COVID FAFO Roll Call

[Aqua Buddha 14261]

9 hours ago, JimmyJames said:

Just imagine this being your final legacy. Dying in support of a conman from a disease you could have avoided. Just pathetic.

All while dressed like a clown.

[Sbbruin 21588]

13 hours ago, JimmyJames said:

Just imagine this being your final legacy. Dying in support of a conman from a disease you could have avoided. Just pathetic.

A conman who got the vaccine but won't support others getting it only because it helps the current President's cause- which is to try to save American lives.  

[Sbbruin 21588]

On 9/18/2021 at 3:33 PM, Beau Vine said:

Any update on our friend here?  Not that I'm rooting against him...

[cactusflinthead 27247]

The Victorian government will forcibly shut down all construction sites in metropolitan Melbourne and all other locked down local government areas in response to violent protests on Monday.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-09-20/victorian-construction-industry-shutdown/100477912

[Pato del Muerto 52118]

4 minutes ago, cactusflinthead said:

The Victorian government will forcibly shut down all construction sites in metropolitan Melbourne and all other locked down local government areas in response to violent protests on Monday.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-09-20/victorian-construction-industry-shutdown/100477912

I see there are idoits all over the world- or grifters.  Australia is an English prison after all. 
 

Where is the health advice that supports this decision? Why was construction safe a day ago, but not safe now?" she said.

 

the point, whether you believe it or not, was that it wasn’t safe a day ago or a week ago and they were told to comply with the mandates to ostensibly make it safe or be shut down. They chose the latter. 

[Pato del Muerto 52118]

11 hours ago, Aqua Buddha said:

All while dressed like a clown.

[Chewy's Hairy Horn 867]

That’s an evocative pic. Can’t you just hear the honking and squeaking with every step?

[Pato del Muerto 52118]

5 minutes ago, Chewy's Hairy Horn said:

That’s an evocative pic. Can’t you just hear the honking and squeaking with every step?

There’s nothing funny about clown funerals.  No different than any other situation involving clowns. 

[DigglerontheHoof 20602]

57 minutes ago, cactusflinthead said:

The Victorian government will forcibly shut down all construction sites in metropolitan Melbourne and all other locked down local government areas in response to violent protests on Monday.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-09-20/victorian-construction-industry-shutdown/100477912

[Grandioso 2592]

Sorry I’m going full mask off at this point. Every dumbass that dies of covid because they refused to get 1 second shot/miracle cure in their arm deserves to die. Good riddance. And I’m sorry if this includes minorities who had the education, means, and wherewithal to be included. I can’t justify it. Vaya con dios.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Superhero 8638]

On 9/15/2021 at 9:57 AM, OneOfTheOutOfFocusGuys said:

curious about the racial breakdown of FAFO award winners. looking at r/hermancainawards, they are all 40 year old white folks. kind of interesting that the people most concerned with the browning of america are going to be responsible for hastening that change through their own elimination.

There was a segment on NPR a few weeks ago that talked about social economic classes. My memory is fuzzy on this… they might have mentioned Jonathan Swift.

The gist is that the poors hate poorer people more than they hate the rich. The reason is because they think the poorer group are here to take their jobs.

This explains what’s going on in America. The poor white folk are afraid of the blacks and browns taking their jobs. The situation is ripe for some racist to come in whip them into a frenzy blaming immigrants for their own misery.

 

 

[Gap03 3193]

9 minutes ago, Superhero said:

There was a segment on NPR a few weeks ago that talked about social economic classes. My memory is fuzzy on this… they might have mentioned Jonathan Swift.

The gist is that the poors hate poorer people more than they hate the rich. The reason is because they think the poorer group are here to take their jobs.

This explains what’s going on in America. The poor white folk are afraid of the blacks and browns taking their jobs. The situation is ripe for some racist to come in whip them into a frenzy blaming immigrants for their own misery.

 

 

For real though - fuck Rupert Murdoch.

