Subreddit celebrating/mocking anti-vaxxers who die of COVID explodes in popularity

[TrumpBritt24]

https://www.vice.com/en/article/4avzym/redditors-give-the-the-herman-cain-award-to-anti-vaxxers-who-die-of-covid

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

I feel as though this unnecessarily contributes to the dehumanization of our political division, but as a vaccinated pro-vax choicer, I'm torn.

[Mercenary]

Anti vaccaination people are dumb but people celebrating their deaths are nothing short of evil. However it is unsurprising as I acknowledge that humans are basically evil and only behave well in society for self benefit. Anonymity brings out the true character of people as they can finally be honesy without repurcussions.

[Not Me, Us]

It's a great sub and one I browse often. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. They brought it on themselves.

[TrumpBritt24]

It's a great sub and one I browse often. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. They brought it on themselves.

I can't wait to say this when the next unarmed minority gets shot by a cop, and for you to call me a racist, and for the wheels on the bus to go round and round.

[CEO Mindset]

imagine being liberal and this kind of sociopathic

[Not Me, Us]

It's a great sub and one I browse often. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. They brought it on themselves.

I can't wait to say this when the next unarmed minority gets shot by a cop, and for you to call me a racist, and for the wheels on the bus to go round and round.

I shouldn't have to explain why these are in no way similar, but here we are I guess. George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Daunte Wright, and so many others were executed by the Police. They did not do anything that any reasonable person would consider worthy of death. They posed no threat to the lives of the officers involved, nor did they do anything to suggest to the officer that they did. No action they made could possibly make their deaths justified. Anti-vaxxers know the risks COVID poses. They know that there is a free and easy to access way to virtually guarantee safety from COVID. They knowingly opt not to get the vaccine, and sometimes they pay the price for it. It is a direct consequence of a decision they made, and I do not feel any sadness when their choice bites them in the ass. The end.

[TrumpBritt24]

It's a great sub and one I browse often. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. They brought it on themselves.

I can't wait to say this when the next unarmed minority gets shot by a cop, and for you to call me a racist, and for the wheels on the bus to go round and round.

I shouldn't have to explain why these are in no way similar, but here we are I guess. George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Daunte Wright, and so many others were executed by the Police. They did not do anything that any reasonable person would consider worthy of death. They posed no threat to the lives of the officers involved, nor did they do anything to suggest to the officer that they did. No action they made could possibly make their deaths justified. Anti-vaxxers know the risks COVID poses. They know that there is a free and easy to access way to virtually guarantee safety from COVID. They knowingly opt not to get the vaccine, and sometimes they pay the price for it. It is a direct consequence of a decision they made, and I do not feel any sadness when their choice bites the in the ass. The end.

Bad person deserved it go brrrrrrrrrrrr!

[Person Man]

It's a great sub and one I browse often. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. They brought it on themselves.

I can't wait to say this when the next unarmed minority gets shot by a cop, and for you to call me a racist, and for the wheels on the bus to go round and round.

I shouldn't have to explain why these are in no way similar, but here we are I guess. George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Daunte Wright, and so many others were executed by the Police. They did not do anything that any reasonable person would consider worthy of death. They posed no threat to the lives of the officers involved, nor did they do anything to suggest to the officer that they did. No action they made could possibly make their deaths justified. Anti-vaxxers know the risks COVID poses. They know that there is a free and easy to access way to virtually guarantee safety from COVID. They knowingly opt not to get the vaccine, and sometimes they pay the price for it. It is a direct consequence of a decision they made, and I do not feel any sadness when their choice bites the in the ass. The end.

Bad person deserved it go brrrrrrrrrrrr!

Not getting vaccinated requires much poorer judgment than avoiding being shot by people who you are expendable to.

[SnowLabrador]

It's a great sub and one I browse often. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. They brought it on themselves.

[Santander]

I wonder why some people might not trust the United States Government...

