Medina Praises Vaccines Day After Fortnite Announcement Of Jab-Status Goes Viral

Most fires started on social media generate more heat than light. 

On Thursday, Gabriel Medina, the Brazilian two-time world champ revealed via the live video-streaming service Twitch that he had not been vaccinated. Today, he praised vaccines and announced he would be getting the jab “soon.”

Translated text: “Vaccine saves lives, guys! It was a mistake that I couldn’t fit the immunization into my training schedule for this year’s challenges because I was focused on the world championships. But soon I’ll take mine. In the meantime I continue to be careful and follow the safety protocols.”

Because of France’s quarantine laws which stipulate that unvaccinated travelers must self-isolate for ten days, he will not be eligible to compete within Tahiti’s event-window, which begins five days after the end of the Mexico event. 

For Gabs, who currently sits on top of the World Rankings 13,165 points ahead of Italo in second, it is not the end of the world. In fact, earlier this week, we suggested Gabs might be better off missing the next two events entirely to focus on Final’s day prep at Trestles given the near-impossibility of Italo or Filipe overtaking him. 

More interestingly however, was seeing how explosive the issue of vaccines was to talk about on a surf media page. In comment threads people called each other morons, dropped links to conspiracy videos and attempted to disentangle more nuanced concepts from one another such as mandated vaccines, travel passports, herd immunity and viral mutations undermining vaccine effectiveness. 

It was a clusterfuck of genuinely thoughtful, well-reasoned opinions backed by credible statistics and honest departures from mainstream group-think, and trolling, gaslighting and below-the-belt slander backed by mental illness and misinformation amplified by devious algorithms. 

While the fire raged in the comments section, Gabs got a 10-kill streak and Italo did another air-reverse. Someone stepped in shit, another zipped his foreskin in his trousers. The earth continued its orbit around the sun. 

Don’t forget to surf guys.