[safe sex 11608]

58 minutes ago, Grandioso said:

Sorry I’m going full mask off at this point. Every dumbass that dies of covid because they refused to get 1 second shot/miracle cure in their arm deserves to die. Good riddance. And I’m sorry if this includes minorities who had the education, means, and wherewithal to be included. I can’t justify it. Vaya con dios.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Jfc wearing a mask is like the least intrusive thing you're asked to do.

Edited September 21, 2021 by trauma babe
Word

[cactusflinthead 27247]

1 hour ago, Grandioso said:

Sorry I’m going full mask off at this point. Every dumbass that dies of covid because they refused to get 1 second shot/miracle cure in their arm deserves to die. Good riddance. And I’m sorry if this includes minorities who had the education, means, and wherewithal to be included. I can’t justify it. Vaya con dios.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I dunno man. I kinda liked going the whole winter without getting a cold or flu. 

[brakeman 28095]

1 hour ago, Grandioso said:

Sorry I’m going full mask off at this point. Every dumbass that dies of covid because they refused to get 1 second shot/miracle cure in their arm deserves to die. Good riddance. And I’m sorry if this includes minorities who had the education, means, and wherewithal to be included. I can’t justify it. Vaya con dios.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

And infants, babies, toddlers and anyone youngster under 12.

You should just shut the fuck up.

Holy shit, how did you ever get in here?

Really, just eat shit and die.

Edited September 21, 2021 by brakeman

[Horn Under a Bad Sign 20305]

Counterpoint.


 

[Grandioso 2592]

5 minutes ago, brakeman said:

And infants, babies, toddlers and anyone youngster under 12.

You should just shut the fuck up.

Holy shit, how did you ever get in here?

Really, just eat shit and die.

Well, infants, babies, toddlers and those younger than 12 don't have the capacity to make a decision to get the shot, are not approved to get the shot, and do not fit the crieteria I listed. I'm talking about adults.

[brakeman 28095]

FAFO watchlist.

[brakeman 28095]

1 minute ago, Grandioso said:

Well, infants, babies, toddlers and those younger than 12 don't have the capacity to make a decision to get the shot, are not approved to get the shot, and do not fit the crieteria I listed. I'm talking about adults.

They should just get sick because your lazy ass can not be fucking be committed any longer.

WOW, go away.

[Biff Tannen 45228]

13 minutes ago, cactusflinthead said:

I dunno man. I kinda liked going the whole winter without getting a cold or flu. 

I’m never going in a men’s room without a mask again. 

[Grandioso 2592]

To clarify my earlier post, when I say "mask off" I mean it in the sense that I'm dropping the facade. It does not have anything to do with a covid/surgical mask. 

 

[Grandioso 2592]

I assure you I don't want to deliberately infect people with Covid and kill them. Wow, poor choice of verbage on my part. 

[Beau Vine 53737]

2 hours ago, Pato del Muerto said:

There’s nothing funny about clown funerals.  No different than any other situation involving clowns. 

Counterpoint:

[brakeman 28095]

9 minutes ago, Grandioso said:

I assure you I don't want to deliberately infect children with Covid and kill them. Wow, poor choice of verbiage on my part. 

That is what came out of your account.

Take a lap and go home early. 

innocent toddler killer.

[Grandioso 2592]

1 minute ago, brakeman said:

That is what came out of your account.

Take a lap and go home early. 

innocent toddler killer.

Fair. I should have written "Sorry but I can no longer maintain the pretense that I am saddened by these folks who embrace death via deliberate scientific ignorance."

"Mask off" was just so much more concise. 

[Horn Under a Bad Sign 20305]

13 minutes ago, Beau Vine said:

Counterpoint:

Wait a minute ... they killed Chuckles? THOSE BASTARDS!

[Deej 76220]

3 hours ago, Pato del Muerto said:

You should see the number of clowns they crammed into that casket.

[brakeman 28095]

28 minutes ago, Grandioso said:

Fair. I should have written "Sorry but I can no longer maintain the pretense that I am saddened by these folks who embrace death via deliberate scientific ignorance."

