This Anti-vaxx Chronicles series documents stories from the Herman Cain Awards subreddit, tracking the COVID mis- and disinformation on Facebook that is leading to so many deaths. Today’s cautionary tale, Buck, is an asshole, but what his family puts him through just isn’t right. In fact, it is absolutely horrifying.
We’ve seen plenty of shitty memesters in this series, but Buck was a level above most. Sure, he had garden variety anti-vaxx memes like this one that pretend you don’t have to be tested for cancer or a bazillion other diseases that can lie undetected while wreaking havoc on your body:
But Buck was particularly fond of misappropriating Holocaust imagery to make his hysterical points.
What an utter garbage piece of shit.
Some say, “If you wore a mask, you might’ve avoid the horror that’s coming. Doubly so if you had vaccinated.”
Yeah, Southwest pilots didn’t go on strike.
Never mock fate to its face. It doesn’t like it.
Herman Cain. Rep. Ronald Wright. Rep.-elect Luke Letlow. A bunch of state-level elected officials. Donald Trump had a rough go with COVID. Internationally, the presidents of Tanzania and Burundi died of COVID. U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson almost died.
Of course, most politicians are vaxxed and boosted (even the ones who pretend otherwise), and they have access to far better health care than average people.
Yellow is his wife.
I know this picture is fodder for those who oppose hunting, but this has more salient significance to the unfolding story.
Humans have infected wild deer with Covid-19 in a handful of states, and there’s evidence that the coronavirus has been spreading among deer, according to recent studies that outline findings that could complicate the path out of the pandemic.
Clearly, Buck could’ve gotten COVID from any number of places, given how he was bragging about being unjabbed and unmasked and hugging people. But given the timeline, he could’ve also gotten it from this deer.
Huh. So apparently not “psychological warfare” after all?
Okay, so far we’re all like, “This guy is an ass. A next-level ass.” And we wouldn’t be wrong. But this thing takes a turn.
He’s immediately vented when he gets to the hospital. No, no nurse will say that an intubated patient is “ideal for his situation.” He’s literally on life support. They’re plugging him full of tubes to keep him alive. There’s nothing remotely ideal about that.
Meanwhile, things get progressively darker.
The nurse lied about praying for him. The nurse is overwhelmed and underpaid for the amount of work she’s doing, all because people insisted on remaining proudly unvaxxed and unmasked. She doesn’t have time to be praying for anyone as she rushes from room to room trying to do her job and keep her shit together. Having family members demand that the nurse do even more is rude and obnoxious.
Meanwhile, the poor guy can’t even focus on people walking into the room, much less watch TV.
And now, shit is dark. He has now had multiple strokes, and is paralyzed from the neck on down. Doctors say best-case scenario, he’s a quadriplegic for life and vent-dependent.
God bless this nurse and her white lies. Sure, no one else has had as much support as Buck. Sure.
Meanwhile, Buck is begging for help. He wants help. And his wife is like, “Oh, you want us to move you to a different facility where the doctors won’t tell us what we don’t want to hear?” And Buck can’t even focus or move or comprehend what she’s talking about. He’s just scared and trapped.
“Many of us don’t agree with the prognosis.” Obviously there’s nothing wrong with getting a second opinion. But that’s not what Buck’s wife wants. “We don’t agree” isn’t “Let’s see what another doctor says.” She’s fishing for someone to validate her steadfast opinion, thinking real life is Facebook. Is there anyone with “extra strings” who will tell her what she wants to hear?
I get that she’s under a lot of stress, with her husband in the situation he’s in. But … this is utterly unhinged. If they really think hospitals are killing their loved ones for money, why take them there? Why not take them to their church and pump them full of horse paste and Clorox with a prayer warrior choir in the background?
Does she really think the lovely nurse with the white lies is part of a murder machine?
Obviously she’s lashing out, looking for someone to blame. And it certainly isn’t going to be her venison-providing husband or his “shout out to the unmasked and unjabbed!” lifestyle.
“My panicked husband keeps saying ‘help me,’ which reminds me can someone change my key fob battery?”
This is now nine days after she first posted about him mouthing, “Help me.” Imagine all that time, unable to move, unable to breathe, being trapped inside your own mind, begging for help … This is among my worst nightmares. Maybe the worst.
