LeBron James Compares COVID-19 to Flu, Cold in Meme on Instagram

It's hard to know what exactly the Lakers star was going for here, but he appears to be frustrated with the current state of affairs.

LeBron James, like many Americans, appears to be frustrated with the current issues around COVID-19. The virus has ripped through the NBA once again as the omicron variant has taken hold, though most players have been either asymptomatic or have had mild cases, according to reports.

On Friday afternoon, the Lakers star shared a variation of the popular “Spider-Man” meme, with the three identical superheroes pointing at each other, labeled as “COVID,” “cold,” and “flu.” 

James is catching plenty of heat for the post. Some think he's downplaying COVID-19, which has killed over 800,000 Americans, as something as relatively benign as a cold or the flu, while others wonder if he's commenting on the difficulties presented by the similarities of the symptoms.

It's impossible to know for sure what LeBron was going for without hearing him expand on his point here.

LeBron has had his own COVID-19 frustrations this season. The Lakers forward, who is vaccinated, was placed in COVID-19 protocols on Nov. 30 after a positive test the day before. On Dec. 2, he was cleared to return to play after reportedly testing negative eight times, with the NBA saying the original tests delivered “conflicting results.”

The Lakers have been dealing with other COVID-19 absences in the weeks since, including Avery Bradley, Austin Reaves and Malik Monk.

“Well this is the unknown, obviously, you don’t know,” James said Thursday, via All Lakers. “This is like I said, I say every year has its own challenges and this is another year where you can literally have one guy one night and the next night you won’t. You really don’t know, it’s up in the air.

“It’s literally a crapshoot every single time you take a test at this point on who is negative and who is positive. You just gotta see who is available and go from there.”

In September, James revealed he was vaccinated after initially saying he would keep his status private. He also said he would not try to convince anyone else to take the vaccine.

The NFL, another league dealing with rolling outbreaks, has moved to a much more lenient testing policy when it comes to vaccinated, asymptomatic players. The NBA hasn't quite followed suit yet, and has had a number of postponements, but commissioner Adam Silver says that the league has no plans to pause the season. 

“Frankly, we are having trouble coming up with what the logic would be behind pausing right now,” Silver said, per Sports Illustrated's Chris Mannix. “As we look through these cases literally ripping through the country, let alone the rest of the world, I think we're finding ourselves where we sort of knew we were going to get to over the past several months, and that is this virus will not be eradicated, and we're going to have to learn to live with it.”

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