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Is This the Worst Op-Ed About COVID?

Matt Vespa
Matt Vespa  |  January 11, 2022 6:00 AM

This is classic word salad. I’ve never seen a column twist itself into a pretzel to justify mocking those who have died of COVID who also happened to be unvaccinated. How about this? Maybe you just don’t. Liberals have an incessant need to lecture. It’s part of their moral superiority complex. They need to explain why they’re right. The irony being that they’re almost always wrong. No one really dwells on this subject, except the Left. It’s concern trolling at its worst and this op-ed from The LA Times is a clear MVP winner in that category. Liberals are not sad the unvaccinated are dead. They are happy. They love it, even though they’re the ones who are teeming with COVID now. The stigma associated with getting the virus is because of liberals. They made it a thing, and now they’re eating it. COVID is here to stay. It’s endemic. Everyone is going to catch it eventually, but it was liberal America who mocked the areas not dominated by them, which is most of the country, for having outbreaks. So, to cap off this crap sundae, here’s the piece where the author says mocking the unvaccinated dead is ghoulish but necessary:

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.

[…]

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.

Kelly Ernby was a deputy district attorney from Orange County, California who recently died from COVID. She was unvaccinated as you can see. And the rest of the piece is littered with pro-Fauci points, pro-vaccine mandates, and the like—you get the point. So, the CDC, Fauci, and the liberal media didn’t peddle myths about COVID. Really? First, the whole piece is nauseating in its self-righteousness. Again, liberals are their own worst enemy. If I was unvaccinated and read this column, I would certainly double down in not getting the shot. The woman was against mandates. That’s her right as an American, dude. Deal with it. 

'The science' has changed with the political winds. The COVID death count is also totally off, with the CDC now saying that they’ll have to sift through those who died from COVID and with COVID. The new number will certainly be revised down, with those who died from the virus, some 75 percent of the total, being gravely ill and suffering from not one but at least four comorbidities. A contagious airborne virus where we had no vaccine or therapeutics at the time hitting the elderly and infirmed—of course, people were going to die. The virus still has a 99 percent survivability rate. Fauci admitted store-bought masks were useless, you going to hit him on that. Cloth masks don’t work either obviously, but Fauci was out there saying any face covering was acceptable. Plexiglass does nothing. The lockdowns didn’t work. There are just as many arguments that shred the narratives of the COVID panic porn peddlers that even the CDC is now cutting down the quarantine time. Word on the street is that by year’s end COVID will be declared endemic. That means no need for COVID vaccine passports, mask-wearing, or any of the other measures that never worked. 

But yes, let’s bash this woman who died because she just didn’t know she was wrong, and I was right. Yeah, that will really win more folks to your cause, genius. As of now, any messaging about vaccination is useless. We have three. They’re readily available. Those who don’t want to take it will not be persuaded. Not now. Not in six months. It’s over. And again, mocking dead people doesn’t help; liberals are their own worst enemy. It’s also the seat of irony that these people, who are all about the vaccine and enforcing it through Gestapo tactics, are silent about those who think the MMR vaccine causes autism. That’s science fiction too. It’s the same crowd. That’s real hypocrisy.