"Mask off" was just so much more concise. 

mask on and vaxx. this is the only real answer grandioso, even if this is your  real name. 

please, just realize we have many more years of this covid to go.

Nobody really wins, at this point.

Edited September 21, 2021 by brakeman
grow up and grow a set. what a fucking pussy. i fucking hate you. take a deep breathe and hold it.

[atomheartbevo 89061]

48 minutes ago, Deej said:

You should see the number of clowns they crammed into that casket.

I have a feeling that Tim Conway did a skit like that on the Carol Burnett show.  I can't prove it, and don't directly recall such a skit, but it feels like that had to be a skit on that show.

Unlike in real life, where it's hard to cram more than two regular-sized people in a regular-sized casket, even with the aid of a sedative/muscle relaxant.

[Grandioso 2592]

7 hours ago, brakeman said:

mask on and vaxx. this is the only real answer grandioso, even if this is your  real name. 

please, just realize we have many more years of this covid to go.

Nobody really wins, at this point.

JFC Brakeman. I promise you that "mask off" is a real expression that kids/the internet uses to illustrate revealing one's true feelings. 

 

I got Covid over a year ago and it fucking sucked. I ran a fever for like 10 days. Then I got the Johnson & Johnson this spring which made me sick AF again albeit only for a day. I wear a mask in every public area. I appreciate the danger, which is why I have no sympathy for people (with the means and education) who willfully reject taking incredibly easy measures to save their own lives. 

Kyrie Irving:

 

[Aqua Buddha 14261]

Natalie Rise was a registered nurse in Idaho who loved her job as a home health care worker before she decided to stay at home with her special-needs twins, according to her brother, Daryl Rise.

But her science-based training to become an RN was apparently no match for the disinformation about Covid-19 vaccines being shared across social media, according to her brother. 

 

Rise refused to be vaccinated, even as the virus surged in her city, Coeur d'Alene. And even as her mother lay in a coma in a hospital bed, fighting for life against Covid, Natalie advised her family against being vaccinated.

 

Natalie Rise, 46, died August 22, one of the many unvaccinated patients who have triggered a capacity crisis in Idaho hospitals that's flowing into Spokane, Washington, which is about 33 miles away.

 

His and Natalie's mother, who is still recovering from Covid-19, remains on the fence about being vaccinated, he said. 

But Daryl got his first shot the day after his sister died.

 

"It was the hardest decision of my life, you know, am I doing right by God? Am I doing right by Natalie?" he said. "And I got it out of fear."

 

https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/21/us/idaho-covid-crisis-nurse-death/index.html

[DigglerontheHoof 20602]

21 minutes ago, Aqua Buddha said:

Natalie Rise was a registered nurse in Idaho who loved her job as a home health care worker before she decided to stay at home with her special-needs twins, according to her brother, Daryl Rise.

But her science-based training to become an RN was apparently no match for the disinformation about Covid-19 vaccines being shared across social media, according to her brother. 

 

Rise refused to be vaccinated, even as the virus surged in her city, Coeur d'Alene. And even as her mother lay in a coma in a hospital bed, fighting for life against Covid, Natalie advised her family against being vaccinated.

 

Natalie Rise, 46, died August 22, one of the many unvaccinated patients who have triggered a capacity crisis in Idaho hospitals that's flowing into Spokane, Washington, which is about 33 miles away.

 

His and Natalie's mother, who is still recovering from Covid-19, remains on the fence about being vaccinated, he said. 

But Daryl got his first shot the day after his sister died.

 

"It was the hardest decision of my life, you know, am I doing right by God? Am I doing right by Natalie?" he said. "And I got it out of fear."

 

https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/21/us/idaho-covid-crisis-nurse-death/index.html

Where is your god now, asshole?

[OneOfTheOutOfFocusGuys 2054]

23 minutes ago, Aqua Buddha said:

Natalie Rise was a registered nurse in Idaho who loved her job as a home health care worker before she decided to stay at home with her special-needs twins, according to her brother, Daryl Rise.