It's not like they've ever done human medical experimentation on African-Americans under the guise of treating them. A federal regulatory agency never approved a flying death trap out of expedience and tried to blame the victims when it crashed, either.

Go ahead and attack politicians who engage in demagoguery, but celebrating the death of the little guy, whether through COVID or engaging in deeply misguided rioting at the Capitol, is f**king disgusting.

[Big Abraham]

Anti-vaxxers know the risks COVID poses. They know that there is a free and easy to access way to virtually guarantee safety from COVID. They knowingly opt not to get the vaccine, and sometimes they pay the price for it. It is a direct consequence of a decision they made, and I do not feel any sadness when their choice bites them in the ass. The end.

It's easy to put all of the blame on the individual when you read it through a direct "cause & effect" narrative. By this same logic, you could easily laugh away every premature death in America (of which cardiovascular heart disease is #1) because the deceased ate way too much McDonald's and drank too much Dr. Pepper, without paying attention to the long-term health consequences and despite the fact that they know such food is bad for their health.

The same, of course, applies to even more causal links between someone's decisions and their untimely death, such as suicide, or car accidents. And yet you'd look like a pretty big asshole for saying "play stupid games, win stupid prizes" to a family who lost a loved one by their own hand, or who died of complications from hypertension.

The great majority of "anti vaxxers" are people who have been unfortunately deluded into a superstitious belief that is ultimately detrimental to their own health and the health of those around them. The reasons are manifold: maybe it's pressure from, and ultimately assimilation with, the reactionary culture in which they live; partisan knee-jerk reaction against the Democrats; distrust of "medical experts" and experts generally which goes hand in hand with the concomitant massive rise of distrust in the media and other institutions (much of which is not directly tied to the vaccine issue, etc.). That's all bad of course, but we we should see these people as victims too, just as anyone deluded by a self-destructive belief (such as suicide), not as people who deserve to be mocked as though they are beneath even the modicum of respect for the dead which is afforded to every other group. Doing so will only continue to fan the flames of extreme partisan divide, will further consolidate a large chunk of the right as anti-vac, and fundamentally contributes nothing positive to the public discourse.

[The Free North]

Obviously anti-vax deaths are deeply ironic but actively rooting for a stupid person to die is tasteless and disgusting.

[Not Me, Us]

Anti-vaxxers know the risks COVID poses. They know that there is a free and easy to access way to virtually guarantee safety from COVID. They knowingly opt not to get the vaccine, and sometimes they pay the price for it. It is a direct consequence of a decision they made, and I do not feel any sadness when their choice bites them in the ass. The end.

It's easy to put all of the blame on the individual when you read it through a direct "cause & effect" narrative. By this same logic, you could easily laugh away every premature death in America (of which cardiovascular heart disease is #1) because the deceased ate way too much McDonald's and drank too much Dr. Pepper, without paying attention to the long-term health consequences and despite the fact that they know such food is bad for their health.

The same, of course, applies to even more causal links between someone's decisions and their untimely death, such as suicide, or car accidents. And yet you'd look like a pretty big asshole for saying "play stupid games, win stupid prizes" to a family who lost a loved one by their own hand, or who died of complications from hypertension.

The great majority of "anti vaxxers" are people who have been unfortunately deluded into a superstitious belief that is ultimately detrimental to their own health and the health of those around them. The reasons are manifold: maybe it's pressure from, and ultimately assimilation with, the reactionary culture in which they live; partisan knee-jerk reaction against the Democrats; distrust of "medical experts" and experts generally which goes hand in hand with the concomitant massive rise of distrust in the media and other institutions (much of which is not directly tied to the vaccine issue, etc.). That's all bad of course, but we we should see these people as victims too, just as anyone deluded by a self-destructive belief (such as suicide), not as people who deserve to be mocked as though they are beneath even the modicum of respect for the dead which is afforded to every other group. Doing so will only continue to fan the flames of extreme partisan divide, will further consolidate a large chunk of the right as anti-vac, and fundamentally contributes nothing positive to the public discourse.

