Column: Mocking anti-vaxxers' COVID deaths is ghoulish, yes — but may be necessary

[JUSA]

Column: Mocking anti-vaxxers' COVID deaths is ghoulish, yes — but may be necessary
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/colum...200419664.html

Among all the ways that COVID-19 affects our lives, the pandemic confronts us with a profound moral dilemma:

How should we react to the deaths of the unvaccinated?

On the one hand, a hallmark of civilized thought is the sense that every life is precious.

On the other, those who have deliberately flouted sober medical advice by refusing a vaccine known to reduce the risk of serious disease from the virus, including the risk to others, and end up in the hospital or the grave can be viewed as receiving their just deserts.

> The vaccine is not the cure to Covid, and mandates won't work.

Kelly Ernby, before her unvaccinated death from COVID

That's even more true of those who not only refused the vaccine for themselves, but publicly advocated that others do so.

It has become common online and in social media for vaccine refusers and anti-vaccine advocates to become the target of ridicule after they come down with COVID-19 and especially if they die from it.

Witness the subreddit HermanCainAward, which Lili Loofbourow of Slate identified in September as "a site for heartless and unrepentant schadenfreude."

The site is named for the former Republican candidate for president who became one of the first political notables to succumb to the disease after publicly defying social distancing measures.

Like another site, sorryantivaxxer.com, the subreddit hosts snippets and photographs of anti-vaccine advocates, often taken at their deathbeds.

The issue of how to think about the deaths of unvaccinated has been thrown into high relief locally by the case of Kelly Ernby, a prominent Orange County Republican and deputy district attorney who crusaded against vaccine mandates and died of COVID around New Year's Day, unvaccinated.

Ernby's death promptly came to symbolize the rift in the social fabric caused by the ravages of COVID.

Some online commenters greeted her demise with glee, provoking her political friends to push back against what Ben Chapman, a Costa Mesa GOP official, called "bigotry and hate" directed against her.

My colleague Nicholas Goldberg recently lamented eloquently the rift in the social fabric that this species of callous commentary represents. "Mocking anti-vaxxers when they get sick has become a bit of a sport," he wrote.

I have a slightly different take.

To begin with, let's stipulate that not all people unvaccinated against COVID are alike. Some have remained unvaccinated for legitimate medical reasons — they may be children for whom the COVID vaccines haven't yet been officially ruled safe, or people with genuine medical reasons for avoiding the vaccine.

Some may have legitimately faced obstacles in getting to a vaccination site and receiving the full series of shots before becoming exposed to the disease.

Others may have refused the vaccine because they've been deceived by the misinformation and disinformation spread by the anti-vaccine crowd such as anchors on Fox News.

The deaths of all those victims are truly lamentable.

Finally, there are those who have voiced public opposition to the vaccines — not all of whom are unvaccinated themselves. Some have couched their opposition in policy terms. Ernby fell into that category — she asserted opposition not to the vaccines as such, but to vaccination mandates.

"I don't think the government should be involved in mandating what vaccines people are taking," she said during a livestreamed town hall on Nov. 3, 2019, during an unsuccessful campaign for the state assembly. "If the government is going to mandate vaccines, what else will they mandate?"

That town hall predated the pandemic; the mandate Ernby opposed then was a law tightening the immunization rules for California schoolchildren by eliminating exemptions based on "personal belief."

But Ernby made clear that her opposition extended to the COVID vaccines. In August, she posted a statement on her ******** page supporting Huntington Beach firefighters who were opposing a vaccine mandate.

"The vaccine is not the cure to Covid, and mandates won't work," she wrote.

It should be clear that opposing vaccine mandates as a substitute for opposing vaccination itself is a fundamentally incoherent position. It's little more than the garden variety small-government Republican ideology. That's what it was in Ernby's hands.



Vaccination rates closely correspond to the level of Trump votes in the 2020 — lower vaccination rates are seen where Trump succeeded. (Charles Gaba)
"I want small government, I want lower taxes, I want to protect our freedoms," she said during her discussion of vaccine mandates at that town hall.

Contrary to Ernby's assertions, however, mandates do work. Requirements that people provide evidence of vaccination before attending public events or entering restaurants or bars have been associated with heightened vaccine rates abroad. Employer mandates in the U.S. have raised vaccination rates at workplaces, as United Airlines has shown.

As for whether a vaccination mandate is a slippery slope to more government control, as Ernby maintained, government mandates have been with us for untold decades. We require drivers to wear seat belts, cars to be equipped with air bags and drivers to observe speed limits and avoid pedestrians. We ban smoking in public places.