I don’t think she really wants to know what he’s trying to say.
Her husband is in the hospital with COVID. Best-case scenario, he’s paralyzed for life and will need around-the-clock life support. But sure, shitpost more COVID disinformation while you’re at it, with the laughing-face emojis because this is all so hilarious.
I looked up the video and wish I didn’t. It’s horrible. Don’t think this is some reverse psychology thing either. Just don’t. I can’t even fathom how little respect his wife had for her husband that she would strip him of all dignity by posting this.
And even then, she doesn’t take her husband’s decrepit and horrifying state as a cautionary tale, begging people to learn from their mistake and vaccinate. Instead, her brain concocts the most convoluted nonsensical conspiracy theory ever.
- The virus is a politicized bio weapon, but don’t protect yourself from it.
- The virus is making Anthony Fauci, the Clintons, the Bidens, and Bill Gates billionaires, somehow.
- Look up who has stock in Pfizer, which is a thing she hasn’t done because she can’t even change the battery on her key fob.
- She hates on Mark Zuckerberg, because Pfizer and not because his platform directly encouraged their self-destructive behavior.
- You have to question everything except the mis- and disinformation that validates her broken world view.
Let me see if I can wrangle this into some sort of cohesive narrative:
- The Deep State (Clintons, Fauci, Biden, Gates) intentionally infects some people (not all!) so that
- they go to the hospital, where
- they give patients remdesivir, which is actually ground-up glass to cause strokes, to
- murder the patients, which in turn
- … something something ...
- Profit! Billions of it.
Nope. Can’t do it.
“God is good and he still performs miracles,” like gutting her husband’s spirit and paralyzing him and forcing him to require life support for the rest of his life. He’ll breathe through a tube. Eat through a tube. Piss and shit through tubes. And lie there, trapped in a bed, for the rest of his horrible, tragic life.
That’s her miracle? That’s “good”? Holy shit. If I were a believer, I’d think it was Satan that delivered such heinous torture. If you have to reiterate publicly “he totally does know who I am,” well, maybe he doesn’t. Maybe he’s so out of it he just nods at any stimuli.
Mercifully, this was his last day alive.
If I'm ever in a similar state, no one better try to keep me alive. (Gotta go check and make sure my DNR paperwork is still available and current.) Also, no one needs to post videos and pictures of it on fucking social media. Let me go with my dignity intact.
That … that picture. That's how his family sent him off.
This story was particularly triggering to me. Obviously, there’s that visceral fear of being trapped inside of your own mind (so vividly captured by Metallica in their song “One”). But what’s worse is his wife’s effort to prolong that torture indefinitely.
I was in a similar situation with my dad, dying of a brain tumor, glioblastoma multiform—the same tumor that felled Sen. John McCain. It is incurable. He was operated on once to relieve pressure from the tumor, but it only bought him a couple of months, and low quality of life months because open brain surgery is as invasive and destructive as you might imagine. A few months later he had another stroke, and doctors at the hospital began preparations to operate once again. My mom and I put an end to his suffering and moved him to hospice care instead.
It was a gutting decision, but one that I would want for myself.
A few years later, my diabetic grandmother, 97 years old, kept falling into diabetic comas, and the family insisted she be revived. She’d wake up and say, “I'm ready to go!” She was in obvious pain. But my extended family refused to let go and prolonged her agony for several years, against her will. I was so upset at what was happening that I couldn’t bring myself to go to the funeral. I didn’t trust myself to be civil around those who had tortured her for those years. And I missed my chance to say goodbye to her. (Though I did, in my own way.)
Death is difficult. I get it. But it is natural, and it’s okay. And it really should be easier for religious believers as they have a heaven to look forward to. Why condemn Buck to a lifetime of mechanical life support without the ability to do anything other than flick his eyes when he could go get his angel wings and hang out with deceased relatives?
Buck was a real asshole in so many ways, but no one deserves this kind of treatment. No one deserves to suffer this much against their will.
Meanwhile, Buck’s wife will continue her crusade, warning people against vaccinating against the "evil bio weapon" and claiming the hospital murdered her husband through ground-up glass in the remdesivir.