But her science-based training to become an RN was apparently no match for the disinformation about Covid-19 vaccines being shared across social media, according to her brother. 

 

Rise refused to be vaccinated, even as the virus surged in her city, Coeur d'Alene. And even as her mother lay in a coma in a hospital bed, fighting for life against Covid, Natalie advised her family against being vaccinated.

 

Natalie Rise, 46, died August 22, one of the many unvaccinated patients who have triggered a capacity crisis in Idaho hospitals that's flowing into Spokane, Washington, which is about 33 miles away.

 

His and Natalie's mother, who is still recovering from Covid-19, remains on the fence about being vaccinated, he said. 

But Daryl got his first shot the day after his sister died.

 

"It was the hardest decision of my life, you know, am I doing right by God? Am I doing right by Natalie?" he said. "And I got it out of fear."

 

https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/21/us/idaho-covid-crisis-nurse-death/index.html

The divisiveness of this sucks.  “Am I doing right by Natalie?”  You are pushed to make horrible decisions because it’s a group identifier and you’d be betraying your group to align with the others.  

[Bookman 4594]

4 minutes ago, OneOfTheOutOfFocusGuys said:

"It was the hardest decision of my life, you know, am I doing right by God? Am I doing right by Natalie?" he said. "And I got it out of fear."  

Hardest decision of his life? What the fuck? I simply don't understand these people.

[Aqua Buddha 14261]

15 minutes ago, Bookman said:

Hardest decision of his life? What the fuck? I simply don't understand these people.

That was my thought, too.  Hardest decision of his life…..?

[Mrs Whiggins 13049]

9 hours ago, Grandioso said:

Fair. I should have written "Sorry but I can no longer maintain the pretense that I am saddened by these folks who embrace death via deliberate scientific ignorance."

"Mask off" was just so much more concise. 

I understood, but I have older children so I'm a little more exposed to lingo/slang. The 'deviant licks' one was a real head scratcher I gotta say....

 

[Mole 4311]

27 minutes ago, Bookman said:

Hardest decision of his life? What the fuck? I simply don't understand these people.

My great grandfather was an abusive alcoholic. This morning I had to make the hardest decision of my life: get drunk and race laps through a school zone in his honor or have a cup of coffee and go to work. I didn’t get a great night of sleep last night so I didn’t really feel like going to work, and I really want to do right by my terrible ancestors.

It was the hardest decision of my life to not risk the lives of hundreds of school children. I just hope I did the right thing by going to work. I think I did it out of fear, which makes me a weak man.

[Bookman 4594]

23 minutes ago, Aqua Buddha said:

That was my thought, too.  Hardest decision of his life…..?

Economically it's an easy decision. So that means either they're bad at economic decision-making or they're taking into account other things, such as ideology.

And I understand wanting to wait awhile before getting vaccinated, but how long is enough? It's been six months since it was readily available. I think that's enough time.

We are in a crisis, but are being held back by those making terrible economic decisions.

 

[Mrs Whiggins 13049]

6 minutes ago, Bookman said:

 So that means either they're bad at economic decision-making or they're taking into account other things, such as ideology.

[Horn Under a Bad Sign 20305]

6 hours ago, Aqua Buddha said:

That was my thought, too.  Hardest decision of his life…..?

Hey, you laugh, but it was way harder than trying to decide between that 1970 El Camino and that 1973 Nova.  The El Camino had that 396 SuperSport engine but the Nova had that killer Craig Powerplay audio setup. 

[Horn Under a Bad Sign 20305]

7 hours ago, Aqua Buddha said:

 

But her science-based training to become an RN was apparently no match for the disinformation about Covid-19 vaccines being shared across social media, according to her brother. 

 

 

You know what else didn't help in Natalie's fight against the 'Rona? The fact that she was a 275 .lb whale.


 

[The Royal We 3051]

Taking a dirt nap to own the libs.  smfh

[conVINCEd 21468]

People who work at hospitals refusing to get vaccinated is the most batshit crazy thing I have ever seen, and I’ve seen a lot of batshit crazy stuff the past 5 years.