Vaccine mandates themselves have been part of the educational system for longer than anyone can remember in every state in the Union: California requires K-12 pupils to have as many as 20 doses of immunizations against polio, measles, mumps, rubella, whooping cough, diphtheria, hepatitis and chicken pox.

Obviously, the mandates exist because these diseases threaten not only infected persons themselves, but the community, meaning anyone they come in contact with. That's the folly of the anti-mandate argument: It places a perverse conception of individual "freedom" in opposition to the communal interest.

As it applies to COVID, the argument undermines communal action at precisely the moment when communal action has emerged as the only obstacle to the spread of a deadly disease. We see the harvest of this fatuous ideology in every COVID statistic.

As statistical ace Charles Gaba has shown graphically, vaccination rates in all 3,144 U.S. counties track closely with votes for Donald Trump in the 2020 election: The higher the Trump vote, the lower the vaccination rate. There's no gainsaying that this is an artifact of Trumpian downplaying of the pandemic, which has claimed more than 800,000 American lives.

By the way, no one has ever claimed that the COVID vaccines are a "cure" — another smidgen of misinformation Ernby purveyed. The COVID vaccines, however, have been spectacularly effective in reducing the severity of the infection, a result that appears to hold true for the extremely transmissible Omicron variant.

What's especially iniquitous about the anti-mandate and anti-vaccination arguments is the damage they are doing to America's public health system. Republicans like Ernby used COVID vaccines to turn public health into part of their partisan culture war.

The consequences are pernicious. They can be measured in overwhelmed emergency rooms and intensive care units, in hospital staffs burned out or rendered missing in action because they've been infected.

Ernby reportedly died at home, but others of her ilk took up hospital beds that may accordingly have been denied to others in great need of treatment for non-COVID conditions.

In Ernby's home county, Orange, health authorities say that ambulances are waiting longer to offload patients into emergency rooms and at least nine hospitals have set up surge tents to increase capacity, according to my colleagues Gregory Yee and Rong-Gong Lin II.

That brings us back to the tenor of the online reaction to the deaths of Ernby and her fellow anti-vaxxers. Some of those who object to the tone of the commentary are merely voicing a variation on the "civility" argument that was commonly raised against critics of the intemperate and inhumane policies of the Trump administration.

As I observed then, pleas for "civility" are a fraud. Their goal is to blunt and enfeeble criticism and distract from its truthfulness. Typically, they're the work of hypocrites.

Consider the objection raised against Ernby's critics by her friend Ben Chapman: He didn't merely decry the criticism, but attributed it to "the woke big-government mob," thereby exploiting her death to continue her partisan culture war against a sensible public health policy.

So what, then, is the proper response to the deaths of anti-vaxxers or other determined foes of public health? First, we must acknowledge that the enemies needing to be stamped out are the misinformation, lies and stupidity being injected into the fight against COVID.

Second, we must view every one of these deaths as a teachable moment. They demonstrate in the most vivid way imaginable the folly of vaccine refusal and of flouting responsible public health measures. They underscore the dire consequences of turning public health into a partisan football.

Kelly Ernby's friends and family ask us to remember her for her career as a public servant and as a devoted spouse and mother. But let's not mince words: Her campaigns against public health measures negated whatever good she may have done in her other endeavors.

The policies Ernby advocated may well have contributed to the spread of COVID and to the damaging of the public health infrastructure in her own community. Even before this pandemic, she spoke out for measures that would threaten California schoolchildren with exposure to deadly childhood diseases. There were no scientific or medical grounds for her opposition to mandates; there was only political ideology.

It may be not a little ghoulish to celebrate or exult in the deaths of vaccine opponents. And it may be proper to express sympathy and solicitude to those they leave behind.

But mockery is not necessarily the wrong reaction to those who publicly mocked anti-COVID measures and encouraged others to follow suit, before they perished of the disease the dangers of which they belittled.

Nor is it wrong to deny them our sympathy and solicitude, or to make sure it's known when their deaths are marked that they had stood fast against measures that might have protected themselves and others from the fate they succumbed to.

There may be no other way to make sure that the lessons of these teachable moments are heard.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

Agree or disagree?

[~Hades~]

not reading all that of course thats a dumb idea


how about all the people who got vaxxed and died? is it ok to make fun of them?

[Duckliver]

Sounds like someone who wants to be open minded of every possibility except his own fallibility.

Note I did speed read it, I’m not actually gonna read every word.

[Procta]

only make fun on the ones who wanted to force things upon you or prevent your from things

fuk them

[guest89]

I don't know any anti-vaxors that have died or had any kind of long term side effect from Covid.

