In news that surprised absolutely no one, Buffalo Bills wide receiver Cole Beasley — the league’s No. 1 anti-vaxxer — tested positive for COVID-19 Tuesday. Beasley will miss Sunday’s massive game against the New England Patriots and could miss Buffalo’s Week 17 game against the Atlanta Falcons.
Bills WR Cole Beasley tests positive for COVID-19
Beasley testing positive isn’t unique. Nearly two-dozen other players tested positive Tuesday, meaning roughly 10% of the league has caught COVID in the last two weeks. Many of them were vaccinated. That’s a reflection of spiking cases nationally. The highly contagious Omicron variant does a good job of infecting the vaccinated and the unvaccinated alike. But it doesn’t affect them equally.
Moderna announced recently that its research has found that its booster, on top of a two-shot regimen, increases antibodies 37-fold. So while the vaccine certainly does not provide guaranteed protection against catching COVID-19, it definitely does help — if you’ve been jabbed three times.
NFL COVID-19 protocols punish the unvaccinated
But that’s not the only way Beasley would have benefitted from getting the vaccine. New NFL rules are designed to reward vaccinated players — even those who might be COVID-19 positive. Beasley has to sit out 10 days because he’s unvaccinated. Yet, if he were asymptomatic and vaxxed, the return-to-play window would be much shorter.
The NFL recently changed its rules to lower the threshold positive players need to cross to return, and a bunch of players suited up in Week 15 despite going on the reserve/COVID-19 list just days before. The odds are quite good that a positive test on a Tuesday will not keep him out the ensuing Sunday.
Plus, there’s a very real chance that Beasley’s infection would not have been detected at all had he been vaccinated. The majority of Omicron cases among vaxxed players have been asymptomatic. And under the NFL’s new rules, asymptomatic players are no longer tested regularly.
There are undoubtedly COVID-19-positive players cleared to play in almost every game, and that will likely continue until Omicron runs its course.
Beasley’s social media response
This is not meant as a piling on Beasley. Like every person who catches COVID-19, we hope he gets healthy fast and doesn’t spread it to anyone else. But it is relevant that he is unavailable for the biggest game of the year, in no small part, because he didn’t get vaccinated.
“Hi, I’m Cole Beasley, and I’m not vaccinated!” the 32-year-old wrote on social media over the summer. “I will be outside doing what I do. I’ll be out in public. If you’re scared of me, then steer clear or get vaccinated. Point. Blank. Period.” Beasley finished with, “I may die of COVID, but I’d rather die actually living.”
Bills Mafia cannot be happy
Bills fans, like the organization, knew that this scenario was a distinct possibility. That’s why they yelled at him before, during, and after games to get the shot.
“Only place I get boo’d is at our home stadium,” Beasley wrote on Twitter earlier this season. “Then some of the same people want me to take pictures and sign autographs. I thought Bills fans were the best in the world? Where’d they go? If the vaccine works then why do vaxxed people need to be protected from unvaxxed?”
He added that some fans “right behind the bench [are] yelling at me to get vaccinated and talking s—.”