[Longhorn_Fan68 33723]

6 minutes ago, conVINCEd said:

People who work at hospitals refusing to get vaccinated is the most batshit crazy thing I have ever seen, and I’ve seen a lot of batshit crazy stuff the past 5 years.

what's even more mind bottling is why it would even be allowed in the first place. seems like a hospital is the exact place where you would want 100% of your staff vaccinated for a plague that has killed 675k domestically. But again, we're not great at the whole logic thing

[safe sex 11608]

She has "two-year ADN degree" written all over her dead face.

God I'm a bitch.

[ultimaton 2954]

16 hours ago, brakeman said:

mask on and vaxx. this is the only real answer grandioso, even if this is your  real name. 

please, just realize we have many more years of this covid to go.

Nobody really wins, at this point.

Edited 16 hours ago by brakeman 
grow up and grow a set. what a fucking pussy. i fucking hate you. take a deep breathe and hold it.

 

[Underdog 28234]

8 hours ago, Aqua Buddha said:

Natalie Rise was a registered nurse in Idaho who loved her job as a home health care worker before she decided to stay at home with her special-needs twins, according to her brother, Daryl Rise.

But her science-based training to become an RN was apparently no match for the disinformation about Covid-19 vaccines being shared across social media, according to her brother. 

 

Rise refused to be vaccinated, even as the virus surged in her city, Coeur d'Alene. And even as her mother lay in a coma in a hospital bed, fighting for life against Covid, Natalie advised her family against being vaccinated.

 

Natalie Rise, 46, died August 22, one of the many unvaccinated patients who have triggered a capacity crisis in Idaho hospitals that's flowing into Spokane, Washington, which is about 33 miles away.

 

His and Natalie's mother, who is still recovering from Covid-19, remains on the fence about being vaccinated, he said. 

But Daryl got his first shot the day after his sister died.

 

"It was the hardest decision of my life, you know, am I doing right by God? Am I doing right by Natalie?" he said. "And I got it out of fear."

 

https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/21/us/idaho-covid-crisis-nurse-death/index.html

What about your brother Daryl, Daryl?  

[Francisco 2.0 32227]

Everyone's favorite FAFO subreddit was profiled on Slate.  

https://slate.com/technology/2021/09/hermancainaward-subreddit-antivaxxer-deaths-cataloged.html

Quote

HermanCainAward, one of the fastest-growing subreddits on Reddit.com, is exactly what it sounds like: an archive of those who have been hospitalized and/or killed by COVID and didn’t believe the disease could harm them. It is named after Republican Herman Cain, the onetime candidate for president who succumbed to COVID some weeks after attending a Trump rallyin Tulsa, Oklahoma, at which he was photographed maskless in the summer of 2020. Cain’s Twitter account would continue to downplay the virus even after his death.

 

Quote

The Herman Cain Award concept is simple and ugly. A single entry to the subreddit consists of anywhere between two and 16 screenshots of a social media profile (usually Facebook, with last names scrubbed out) belonging to someone who died after aggressively rejecting precautions that could have protected them and others. The idea is to track the individual’s journey from COVID theory, so to speak, to COVID practice: what a person posted or commented about masks or shots, or those who advocated for either before getting sick, and how they and their community narrated their disease once they were ill. As the forum has grown, entries have started following a fairly standard format: The first few screenshots typically feature the individual in question deploying a remarkably consistent set (there are 30 or so) of memes. Some vilify Dr. Anthony Fauci or champion the right to be unvaccinated. Others warn people they’re experimental rats or offer scripts that will properly punish wait staff for daring to inquire about vaccination status. Some deride masked liberals as “sheep” and the unvaccinated as proud free lions or refer to immigrants as vectors of disease or compare vaccination requirements to the Holocaust. Most of them treat the pandemic as a joke and frame ignoring it as brave or clever or both. The final few screenshots typically announce the disease, its progress, and the eventual death announcement, frequently followed by a GoFundMe for the family. If someone is merely hospitalized, the flair on that entry reads “Nominated.” When they die, it changes to “Awarded.”

