Very Bad Boston Sports Column Sides With Tom Brady and COVID

WEEI published a story today that by Andy Hart titled, "Tom Brady Was Right About Coronavirus Fear." The central theme of the column was that Brady was right when he quoted FDR and ignored CDC and league recommended protocols to stop the spread of COVID-19. Why is Boston sports media still carrying the water for Brady's snake oil act? Who knows, but this time it comes as a vessel for the essential truth-telling that coronabros don't want to hear.

Hart states multiple times that fear is the worst symptom of coronavirus. This is, of course, dumb. Plenty of people would rather be afraid than have diarrhea or difficulty breathing or vomit or lose their sense of smell or taste for a couple months. Also, ending up in the hospital on a respirator or dying would also be worse than fear, but I'm not sure either of those COVID-19 consequences technically count as "symptoms."

The good news is that Hart does actually seem to understand what's going on. Just look at this throwaway line towards the bottom of the column.

"The coronavirus is real. The pandemic that began late last winter has caused immeasurable damage to our society, well beyond the 160,000-plus deaths and the hospitalizations."

IMMEASURABLE DAMAGE TO SOCIETY.

BEYOND 160,000 DEATHS.

Those sound worse than fear. Maybe an editor just stuck that in on accident. Let's see what Hart had to say on June 28th:

"The coronavirus pandemic is a big freaking deal. It has killed more than 140,000 Americans. Destroyed our economy. Undercut the education of our youth. Caused an almost immeasurable increase in mental illness. It’s not a mirage, a political tool or a media concoction. It’s a real public health problem throughout the globe."

Again, this sounds bad and like Hart has a real grasp on the situation at hand. So how did he feel before things went to shit around the country? Here's something from March 13th.

"In just a couple months the coronavirus has gone from some faraway flu I’d never heard of to something that’s seemingly controlling my life and the lives of so many on the this planet. It decides what we do. Where we go. What forms of entertainment we can take part in. It controls what we are thinking about. Our children are being told to stay home from school and sports. Our jobs feel insecure, at best. Our economic future is alarmingly unstable. Where will it go? When will this end? Clearly, no one knows right now. That’s leaving us all, with a terrible feeling of relative helplessness. Like it or not, we’re all in this together."

This is what is so exhausting. This guy clearly gets it. He was worried about what was going to happen and everything he worried about five months ago came true. Yet when college football season doesn't roll around in five weeks and America is closing in on it's milestone 200,000 coronavirus death, he'll still be blaming fear instead of the people who wrote columns like that who proved that we were never all in this together. Like it or not.