Kyrie Irving Explains Defends His Decision to Not Get Vaccinated

Brooklyn Nets star guard Kyrie Irving finally opened up about his current vaccination status during a 20 minute Instagram Live on Wednesday night.

Irving, who has been banned from playing practicing or playing with the Brooklyn Nets because of his refusal to get the Covid-19 vaccine, spoke out publicly on Wednesday night. Irving said that his choice is a matter of personal freedom, said that he will not be retiring and claimed that he was promised an NBA exemption from having to take the COVID-19 vaccine.

“It’s reality that, you know, in order to be in New York City, in order to be on a team, I have to be vaccinated,” Irving said. “I chose to be unvaccinated, and that was my choice. And I would ask y’all just to respect that choice, and I am gonna just continue to stay in shape, be ready to play, be ready to rock out with my teammates, and just be part of this whole thing.

“And no I’m not retiring and no I’m not leaving this game like this,” Irving said. “There’s still so much more work to do and there’s still so many other young (people) yo inspire. Because I know they want to be better than me. And I can’t wait to play against all y’all on this stage.”

Irving falsely claimed his decision to remain unvaccinated does not harm other people. The highly contagious Delta variant has overrun hospitals in areas with lower vaccination rates. While breakthrough infections do occur in several vaccinated individual, vaccinated people are 5 times less less likely to catch Covid-19 than unvaccinated people. New studies also show that vaccinated people are far less likely to spread Covid should they be infected.