Regardless of the (mostly overlooked) Context, Vikings deserve better than Cousins’ mask comments
Those of you who are unfortunate enough to follow my “work” know that I love me some Kirk Cousins. Like your new step-Dad, sure, he’s not perfect and you paid a premium to accept him into your home, but after three decades of failing to find your real dad after he left for cigarettes in 1978 (the start of the Vikings’ depressing streak for not having the same QB start back-to-back 16 game seasons) only to miss most subsequent holidays, you have to lower your expectations a bit. Cousins/Todd may not be “elite”, but they can be if you just give them a chance.
So, I know, I’m late to this “story”. If you somehow missed it, Captain Kirk was on (NFL Network’s) Kyle Brandt’s on Spotify’s “10 Questions” podcast
Apparently, (like six weeks ago, which he found important to clarify as if COVID was totally under control then) Cousins was asked the following:
“If 1 is the person who says, ‘Masks are stupid, you’re all a bunch of lemmings’ and 10 is, ‘I’m not leaving my master bathroom for the next 10 years,’ where do you land?”
Cousins, who prefaced his response as someone who was about to give a very boring, football player answer, did not.
“I’m not gonna call anybody stupid, for the trouble it would get me in. But I’m about a .000001,”
He continued:
“I want to respect what other people’s concerns are. For me personally, just talking no one else can get the virus, what is your concern if you could get it, I would say I’m gonna go about my daily life. If I get it, I’m gonna ride it out. I’m gonna let nature do its course. Survival-of-the-fittest kind of approach. And just say, if it knocks me out, it knocks me out. I’m going to be OK. You know, even if I die. If I die, I die. I kind of have peace about that. So that’s really where I fall on it, so my opinion on wearing a mask is really about being respectful to other people. It really has nothing to do with my own personal thoughts.”
Now, because this is 2020 Cousins walked back his comment via the type of “clarification” that only comes after a call from Eagan. I’d copy and paste it, but the main part is that he essentially isn’t worried for himself personally but believes in masks and social distancing in general and also should’ve explained things better as he wants to be healthy (and alive, although, if I had that O-line protecting me I’d probably be used to the idea of premature death, too) for 16 games, etc.
But, like most ready made controversies, this was sort of taken out of context.
First, general context for those who say “What else could we have done?” while literally being angry about being asked to do something very small and who also apparently don’t realize the rest of the world exists.
It is irrefutable that masks and social distancing work. Ask Europe. Or basically anywhere but here. One side politicized masks as being on par with wearing the star of David in the late 1930’s, and now we essentially contracted our economy in the second quarter of this year by A THIRD for nothing.
While people that could, GASP, wear a mask made of paper (the horror) and not act like Thomas Jefferson was rolling over in his grave, in countries like basically everywhere are or have basically normalized (or done so much more than we have), we’re all still talking fondly about going to movies? Or school?
So. Just wear the mask. Why? Because liberty doesn’t mean you can hurt other people and the mask doesn’t protect YOU it keeps YOU from getting others sick. Also, it’s a pretty good sign as to where your country is in terms of liberty if a paper mask is your example of tyranny. But liberals are snowflakes? I mean, as a liberal I will say that PROGRESSIVES are snowflakes, but you learn in intro to Poli Sci that the further each side goes to the left or right, the closer they come to touching one another (hence each side hating vaccines, albeit for mostly different reasons).
That’s where I think people are misquoting Cousins, or rather, overlooking the context he gave. He said “just talking no one ELSE can get the virus”. He means, if the context is solely about himself and not his ability to spread the virus (which again isn’t how it works, but still an important caveat), he isn’t afraid of COVID.
Maybe he thinks he’s healthy and young, and that considering that the CDC just said that 94% of COVID deaths had underlying health issues, so he shouldn’t worry too much about this from a life or death standpoint.
Granted, we are learning about the short and long term effects as we speak, so that still seems like an incredible amount of hubris for a guy due a guaranteed $45 mil in 2022 if the trade off, again, is a paper mask at Cub? But, in this context I am not going to tell a grown person what to do unless it impacts me or my loved ones and he did preface it specifically to have his cake and cough all over it too.
Outside of that, though, yeah… This was just a dumb take. Patrick Mahomes can’t even ride in bumper cars but our former record setting QB, captain of our beloved squad, is putting that opinion out there as the NFL attempts a season while college football has mostly cancelled their season(s)?
Cousins the private citizen can say and do what he wants, but he wasn’t on a NFL Network employees show in that regard and the reality is that the context he describes doesn’t exist, and we’re all dealing with either the emotional pain of worrying about or actually losing a loved one, some of us the physical pain of having COVID, and all of us the continued economic pain of this pandemic which is still raging because of the idea that a small personal sacrifice by all is worse than the biggest sacrifices possible by far too many.
Death is final. His family needs him. The team that broke the way contracts were given to players deserves a player who, while usually so organized that he knew who Sid Hartman was during his intro press conference, is willing to rock a mask to protect their investment.
And at this point, America deserves to catch up to third world countries in terms of every measurable statistic when it comes to COVID.
