I think it’s time to stop featuring the stories about the anti-vaxxers who catch COVID and die. I admit that at first I read them to satisfy some demented sense of schadenfreude, but now I am thinking differently: We will not change them; it does not help us or anyone to keep posting these stories; it diminishes us to take sick pleasure in their stupidity. Not all those they leave behind had a say in what they did but they are left with the pain nonetheless; let’s not add to that.
It is easy to think that this series is all about schadenfreude. And I’m not going to pretend that I didn’t enjoy some of that early on. But the daily grind of putting this together has certainly stripped that stuff away. What’s left is a desperate longing for a collective wake-up that would get us all out of this pandemic and its misery. And as much as we might not care what these a-holes are doing to themselves, the reality is that we’re all still paying for their idiocies. The virus circulates and mutates and sticks around, whereas universal vaccination limits its ability to infect. All those frightful million-dollar hospital bills? These a-holes and their families aren’t paying that off. We are. The high number of long-COVID sufferers who can’t work? We will support them. Medicare and Medicaid will have to foot the inevitable medical bills.
If you think that there might be some electoral benefit to Republicans killing off their own supporters, the math just isn’t there. Maybe in a Florida 2000 scenario, where one side wins by hundreds of votes. But while the overall number of people dying is high, and will soon hit 1 million, the number of voters who have died is maybe half that. Then the split, last I saw, was likely around 60-40 red vs. blue (remember, blue states were hit hard early on). That would suggest a 300,000 to 200,000 split, or a net “loss” of 100,000 conservative voters. Now spread those out across the country, and we’re talking 1-3,000 per state. Let’s say Florida and Texas have a lopsided percentage of those numbers; that puts them at a net loss of, what, 5,000? Even 10,000 wouldn’t swing most races. Beto O’Rourke lost in 2018 by 2.6%! So close! In raw numbers, that was around 215,000 votes.
In the meantime, COVID fatigue is real, and it cost us the election Virginia last November, and we came way too close to losing New Jersey. This is, as of now, a political disadvantage. Republicans know this, which is why they’re happy to kill off their own supporters to increase the general public’s sense of malaise. You can see it in our own Civiqs data:
Look at all that optimism when President Joe Biden took office, yet it has whittled away. (Though that recent uptick is a hopeful sign.)
Now, will conservative America’s mass COVID delusion accelerate the documented demise of white rural America, already beset by an aging population, opioid addiction, obesity, and other poor health metrics? Yes! But that’s a decades-long trend, and I doubt anyone reading this is interested in prolonging this nightmare for a second longer than necessary.
So no, I get no pleasure in writing these stories. In fact, the daily grind has taken its toll. I’m frustrated and angry and perplexed. I don’t understand why the “I don’t know what’s in it” crowd is so happy to take all manner of snake-oil remedies whose contents they clearly don’t know or understand. I don’t understand how they can trust Facebook commenters more than actual doctors and scientists. I don’t understand how the most ingrained parenting instincts to keep our children safe have been short-circuited by this alternate-reality machine. (It’s no accident that QAnon’s gateway message is about “saving our children,” nor is it an accident that Robert Kennedy Jr’s organization is called the Children’s Health Defense.”)
Here’s why I do this series:
- It’s important to see exactly what a severe COVID infection resulting in hospitalization looks like. Statistics sanitize those numbers. “Oh, another 2,000 people died today” is impersonal, overly intellectual, and easy to swat away. The 3,000 deaths on 9-11 didn’t have an impact for most Americans because of the specific 3,000 people who died, but because we witnessed their murder in real-time, and could imagine ourselves being similarly attacked. With COVID, you often see “they died peacefully.” No, they didn’t. No one who sees this picture wants to go out that way:
They like to say shit like, “I’d rather die free than live in chains!” Well, dying of COVID-19 doesn’t look particularly “free” to me. Quite the opposite, actually.
- We’ve learned what a COVID illness can look like, in all its grotesque permutations. It’s a real-life counter to the common claims that COVID is “just like the flu,” For one, the flu is horrific, and it actually kills lots of people. People likely confuse it with the common cold, which is itself miserable (my whole family has it this week, and yes, we’ve tested daily to make sure it’s not COVID). Thanks to the many people liveblogging their own COVID journeys, we get a better understanding of how horrible and cruel the disease is. The dead-cat bounce, where people get better just before they crash and die, is particularly brutal.
- We get a direct look at the conservative mis- and disinformation machine. I dig into their conspiracy theories to see where they come from, how they spread, and what the actual truth is. We had a good example of that in Saturday’s edition, when I dug into the source of this common meme:
Turns out, a Breitbart writer tweeted that lie out, corrected herself just three hours later, but by then, the meme machine had gone into action, and a new reality was born. Most of the time, the source of the misinformation doesn’t even bother to correct the lies. Usually, it’s done on purpose (hi, Russia!). It’s important for us to understand what we’re up against.
- If we learn their lies, and we debunk them, then maybe you guys will find occasion to push back against this shit if the opportunity strikes. It sucks that we have to play defense against this avalanche of bullshit, but the more informed we are, and the more we spread the fact-checking, the better things might be.
- I just don’t want us to forget the human toll of this pandemic. These stories are full of assholes, no doubt. The world won’t miss them. But you know who will? Their family members. Their kids, over a hundred thousand left orphaned during this pandemic. Their communities. The anti-vaxx movement is rooted in deep selfishness and toxic individuality. The Herman Cain Awards subreddit has myriad stories of people who stumbled upon the subreddit, and realized that it wasn’t about them, but about their loved ones, and got vaccinated. Maybe we can help people remember what parenting instincts look like, and how one really takes care of their family: by not dying of avoidable reasons.
- I think, “I can’t wait for the day I can retire this feature,” then realize that I’m not even in the front lines of this battle. Think of all the doctors, nurses, paramedics, and hospital staff having to deal with the consequences of these people’s actions. We have National Guardsmen called up to help staff, taking them away from their families and careers. Then think about all the essential workers who never had the chance to isolate and work from home, and put themselves at increased risk. I’ve avoided infection, in massive part, because I have the privilege of being able to avoid infection. We need to do everything in our power to remove, or at least reduce, that threat.
There is no schadenfreude in any of that. That “let’s go Brandon” asshole might be dead, sure, but the overall cost to our society is nowhere near worth it. And so the series will continue, so long as a large part of our population continues to resist common-sense mitigation efforts.