 

 

Spoiler

It is cruel, a site for heartless and unrepentant schadenfreude. This is a place where deaths are celebrated, and it is not the only one. While endless ink has been spilled on the anger of Trump voters and Fox News viewers and QAnon adherents, there are other angers that haven’t been nearly as well explored. The exhaustion and fury doctors and nurses feel, for example, as they deal yet again with overwhelmed ICUs. Instead of being hailed as heroes, this time around they’re risking their lives to serve while walking through anti-vax protestersand being called murderers or worse by misled family members demanding or indeed suingfor sick unvaccinated relatives on ventilators to be dosed with ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine or vitamin C. There is the anger of family members of those without COVID who are dying or sicker than they should be because treatment was delayed or denied to them at dozens of hospitals that had no beds available. There’s the frustration of parents trying to keep their children safe, the constant, destabilizing calculations and adaptations people are forced into when (for instance) the governor of Texas prohibits schools from taking safety measures and then two teachers at a single school die, forcing closures once again. There’s the run-of-the-mill anger of those weary of living under pandemic conditions and demoralized—in the most literal sense—by the selfishness of their compatriots.

 

Subscriptions to the HermanCainAward subreddit are increasing exponentially, from 2,000 subscribers on July 4 to 5,000 at the beginning of August to more than 100,000 on Sept. 1 to 243,000 Friday to 276,000 today. If that rate is any indication, rage is growing toward anti-vaxxers deliberately prolonging the pandemic out of an anti-social and deadly understanding of their rights. Now, it’s true that not everyone on the subreddit assents to its spiteful premise: One exhausted nurse wrote a long post about how much one of her anti-vax patients suffered, as an attempt at counterbalance. She acknowledged her own compassion fatigue but also urged readers to think harder about how we got to this sorry pass. Plenty of the discussions do orbit around that basic question. But most of the comments are angry. A collection of screenshots generally elicits a common sentiment: The person got their just desserts.

Does anything besidesschadenfreude happen when Americans see one after another after another after another of these stories?

I began reading because I wanted to understand how pro-social impulses could get coarsened to the point where advocates for lifesaving measures like vaccines—people who think of themselves as the good guys—are literally celebrating deaths. I’m no closer to understanding that, but something very strange did happen because I read these records: Despite reading loads of statistics and case histories and news articles about the pandemic, r/HermanCainAward became my most thorough source on what it’s like for a person to die from COVID. I understand the disease more deeply because I have read so many viciously curated “stories” in which ordinary people blathering about politics end up narrating their decline from it—with help from their families—as optimistically as they can. They are younger than COVID patients used to be. Trying to put a positive spin on things. Soliciting prayers. Generally avoiding conversions. They do not expect to die. It’s relentless reading. And it keeps ending up the same way. Only health care workers have seen this many people decline and die.

 

It has always been and remains a problem that COVID is functionally invisible to so many Americans. We already medicalize death more than most cultures, but the sensible restrictions on visitors to COVID wards have meant that the disease crippling hospitals across the country goes mostly unwitnessed. We all know getting on a ventilator is bad and having to go on an ECMO machine is worse, but most of us have not heard what lungs sound like when they have that by-now-classic “ground glass appearance” in scans. We have not watched people panicking and yanking tubes out because they can’t breathe. We have not seen patients swollen and full of air, unrecognizable. Or proned. Or having their last conversation before they go on the ventilator.

You don’t see most of this stuff in these r/HermanCainAward screenshots, either, but you do see a lot you just wouldn’t otherwise. Specifically, you see the suffering. It’s filtered, of course, usually through collapsing defiance and positive thinking that fails. People post that they’re not feeling well when they’ve already become patients. They usually put it simply, with a request for prayers. The contrast to their grandstanding in prior posts acts as an intensifier; that they aren’t commenting on the very thing they’ve preached about so much comes to serve—cumulatively, as you read these—as evidence of just how awful they feel. The selfies can be brutal. The photographs family members post are worse because the patient is frequently unconscious, bloated, clearly in a bad way. Relatives’ updates tend to feature obsessive medical details like ventilator settings and oxygen saturations, and you learn to recognize the time course of the disease: When mentions of dialysis start up, you know, as a reader, that the prognosis is poor. The death announcement—once the requests for prayers and hopes for miracles are over—frequently reveals how much worse it really was than anyone let on: You find out the patient also had MRSA, or had developed an autoimmune disease, or had struggled with strokes and clots.

