“LeBron James needs to be a dynamic advocate for vaccines”: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar comments on Lakers superstar’s Instagram post comparing Covid, cold and flu symptoms

LeBron James received a rebuke from Lakers legend and NBA all-time scoring leader Kareem Abdul-Jabbar for his recent Instagram post.

In times when it has been proved almost conclusively that vaccination helps prevent serious Covid-19 infection quite successfully, there’s still a sizeable chunk of USA that refuses to budge on its stance against any vaccination.

What’s happened instead is that a lot of people are now quite openly anti-vaccines. There’s a whole spectrum of US citizens among Covid-19 skeptics. Anti-maskers, anti-vaxxers, Covid-19 conspiracy theorists, misguided freedom of expression ‘activists’ are all among them.

In times like these, when the USA is still struggling to cope up with the load placed on its healthcare system, many people with public sway have campaigned actively for people to get vaccinated. Stephen Curry and Giannis are 2 former NBA MVPs who’ve also taken part.

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However, it seems that LeBron James is not going to speak in favor or against the Covid-19 vaccines. There’s been external media pressure on him to thoroughly endorse them, but James refuses to budge.

What’s spurred this matter further on is his latest Instagram post. James posted a Spiderman meme that many people interpreted as Covid-19 skepticism. While James received a ton of praise for his meme on the post itself, NBA Reddit and Twitter haven’t been that generous.

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar comments on LeBron James’ Instagram post comparing Covid, cold and flu symptoms

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, in particular, feels that James took the wrong step in posting this particular meme. He wrote a column on his Substack in which he gave LeBron some stick for what he feels was an irresponsible post. A part of the column reads thus:

Here’s the second problem with that statement: He says we’re not talking about racism, but we most definitely are. As of December 2020, about 97.9 out of every 100,000 African Americans had died from COVID-19, a third higher than that for Latinos (64.7 per 100,000), and more than double than that for whites (46.6 per 100,000) and Asians (40.4 per 100,000).

Kareem went on to cite an article from the US National Magazine of Medicine. He made it clear that Covid-19 has had disproportionately adverse effects on the socioeconomic status of African-Americans.

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Whether or not LeBron James should have made the Instagram post is totally his personal decision. But the King would do well to get behind the Captain and begin promoting Covid-19 vaccines and subsequent booster rollouts.