This Infuriates Me

I think I've been pretty clear on where I stand with regards to getting vaccinated both on this blog and on The Hockey Show. If you're unvaccinated at this time, please stay home, please stay away from me, and please stop complaining about everything you can't do because you won't go and get a free vaccination. If, after two years of lockdowns, fines, hospitalizations, and cancellations, you are still "choosing" not to get vaccinated for whatever belief you may have, you're officially the problem. What draws my ire on this day, though, is the amazing selfishness that some unvaccinated people are displaying because they feel that society's public health rules don't apply to them.

The Portage Minor Hockey Association, based in Portage la Prairie, Manitoba, made it pretty clear on their Facebook page last month that if unvaccinated parents break protocols and enter an arena to watch their children play hockey, their children will be banned from hockey for the rest of the season. They also make it clear they're not fooling around as "there will be no second chances".

I applaud and commend the PMHA for taking a hardline stance in ensuring everyone who enters an arena is vaccinated since minor hockey missed an entire year of play due to COVID-19 restrictions already. Giving kids the chance to play is paramount in the PMHA's statement above, so keeping kids, coaches, and staff at the arenas healthy comes as their top priority. For those that want to watch their children play the game, the rules are simple: get vaccinated.

According to reports trickling into various minor-hockey organizations across Manitoba, there have been instances of "fans trying to use fake vaccination cards to get into arenas" along with people sneaking into arenas, refusing to show ID, and ignoring public health rules. That leads to ask a very serious question to those that are doing this:

HOW INCREDIBLY SELFISH ARE YOU?

If YOU, as a parent, opt to not get vaccinated and YOU decide the rules don't apply to YOU when asked for proof of vaccination upon entering a rink before YOU ignore staff who are enforcing provincial health meausres, there's only one person to blame when your child is told they're no longer part of the minor-hockey team for whom he or she once played. I think I spelled out who that person is very clearly.

If you were truly invested in your child's life when it comes to his or her hockey career, you'd understand that what happened to Minnesota's Marco Rossi happens more frequently in younger athletes. You might be one of the "won't happen to me" people, but it's pretty clear that college-aged athletes were affected by COVID in more ways than "flu symptoms". In fact, the CDC states that "patients with COVID-19 had nearly 16 times the risk for myocarditis compared with patients who did not have COVID-19, and risk varied by sex and age."

I hate to be the one to say this out loud, but if you're willing to seek medical treatment for COVID-19 at a hospital from doctors who publish and peer-review studies about the risks for young children experiencing myocarditis, you're nothing more than a walking hypocrite. The level of ignorance you have to show in denying all these findings from scientific studies only to visit a hospital for treatment for this virus is astounding. You can certainly have your beliefs about the vaccines and their efficacy, but the charts below show that the vast majority of people who are lying in hospital beds right now have chosen to put their individual beliefs ahead of overall public health. Being that good public health means a healthy society, do you want to be part of society or not?

In saying all that above, if your goal is to ruin your child's minor-hockey experience through your own selfishness, please continue to act like an imbecile by sneaking into arenas. If and when you're caught doing this and your child is banned from playing hockey, the only person you can blame for this "injustice" is the person staring back at you in the mirror. Spare us all from the outrage and the yelling and the screaming and any other toddler-like antics you'll resort to in trying change the decision because the only person you can blame for the long list of consequences and the people you affect by your actions is YOU.

Take five minutes out of your life, go get vaccinated, and go watch your kid play hockey without any consequences. I can assure you that, being double-vaccinated, I have not grown any extra body parts, I haven't been contacted by the government through some microchip, and any other ridiculous story about being vaccinated is false. If you truly don't want to be vaccinated for whatever reason you believe to be valid, though, the one story I don't want to hear is the one about a minor-hockey player being banned from hockey due to his or her parent's actions of sneaking into arenas while being unvaccinated.

In other words, stop being stupid.

Until next time, keep your sticks on the ice!