 

Jaded though they are, many r/HermanCainAward readers have experienced this much as I did: as a truly frightening look at what COVID can really be like. What hundreds of stories about deaths told through mean-spirited screenshots reveal is that the disease—when it gets bad—is worse than even the most pro-vax person really understood.

And that’s what sets r/HermanCainAward apart from the didactic pleasures of other schadenfreude-based forums like r/LeopardsAteMyFace: It’s more horrible than satisfying because the horror isn’t going to stop. These individual stories do not produce conversions. These aren’t situations where anti-vaxxers learn their lesson, get vaccinated, and save themselves. Sure, there’s the occasional “Redemption” tag, awarded when a patient or relative regrets opposing vaccination and urges their friends to do what they can to avoid a similar fate. But those are rare. What this massive record of human suffering really illustrates (in all its startling, repetitive sameness) is how seamlessly anti-vax communities reconcile themselves to the deaths their convictions will perpetuate. The posts about individual liberty and self-sufficiency devolve into abjectly dependent appeals: A call to “prayer warriors” is almost a required feature at this point in a r/HermanCainAward entry. When someone dies, the grief is gentle and generic: He was a good guy, he got his angel wings today, it was his time, God called him home. Their families frequently express gratitude to the medical staff who cared for their loved ones. It is resignation, and deeply sad. And yet: Chilled though I’ve been by how this subreddit can rejoice at a death, I’m somehow no less chilled by how easily the bereaved normalize their losses. A 35-year-old man with three young children and a free vaccine available should not be dead! There is astonishingly little recognition of this.

If these individual stories seem to change nothing, what about a cumulative record? Does anything besides schadenfreude happen when Americans see one after another after another after another of these stories? I’m not sure, but a new category has recently been gathering steam in the subreddit: the IPA (Immunized to Prevent Award). People post photos of their new vaccination cards, saying that reading the r/HermanCainAward finally convinced them they didn’t want to “win.” They get enthusiastically cheered on by commenters. “I’m not anti-Vax,” one such comment reads, “I was just afraid and confused by all the misinformation out there. Genuinely frightened and confused. Taking a quick 5 minute look at this Sub-reddit brought me back down to earth. I’ll be getting my first round of the Pfizer Vaccine early next week. Thank you for existing.” There are more of these than you might expect; who knows if these stories are true, but if even some of them are, maybe these stories can, in the aggregate, persuade people who wouldn’t be especially moved by specific cases.

Nothing about the r/HermanCainAward, a dark record of a dark, dark time, is decent or kind or particularly fair. Even using Cain as the model is uncharitable; he was actually among the conservatives who didn’t deny that COVID was real. He advocated following CDC guidelines including social distancing and even masks on his radio show, despite not always adhering to those recommendations himself. I’m not sure that matters; no one could argue that a place where people gather to mock the dead is “moral,” or accuse it of hypocrisy, or of virtue signaling, or of coastal elitism. It is an anti-persuasive venue, a place that dispenses with rational appeals for people to behave better in favor of something much more primal and horrifying. And who knows? Maybe it’s persuading people specifically because it’s not trying to.

 

[Grandioso 2592]

Prediction: In a couple years there will be covid orphan support groups. These children will grow up to despise their parent’s irresponsibility.


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[aggie08 20488]

10 hours ago, Bookman said:

Hardest decision of his life? What the fuck? I simply don't understand these people.

I got mine in a storage room of the CVS down the street before buying a tube of sunscreen.

I guess I really needed to put more thought into this huge moral dilemma.