In the Rugby League community, there are players who’ve had their heads bashed in on a weekly basis for years, there are dribblers who have had more nights out on the red bulls than brain cells in their head, then there’s a thousand feet of stupidity, and then there are anti-vaxxers.

Rugby League has not been historically known for its Nobel Prize Laureates, but this new wave of wilfully ignorant oxygen thieves has lowered the bar to a level even I thought was unachievable. As much as I enjoy validating my own intelligence by arguing with misinformed troglodytes in comments sections, lately it’s reached a point where the fun is sucked out of it, and instead, I’m left with genuine concern and frustration for the state of humanity.

Some may assume that my extreme political ideologies would land me in the anti-vax camp, and to them I say this: If you’re skeptical of what big pharmaceutical corporations are putting into their products, good for you, you should be. If you’re worried about corporations and governments tracking you and knowing too much about your lives, you’re right to be. But unless you grow your own food and medicines from manure you’ve created yourself, unless you don’t own a computer or smartphone, unless you’re a qualified doctor or scientist with research experience on vaccines, and unless you’ve lived your entire lives not once receiving a jab or relying on the hospital system, you have absolutely no right to be refusing a shot that could save the lives of millions (and get the pubs open again).

Unfortunately, for many anti-vaxxers, their diet consists of fast food, sugary drinks, poorly researched dribble and a sense of unjust superiority in their ability to be the loudest and stupidest person in every room. As the NRL has recently begun its push to vaccinate players and fans, it’s become increasingly apparent that the anti-vaxxers are more than just a small minority in the Rugby League world, and could cause problems in the near future.