Dwight Howard’s video against masks and vaccines is stupid and dangerous.

The Lakers’ Dwight Howard was reportedly denounced for not wearing a mask within the NBA bubble in Orlando, Florida, and the league spoke to him, according to Howard.

© Getty
Getty

Now, instead of doing a little spiritual searching and working to understand not only how the coronavirus is transmitted, but also the basic levels of human empathy, Howard posted a video on his Instagram where he reiterated that he would not wear a mask. He also argued that vaccines are bad, a delightful double whammy of conspiracy thinking dangerous and misinformed.

(If you think Howard is right, you can get out of this article right now because nothing I write here will make you change your mind. And please don’t tweet me.)

The video is excruciatingly long and mundane, but if you want to spend the 15 minutes yourself, it’s here:

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAKKM6fkIzo&w=1000&h=563]

Part of Howard’s logic for not wearing a mask was that “he did not know that the coronavirus flew through the air looking for people,” apparently believing that some people think that COVID-19 is an airborne viral hunter stalking prey, or something like that. .

Howard mentioned that he felt safe in the NBA bubble, and he’s probably safer than anywhere else right now, which could be true. (The league had no positive tests in the most recent test round.)

But ignoring the severity of this virus is ignorant and also insulting. As SB Nation’s James Dator points out, NBA great man Karl-Anthony Towns lost his mother to COVID-19 just a few months ago, and now Howard is essentially arguing that he doesn’t need to do anything to help stop the spread of the disease. It’s a slap in the face of cities and others in and around the league, as well as ordinary people, who have had loved ones who have been affected by the disease or have affected themselves.

On top of that, Howard has a great platform, for better or for worse, and I’m sure there are a lot of people right now confused by the flood of new information that is emerging about the coronavirus and how it can be transmitted. . If a famous guy they admire tells them it’s not a big deal, that sucks. More than 150,000 people have died from this, and we are not controlling its spread. We need more voices to tell us to be careful, not to tell people it’s not a big deal.

As for the vaccine, I’m not even going to go into that. Someone in the Lakers talks to Dwight. If people can get you to see the light that you are not smart to eat 24 bars of candy a day, maybe they can convince you about this.