Mainstream Australian sports panel discusses harmful vaccine effects
The hosts of Australian sports Channel Nine’s Sunday Footy Show broached the topic of the harmful effects the COVID-19 vaccine is having on athletes.
While cases of young, vaccinated athletes passing out on the field or suffering sudden heart complications have been piling up, speaking ill of the vaccine remains verboten. Suggestions that the vaccine is not “safe and effective” are labeled “misinformation” and often spell reputational damage for the suggester.
But on Sunday, the Sunday Footy Show panelists appeared to throw caution to the wind when they openly stated that the vaccine is harming athletes during a discussion about Ollie Wines.
Ollie Wines is a star football player in the Australian Football League and a Brownlow medalist. Wines sat out Thursday night’s game due to heart palpitations, nausea and dizziness, announced host Damian Barrett.
“Is there a lot of this going on in world sport at the moment, Damo?” asked Nathan Brown. “A lot of athletes have got these issues?”
“Are you referring to the booster shots and the contracting of Covid?” replied Barrett.
“I was referring to the booster shots, that’s obviously the word going around.”
“Look, it’s being discussed,” added Barrett. “I haven’t been able to get an official line on it from anyone on Ollie Wines at this stage.”
“It’s not just the heart issues, you know, without delving into your private affairs you’ve got Bell’s Palsy at the moment which hopefully you’re on the back end of that. But, there’s a bit of that going around as well,” said Brown.
“Exactly. Heart issues and Bell’s Palsy have gone through the roof since the boosters and COVID issues so – and Michelangelo Rucci on Friday night and he said there’s a ward filled with people with similar symptoms in Adelaide to Ollie Wines. Nausea. Heart issues. So, there has to be something more to it,” said Lloyd.
Brown appeared to notice that they were expressing dangerous views and he quickly moved to remind viewers that the hosts were vaccinated.
“We’re not ‘anti-vaxxers’, we’ve all done our due diligence with our booster shots and all that sort of stuff, but there is going to have to be something done on this. Not just in the sport hemisphere, but the community.”
“We don’t want to get into the space where we’re not experts at all,” said Barrett, “but when it comes to the medical side we try to stay clear.”
After a brief stay in the hospital, Wines was released on Friday night and said that his heart complications are unrelated to the vaccine. He is not yet cleared to return to the field.
