Opinion: Low vaccination rates on Washington Football Team part of the United States of Selfishness

It's possible because of the Olympics, you missed one of the more remarkable stories so far this year, and not in a good way. It's what's happening with the Washington Football Team, it's coach Ron Rivera, and it's the culture of selfishness.

Rivera this week was discussing the low vaccination rate of his team, which he said is more than 50 percent, but not in the range of many other teams. The NFL says 14 teams have vaccination rates over 90 percent.

Rivera is one of the most respected coaches in football, but apparently, players on his own team don't respect him enough to help protect his life.

Rivera was diagnosed with skin cancer last year, underwent treatment for it and is now immunodeficient. You don't have to be Dr. Fauci to understand that Rivera is more vulnerable to COVID-19. You would think every player would get vaccinated if not to protect themselves, or their season, or their families, or their friends, or other Americans, but at the very least, their head coach.

But nope.

"With the new variant, who knows?" Rivera said of the Delta variant. "When I'm in a group and the group's not vaccinated or there's a mixture, I put the mask on, and I do that for health reasons because nobody really knows. I have to do that. And I just wish and I hope that our guys can understand that.

"Now, for whatever reason, we have some reluctance to do that, to get the vaccine," Rivera said. "These young men have to make the decision for themselves. Hopefully they can understand how impactful not getting the vaccine is, and you'd like to believe with all the news that's been out there in terms of the fact that people are being hospitalized, that are dying from COVID right now, are those that aren't vaccinated."

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After seeing Rivera's comments, former player T.J. Ward attacked Rivera in one of the more heartless tweets you'll ever see.

The Washington story is important because, in many ways, it's symbolic of what America has become. Not love thy neighbor, but destroy thy neighbor. It's "The Purge" meets "Hunger Games." It's trickle-down selfishnomics.

The team is a microcosm of what's happening in the country. A few selfish players in the league could impact the whole season, the same way a significant number of unvaccinated Americans endanger the entire nation.

This past spring, Rivera even brought in an expert, Harvard immunologist Kizzmekia S. Corbett, to answer any questions from players. She's an African-American woman and one of the world's great medical minds. That apparently didn't do much for the players, because like so many others, the players are thinking mainly of just themselves.

Who are we as a country? What do we stand for now? What does it mean to be American?

The unvaccinated (and I'm not referring to those who cannot take the vaccine for legitimate medical reasons) seem comfortable risking not just ruining the NFL season. On a larger scale, they risk putting the country back into lockdown. The Delta variant is killing increasing numbers of young unvaccinated people. The unvaccinated also risk destroying the economy.

In one of the ultimate acts of American selfishness, the country swims in vaccines, because so many refuse to take them, while other parts of the world are desperate for the life-saving medicine.

Some parents, along with their young children, burn masks. Like some sick twist on Fahrenheit 451.

Some in the media who once mocked vaccinations, or railed against them, urging their listeners not to get vaccinated, only seem to find the light after the virus ravages their bodies. The same network that pushes its employees to get vaccine passports does so while some of the hosts argue against them.

Do as I vaccine say, not as I vaccine do.

The Washington Football Team, as well as the gobsmackingly ignorant comments from Ward, show that we are immersed in a cult of selfishness, as New York Times columnist Paul Krugman wrote. What's happening with that team, and likely some others in the NFL, is a symptom of that larger strain of selfishness disguised as personal freedom.

What's good for me is good for me. If you die because of my selfishness, well, that's a shame.

Of course, it wasn't always this way. We united after the September 11 attacks, and the NFL actually played a part in that. We came together to fight Hitler. We united in a race to the moon.

Those days seem to be over. If aliens invaded and started blowing up cities, the country would fracture into alien fighters, and those who stayed home because they read on Facebook that the aliens were really Black Lives Matter protesters.

You laugh. But you know it would happen because that's where we are.

The United States of Selfishness.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Washington Football Team's selfish, unvaccinated players reflect U.S.