While I understand your point, it doesn't change my mind. I don't see suicide or hypertension as comparable in any way. All these things have so many more external factors at play. People who commit suicide are sad, desperate people who believe they are left with no other option. These people are so often some of the most hateful people out there. Many people with health or obesity issues are like that through no fault of their own. It's easy to say people should eat a good diet and exercise regularly, but having the means to do those things is not as common as we'd like to think. Single parents who work 12-hour days at a minimum wage job don't have time to exercise or cook a nutritious, homemade meal and often don't have the means to pay for expensive produce or organic vegan superburgers or whatever. People who die in car accidents are usually the people getting hit, not the other way around. Even when somebody dies from hitting another car, it's almost never a conscious decision on their part, they swerve to avoid something or hit a patch of black ice. If it's a drunk driver, then I absolutely blame them and wouldn't feel bad for them at all, nor should I.

Further to your point, the people featured on r/HermanCainAwards are almost never innocent, brainwashed people. Oftentimes it's a far-right podcaster or radio host, the people directly responsible for spreading hateful/anti-vaxx rhetoric. The rest of the time, it's clearly extremely hateful people who post racist or homophobic rants. These people aren't victims, they're crazy Trumpsters.

Nobody is celebrating the death of normal people who are concerned about long-term side effects, or people who had COVID before and thought they didn't need the vaccine, or racial minorities who have previously been used by the government for medical experiments and are understandably distrustful when the government is telling them to take the vaccine. The people featured on the subreddit are the people who take horse dewormer and support the capital riot. I agree that not all unvaccinated people are bad people, hell, the majority aren't, and I certainly wouldn't celebrate their deaths. But that's not what the subreddit is about.

[Progressive Pessimist]

Celebrating the deaths so overtly is not right, but I can't say that they don't deserve their impending Darwin awards.

[dead0man]

I assumed that's what all the "anti-vax radio DJ dies of Covid" threads here were all about.  I don't go in them because I don't want to see people I like doing something I view as horrible.

[Pericles]

Covid shouldn't be a morality play. This pandemic has been a disaster and nobody should have died of this awful disease. A lot of these deaths also wouldn't have happened if the Delta variant hadn't arisen, since the US was barely above 10,000 cases and the immunity that the already vaccinated provided was doing the job. The difficult policy question is how many lives must be saved to make it worthwhile to restrict the freedoms of the vaccinated and harm the economy for everyone. These choices are different, and in some ways even harder, than they were before these great vaccines were available.

[charieslec]

Imagine actually defending this. But it was obvious we'd have some really bad takes here. Now let's wait for the comments justifying the existence of this subreddit because "it convinces lots of antivaxxers to get vaccinated" when in reality, the average user of the subreddit is a sociopath.


Take 10 minutes of your time to read some threads there and you'll see things like this:

"Umm....I can sign up on the "Trump supporters get the Hydroxychloroquine" thing..." (412 likes)

"So, you are saying; sit back, pop a cold one, and enjoy the show?

"I can sign up on that too. "

This is normal there, absolutely normal. It's not just about making fun of the dead, it goes far beyond that.


Here's what I think and it's very simple: You don't have to respect antivaxxers. You don't have to feel bad if they die, it's fine. But you can avoid mocking dead people on the internet/posting their photos for entertainment. Just let them rest in peace and respect their FAMILIES. I don't think it's too much too ask.

[progressive85]

Terrible.  Just terrible.

I'm not happy at all they're dead.

It's AWFUL.  this ing Plague is a mess...

this is not a cause for joy, its so depressing that we still live like this 2 years later.... when it is gonna finally end?!!??!?!?!?!

[TrumpBritt24]

It's a great sub and one I browse often. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. They brought it on themselves.

I can't wait to say this when the next unarmed minority gets shot by a cop, and for you to call me a racist, and for the wheels on the bus to go round and round.

