Kyle Kuzma is catching flak on Twitter after he suggested he was skeptical of any widespread lockdown measures to prevent spread of COVID-19.
"Are you guys cool with the country shutting down 2-4 weeks?" he started a series of tweets he shared on Friday. When fans mostly responded that they would be cool with it, due to the rising coronavirus cases nationwide, he replied, "Would you be cool with a shutdown with no stimulus? How would that work. ... Look at Europe. When we had our wild surge all the media said look at Europe they've done a great job with the spread. Now they are locked down. Can u really control?"
Kuzma seemed to elaborate on his thoughts in further tweets, responding to questions about the NBA bubble. "Americans can't live inside a bubble," he replied to one tweet. "We were very fortunate. And quite frankly that's the only way we could 'control' a spread. I don't see another way. There you go."
Many highlighted that the NBA bubble did, in fact, work, but Kuzma doesn't appear to think it would work well at a bigger scale. "Yeah try putting a bubble over Los Angeles see how that works kid lol," he tweeted. "Our ancestors that lived during plagues, Spanish flus, chicken pox etc. didn't live in the new world we live in lol nice try. ... Places in the country were shut down. Then Americans got ansy cmon lol. You got one side of the country that knows the significance of the virus and the rest screaming 98 percent recovery rate lol."
Some of Kuzma's followers also pointed towards the success that New Zealand has had with stopping the spread of the virus. Quite rightly, Kuzma pointed out that Americans are a little more stubborn that New Zealanders. "But hear me out... New Zealand (no disrespect) is not the US lol," he replied. "Those people have abided by rules and procedures. You tell one of us to do something and we're trying to find ways to break a rule."
He also responded to criticism of his tweets, writing, "I could be that athlete that looks down at ppl. Good guys never win!" One fan said that it would be good for Kuzma to "encourage healthy practices," but he shot that down pretty quick. "Stop looking/depending on celebrities & athletes to preach healthy practices and use your own common sense," he said. "We can only do so much."
See what Twitter had to say about Kuzma's tweets below.
