Covid vaccines, Rodgers explained that the NFL actually sent people to training facilities to extol the virtues of the so-called vaccines to those who were on the fence about taking them.
“And then we’re going to virtue signal to say look how righteous our league is, we have 95 percent compliance with the vaccine,” Rodgers said. “And if you don’t we’re going to send a stooge to your team to show you graphs of your vaccination percentage of your team compared to the rest of the league, which actually happened.”
Rodgers explained that he has an allergy to polyethylene glycol (PEG), an ingredient in the mRNA vaccines, which prevented him from receiving the Moderna or Pfizer vaccines. Rodgers refused to receive the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, which was taken off the market for a time due to numerous reports of blood clots.
Rodgers also referenced the controversy that swirled around his infamous, “I’m immunized” answer when questioned if he was vaccinated for Covid-19.
“I knew that this was coming down, that, at some point, I was gonna talk about my status because I’d chosen to not get vaxxed,” the quarterback explained. “Because I’m healthy and I take care of myself, getting vaccinated was not on the top of my list, but I wanted to look into it … and I wanted to make sure I was doing my part, if that’s what was necessary to keep myself safe and my loved ones safe and my teammates safe.”
Rodgers went to the CDC website, which specifically stated that people with an allergy to PEG should not take the mRNA vaccines.
Rodgers instead chose a holistic immunization protocol rather than the vaccines that were being pushed on the rest of the world at that point. Rodgers then sought a waiver from the NFL to be treated as a vaccinated player, which was refused.
“There was clearly two classes of player at the facility — there was the vaxxed and the un-vaxxed,” Rodgers explained. “The vaxxed had full privileges, they tested once every two weeks, they had full privileges on the road, they could go out to dinner on the road … they could be at any place they wanted to and live life normally.”
Rodgers referred to “crazy” NFL policies surrounding unvaccinated players.
“Non-vaxxed” had to be “fully masked, zero privileges on the road, could not go into establishments with more than 15 people, you could not be around more than three individuals from the team outside the facility.”
The QB explained how the unvaccinated players were singled out from the vaccinated players, with unvaccinated players forced to wear masks at all times as well as don a yellow wrist band. Vaccinated players were given green wrist bands.
So, Rodgers never hid his status or lied about it as many in the news and sports media accused him of at the time. He was also appealing his vaccination status with the league.
A conversation with the league office ended any hope of an appeal of his vaccination status. Rodgers claimed a league official called him a “conspiracy theorist.”
“They said, it’s not possible for a vaccinated person to contract or transmit Covid if they’ve been vaccinated.” Rodgers explained to the office that five people on the team — not players — were out with Covid at the time despite having received the vaccines.
“And he said, you’re a conspiracy theorist,” Rodgers said.
As we all know now, vaccinations do not always prevent a person from getting Covid-19. Just ask fully vaccinated and twice-boosted President Joe Biden, who tested positive for the virus twice in one week recently.
Whether it’s Rodgers, tennis great Novak Djokovic, or the NBA’s Kyrie Irving, the last people on Earth that should be forced to receive the sometimes dangerous Covid-19 vaccinations are young, healthy men in peak physical condition at the top of their professions.