[kcadrenalin]

I don't know any anti-vaxors that have died or had any kind of long term side effect from Covid.

This ^^

Seems like only jabbies dropping dead lately.

[JUSA]

I don't know any anti-vaxors that have died or had any kind of long term side effect from Covid.

Oh? The celebrated Pulitzer Prize winning author of this outstanding article links both the Hermain Cain Awards subreddit (where they openly laugh when anyone critical or skeptical of the vaccines dies) and also a great website worthy of amplifying, even if it looks like an 8th grader created it, "sorryantivaxxer.com"

https://www.reddit.com/r/HermanCainAward/

https://www.sorryantivaxxer.com/

PULITZER PRIZES do not err, they do not make mistakes, they are highly celebrated and respected. Do *you* have a Pulitzer Prize? Maybe if you did, you would know more about the many many many antivaxxers all dying, like this author.

Note: I checked on a few of the obituaries for the people sorryantivaxxer were celebrating their deaths, no cause of death could be found for the ones I looked at. The last article, June 2023, was about Laura Loomer getting covid and hoping she would die. She recovered fine.

[6gorillion]

Inb4 JLC

[saltypits]

Those articles aged very poorly.

[WetCoaster]

Trump got the vax. How long does he have left?

[x-trainer ben]

Death and mocking are not funny, a dick move by him; and it wasn't like he was going to change opinions on vaccines with this article!

[JUSA]

Death and mocking are not funny, a dick move by him; and it wasn't like he was going to change opinions on vaccines with this article!

You sure?

He said it was just *that* dangerous to hold insane ideas such as the vaccines not stopping the spread or the lockdowns not being effective. People thinking that probably do need to die horribly, at least in the opinion of a highly celebrated, respected and influential author with a Pulitzer Prize (in 2022).

Hey, I haven't been paying attention? Since 2022, we all still know for this for certain, so much that to think otherwise is to make yourself a subhuman whose deaths are to be celebrated in polite society and openly broadcasted and lawded in established newspapers, right?

It is a fact that the vaccines stop the spread? That the lockdowns were effective and necessary? The science seemed pretty darn settled about that, so I am guessing time has only shown how much more the vaccines stopped the spread of transmission, surely that was tested thoroughly and all.

Plus, whew Lockdowns? How did we ever live without those? Amirite?

God forbid we lived in a world where respected Pulitzer Prize winners openly asked people to mock the deaths of people who were telling the truth, that they were saying the truth about vaccines not stopping the spread and all along the Pharmaceutical companies did not even test to see if they did but had their bought-and-paid-for ghouls run around and demand anyone saying they didn't should die horribly.

Because, boy, if that were the case, you'd think maybe some people might be a little remiss about it, maybe even now kind of upset about it and not willing to just forget about it as the same people doing this just moved on and pretended this all never happened, that they might be a little ****ing skeptical of these vaccines and the companies who made them, you think?

[J.L.C.]

Infections are good.

Vaccines are bad.

Everyone had to pick one of the dichotomous positions.

Science often is, or can be, settled within a couple years.

Now it's a cage match of hilarity.

[JUSA]

Infections are good.

Vaccines are bad.

Everyone had to pick one of the dichotomous positions.

Now it's a cage match of hilarity.

That's right. It's great pharmaceutical companies did not even test to see if the vaccines stopped the spread of transmission and instead just paid off ****ing piece of **** Pulitzer Prize winning whores to write articles saying anyone who said they may not should be be dead.

You are correct to ignore this and pretend it never happened.

[HayZues Christi]

A really good family friend was an antivaxxer and died of covid. Was heartbreaking and I miss him to this day. The first time I had to try and explain death to my daughter who couldn't understand why she'd never see Vince again.



Didn't read article, but covid is a pretty harmless endemic virus at this point. No reason for anyone to have too strong of an opinion either way on the vax. Get it if you want, don't if not. Pretty simple imo.

[Titansfan08]

Lmao at mudbloods

[x-trainer ben]

You sure?

He said it was just *that* dangerous to hold insane ideas such as the vaccines not stopping the spread or the lockdowns not being effective. People thinking that probably do need to die horribly, at least in the opinion of a highly celebrated, respected and influential author with a Pulitzer Prize (in 2022).

Hey, I haven't been paying attention? Since 2022, we all still know for this for certain, so much that to think otherwise is to make yourself a subhuman whose deaths are to be celebrated in polite society and openly broadcasted and lawded in established newspapers, right?

It is a fact that the vaccines stop the spread? That the lockdowns were effective and necessary? The science seemed pretty darn settled about that, so I am guessing time has only shown how much more the vaccines stopped the spread of transmission, surely that was tested thoroughly and all.

