Premier League Tries to Combat Vaccine Misinformation Among Athletes

The report spread wildly. Premier League players shared the link with their peers. Some have passed it on to relatives and close friends. And a few were so bothered by what the text seemed to indicate that they referred him to their clubs’ medical teams for advice.

The work was produced by a website that says it tracks “the number of young athletes who had serious medical problems in 2021 after receiving one or more doses of the Covid-19 vaccine.”

The report stated that 19 “athletes” — most of them in the United States — said they had experienced heart attacks after receiving the vaccine. And some of the attacks, the text stated grimly, had been fatal.

Almost immediately, doctors and other observers noticed glaring flaws in the research. One of the examples cited was Hank Aaron, a member of the Baseball Hall of Fame, who died in January. He was 86 years old. Another name on the list, a retired NBA player, was 64 years old. A baseline study demonstrated that many of the younger athletes identified in the text had pre-existing health problems.

But that made no difference. Nor is the fact that the report has been proven categorically false later on. The study led soccer players to question whether or not they should accept being vaccinated. The damage was done, in the opinion of experts.

The past few weeks have not been an easy one for the Premier League, which is experiencing a spike in the number of virus cases, scores of match postponements and calls from within the organization for a temporary break in the season.

The problems have led the organization’s poor vaccination record to be scrutinized with fierce attention, and raise questions about why the richest football league on the planet has so much trouble convincing its stars to get vaccinated.

In one respect, the league and the teams have had considerable success: the Premier League has released figures that indicate 84% of its athletes are making the “vaccination journey”, meaning they have received at least one of the three potential shots since that vaccines began to be administered in the second trimester. The other 16%, however – around 100 players – became a cause for concern.

Six of the 10 matches the Premier League was supposed to play this past weekend have been postponed after clubs were hit by Covid’s outbreaks. At least one of them would have been postponed not because of a series of positive tests between players, but because some unvaccinated players were meeting isolation regulations, as required by British law, after being identified as close contacts of infected people.

The lost weekend highlights the Premier League’s problems in keeping its vaccination numbers in sync with those of other major European championships and with those of other major sports leagues on the planet.

Serie A, the first division of Italian football, has 98% of players vaccinated. In France the proportion is 95% and in Germany 94% — figures comparable to the NFL, NBA and NHL in North America. Spanish football authorities reported that, considering vaccination and naturally acquired immunity, 97% of the country’s players are protected. The comparison with England is crude: in the Premier League, only 77% of players received two doses of the vaccine.

It is not simple to establish the reason for this divergence. The New York Times spoke with a number of players, advisors, executives, directors and members of medical staff, most of whom agreed to speak on the condition that their names not be disclosed because they are not authorized to discuss personal health issues. The interviews paint a complex and rudimentary picture of why hesitation over vaccines has been allowed to advance so far in the richest football league on the planet.

“It’s hard to find a single reason,” said Maheta Molango, president of the British professional football players union. “You have to assess the situation on a case-by-case basis, really.”

Concern about possible side effects is certainly great. A succession of recent high-profile incidents involving players who have suffered heart problems on the field — including Christian Eriksen, a Danish midfielder who collapsed during a UEFA European Cup mid-year match, and Sergio Agüero, a striker who has just retired Barcelona— fueled the suspicions of some players about the vaccines.

That Eriksen wasn’t yet vaccinated when he collapsed on the field during a Euro match in June made little difference.

But incidents involving other athletes are far from the only source of skepticism. According to reports by The New York Times, several players have expressed concern that the vaccine will lower their sperm count, and some doctors have revealed that they have answered questions about connections to a loss of virility, especially after singer Nicki Minaj tweeted that a friend of her family was suffering from “swollen testicles” after being vaccinated. (Both theories do not hold.)

Molango indicated that some players may have “religious concerns” in addition. Earlier this year, the players’ union and the Premier League organized a talk by Jonathan Van Tam, the UK’s deputy head of national health — who regularly uses football metaphors in his public speeches — to the captains of the league’s 20 clubs, in an effort to convince more players to get vaccinated.

During the meeting, he was asked if it was true that the vaccine contained alcohol — which is a concern for Muslim players. He confirmed that the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine did not contain alcohol, but admitted that the others could contain traces of the substance. However, the amounts were so minuscule, he told the players, that “the bread you ate this morning probably contains more alcohol.”

Others “questioned the credibility” of those encouraging them to receive the vaccine, Molango said. Some players further stated that it had been considered safe for them to return to work last year, before vaccines were developed, and that they did not accept being instructed now to seek vaccinations in order to continue playing.

In some cases, this crystallized in the form of a more relentless opposition: an ideological refusal to receive the vaccine. Most players, however, are more hesitant about the vaccine that opposes it, club officials said. They tend to believe that, as healthy young men, they won’t face problems even if they catch the virus, and therefore they don’t need to take whatever risk the vaccines may or may not cause. Their bodies are their livelihood, after all, and many have told members of their teams’ medical teams that they will not accept any substance that is not irrefutably safe.

The Premier League claims it did its best to persuade players to accept the inoculation. Van Tam not only spoke with the captains of the league clubs, but also released a video in which he highlights the importance of vaccination and debunks myths about it, to reinforce the message. Other clubs, which are struggling to convince players who are still resistant to get vaccinated, have had offers to visit experts to answer questions and allay footballers’ fears.

Internal measures are becoming stricter, too. At least one Premier League club no longer allows unvaccinated players to dine with their teammates, and requires them to change for practice before arriving at the training center, or in their cars. The Premier League is now considering adapting its protocols to generalize the use of these precautions.

The hope, among those in charge of keeping players safe, is that a more active and severe posture will prove decisive for the majority of players who still resist vaccination, except for the most radical. Until that happens, all the league can do is try to counter the misinformation, convince people to change their minds, and hope the games can go on.