Plus, whew Lockdowns? How did we ever live without those? Amirite?

God forbid we lived in a world where respected Pulitzer Prize winners openly asked people to mock the deaths of people who were telling the truth, that they were saying the truth about vaccines not stopping the spread and all along the Pharmaceutical companies did not even test to see if they did but had their bought-and-paid-for ghouls run around and demand anyone saying they didn't should die horribly.

Because, boy, if that were the case, you'd think maybe some people might be a little remiss about it, maybe even now kind of upset about it and not willing to just forget about it as the same people doing this just moved on and pretended this all never happened, that they might be a little ****ing skeptical of these vaccines and the companies who made them, you think?

There was what he claimed and believed, and what we learned shortly after about those who got it anyway.
To wish harm is the part that is illogical.
Live by the golden rule

[J.L.C.]

That's right. It's great pharmaceutical companies did not even test to see if the vaccines stopped the spread of transmission and instead just paid off ****ing piece of **** Pulitzer Prize winning whores to write articles saying anyone who said they may not should be be dead.

You are correct to ignore this and pretend it never happened.

You've tried this previously.

When have challenge trials been required prior to approval?

[JUSA]

A really good family friend was an antivaxxer and died of covid. Was heartbreaking and I miss him to this day. The first time I had to try and explain death to my daughter who couldn't understand why she'd never see Vince again.

Didn't read article, but covid is a pretty harmless endemic virus at this point. No reason for anyone to have too strong of an opinion either way on the vax. Get it if you want, don't if not. Pretty simple imo.

Agree on the last part.

I say this, but Lord knows not everyone reads every thread or every post anyone makes, so I will repeat myself: I am not one of the people saying the vaccines are poison.

My gripe is the environment of propaganda, coercion and lying that was propagated on the world, with collusion of seemingly most Governments on the planet. An environment where nobody could say anything - even things we now know to be true.

In this article, the author is saying people are basically crazy and when they die it's not a big deal -- why? Because they questioned that the vaccines didn't 'stop the spread' (anyone remember that slogan?). Guess what? We now know -- the pharmaceutical companies did not even test to see if they did this and we know for certainty that the vaccines do not stop you from spreading the disease. They don't stop you from getting it. They don't stop you from spreading it. Nobody (sane) disputes that in 2024.

In 2022? No, we lived in a world where if you said that - you were in trouble. You were labeled a crazy loon. If you died (and looking at that one website the author linked, died of any reason) they demanded it was covid and laughed.

Yes it was the truth. It was the truth all along.

That is what pissed me off about the vaccines, that is why when a lot of people have moved on - I haven't. I'm still pissed about this, I will probably never not be pissed about this.

People talk about fascism - that's exactly what this was and it's ****ing scary. It seems like a lot of people who got fooled by it, and I'm not totally irate with them, but what bothers me -- nobody around now acts like they fell for it at the time. Nobody here now, save a handful of truly lost minds, but nobody acts like they were part of the 'mob' that the media, Government and scientists riled up.

They'd rather pretend they were not fooled than admit it and get mad about it.

[J.L.C.]

I am not one of the people saying the vaccines are poison.

My gripe is the environment of propaganda, coercion and lying that was propagated on the world.



The truth. It was the truth all along.

That is what pissed me off about the vaccines, that is why when a lot of people have moved on - I haven't. I'm still pissed about this, I will probably never not be pissed about this.

It seems like a lot of people who got fooled by it

They'd rather pretend they were not fooled than admit it and get mad about it.

Your own words belie your stated position

[JUSA]

Your own words belie your stated position

No, they don't.

[J.L.C.]

No, they don't.

It's cool to be anti vaccine or vaccine opposed. Just own it

[ezmac31]

It's cool to be anti vaccine or vaccine opposed. Just own it

Does being skeptical of just the Covid vaccine make one anti-vaccine? Seems like you are painting with a broad brush to suit your own narrative.

Plenty of people are skeptical of the guardicil (sp?) hpv vaccination due to all the potential side effects, but get all other vaccines. This would be no different

[J.L.C.]

Does being skeptical of just the Covid vaccine make one anti-vaccine? Seems like you are painting with a broad brush to suit your own narrative.

Plenty of people are skeptical of the guardicil (sp?) hpv vaccination due to all the potential side effects, but get all other vaccines. This would be no different

The points raised as concerns are not exclusive to covid vaccines.

Still waiting on those required challenge trials

HPV vaccines seem to have have helped a lot with cancer prevention

[saltypits]

A really good family friend was an antivaxxer and died of covid. Was heartbreaking and I miss him to this day. The first time I had to try and explain death to my daughter who couldn't understand why she'd never see Vince again.



Didn't read article, but covid is a pretty harmless endemic virus at this point. No reason for anyone to have too strong of an opinion either way on the vax. Get it if you want, don't if not. Pretty simple imo.

That settles it. Logically, only people who didn't take the vaccine died. Then there are those that took the vaccine, but they took it wrong, and they also died. But anybody that took the vaccine correctly lived. And they'll live forever.

The article is from 2022.

[HayZues Christi]

Agree on the last part.

I say this, but Lord knows not everyone reads every thread or every post anyone makes, so I will repeat myself: I am not one of the people saying the vaccines are poison.

My gripe is the environment of propaganda, coercion and lying that was propagated on the world, with collusion of seemingly most Governments on the planet. An environment where nobody could say anything - even things we now know to be true.

In this article, the author is saying people are basically crazy and when they die it's not a big deal -- why? Because they questioned that the vaccines didn't 'stop the spread' (anyone remember that slogan?). Guess what? We now know -- the pharmaceutical companies did not even test to see if they did this and we know for certainty that the vaccines do not stop you from spreading the disease. They don't stop you from getting it. They don't stop you from spreading it. Nobody (sane) disputes that in 2024.

In 2022? No, we lived in a world where if you said that - you were in trouble. You were labeled a crazy loon. If you died (and looking at that one website the author linked, died of any reason) they demanded it was covid and laughed.

Yes it was the truth. It was the truth all along.

That is what pissed me off about the vaccines, that is why when a lot of people have moved on - I haven't. I'm still pissed about this, I will probably never not be pissed about this.

People talk about fascism - that's exactly what this was and it's ****ing scary. It seems like a lot of people who got fooled by it, and I'm not totally irate with them, but what bothers me -- nobody around now acts like they fell for it at the time. Nobody here now, save a handful of truly lost minds, but nobody acts like they were part of the 'mob' that the media, Government and scientists riled up.

They'd rather pretend they were not fooled than admit it and get mad about it.

Journalism is a complete joke at this point. Hack writers with horrible biases writing awful clickbait articles to their completely insulated base.


I'm not sure the whole thing was complete propaganda. I do agree the coercion got way out of hand and was anti freedom. However a lot of the stuff that was gotten wrong was done so out of caution and the fact that a novel virus was literally killing millions worldwide. However they were way too slow to adjust to new information and kept some hardline policies in place LONG after the science said it was unnecessary. Was that to practice conditioning and how far they could push it? I could be convinced.

Truth is there are idiots liek this writer and even more idiots who want to consume this chit so they don't feel like complete morons for throwing away 2 years of their life. It's cope. I mean we all still see people wearing masks alone in their car. Trust the science, just be 3 years behind... it's ridiculous.

I will point out that it's antivaxxers who make well over 95% of the vax threads and Twitter posts. It's a weird obsession, usually centered around dishonest argument and misinformation. That doesn't excuse the slow lifting tyrannical covid policies, but lol @ a vaccine that kills off 80% of the world's population, ans specifically the most easily manipulated and controlled portion of the workforce.

[saltypits]

I will point out that it's antivaxxers who make well over 95% of the vax threads and Twitter posts. It's a weird obsession, usually centered around dishonest argument and misinformation. That doesn't excuse the slow lifting tyrannical covid policies, but lol @ a vaccine that kills off 80% of the world's population, ans specifically the most easily manipulated and controlled portion of the workforce.

X is a cesspool, but don't kid yourself. There's a fukton of people still scared to death of covid, and they post like mad on X

I mean you do know they make money off their posts right?

[HayZues Christi]

X is a cesspool, but don't kid yourself. There's a fukton of people still scared to death of covid, and they post like mad on X

I mean you do know they make money off their posts right?

My algorithm, probably due to clicking links on misc, only shows me antivaxxer ****.

[Dave22reborn]

A really good family friend was an antivaxxer and died of covid. Was heartbreaking and I miss him to this day. The first time I had to try and explain death to my daughter who couldn't understand why she'd never see Vince again.



Didn't read article, but covid is a pretty harmless endemic virus at this point. No reason for anyone to have too strong of an opinion either way on the vax. Get it if you want, don't if not. Pretty simple imo.

I'm sure this happened.......

[HayZues Christi]

I'm sure this happened.......

Holy fukin pathetic. You're either such a humongous piece of chit that you think people would make that up, or such a basement dwelling loser that you can't even fathom knowing someone who died from a virus that killed millions.


If I post the obit, will you just fuk off forever, fake cop.