I shouldn't have to explain why these are in no way similar, but here we are I guess. George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Daunte Wright, and so many others were executed by the Police. They did not do anything that any reasonable person would consider worthy of death. They posed no threat to the lives of the officers involved, nor did they do anything to suggest to the officer that they did. No action they made could possibly make their deaths justified. Anti-vaxxers know the risks COVID poses. They know that there is a free and easy to access way to virtually guarantee safety from COVID. They knowingly opt not to get the vaccine, and sometimes they pay the price for it. It is a direct consequence of a decision they made, and I do not feel any sadness when their choice bites the in the ass. The end.

Bad person deserved it go brrrrrrrrrrrr!

Not getting vaccinated requires much poorer judgment than avoiding being shot by people who you are expendable to.

Nah, I don't see any difference. Victim bad!

[beaver2.0]

I certainly understand the sense of "Well, I told you so" associated with these anti-vaxxer deaths.  However, that does not mean we should mock people who have died, no matter how odious they are.  There is nothing to gain from that.

[Person Man]

Comparing shaming people who literally  gave their lives to destroy this country’s public health to celebrating police brutality or racist medical experimentation, especially taking this in some Godwinian direction, I don’t get…I just don’t. Or for that matter to making fun of people dying because of an addiction (obesity included). I guess you could compare dying from being a conspiracy theorist to dying from AIDS because you were super hecking gay in 1982 or something like that but being a conspiracy theorist is a choice and it isn’t some, by the preponderance of the evidence, a reasonably believable natural variation of the human condition like being LGBT is. So that’s not really a good analogy either. Maybe if we started treating this like a mental illness or disability rather than a legitimate position or cultural identity, I could have more empathy for these people instead of believing it’s appropriate to shame them. At this point, asking me to have empathy for COVID conspiracy theorists is like asking me to emphasize with drunk drivers. At best, it’s like asking me to give up my seat on a plane for your small dog or at worst literally telling me you think you are better than me and want to fight me or something.

[Indy Texas]

I wonder why some people might not trust the United States Government...

It's not like they've ever done human medical experimentation on African-Americans under the guise of treating them. A federal regulatory agency never approved a flying death trap out of expedience and tried to blame the victims when it crashed, either.

Go ahead and attack politicians who engage in demagoguery, but celebrating the death of the little guy, whether through COVID or engaging in deeply misguided rioting at the Capitol, is f**king disgusting.

No one is being "experimented" on.

If the COVID vaccines are so dangerous, why did Donald Trump and Joe Biden and Mike Pence and Kamala Harris get it?

Why have all the Republicans who are pandering to the anti-vaxxers quietly gotten themselves vaccinated?

[Secretary of State Liberal Hack]

Incredibly distasteful and petualant. I wouldn't want to be associated with anyone who participates in such a community.

[MaximaEt_Illustratum]

I wonder why some people might not trust the United States Government...

It's not like they've ever done human medical experimentation on African-Americans under the guise of treating them. A federal regulatory agency never approved a flying death trap out of expedience and tried to blame the victims when it crashed, either.

Go ahead and attack politicians who engage in demagoguery, but celebrating the death of the little guy, whether through COVID or engaging in deeply misguided rioting at the Capitol, is f**king disgusting.

No one is being "experimented" on.

If the COVID vaccines are so dangerous, why did Donald Trump and Joe Biden and Mike Pence and Kamala Harris get it?

Why have all the Republicans who are pandering to the anti-vaxxers quietly gotten themselves vaccinated?

It's not only Republicans who are anti-vaxxers. Minorities, particularly African-American, have far lower vaccination rates. Many AA are anti-vaxxers because of the us's history of killing them under the guise of treating them.

[Person Man]

I wonder why some people might not trust the United States Government...

It's not like they've ever done human medical experimentation on African-Americans under the guise of treating them. A federal regulatory agency never approved a flying death trap out of expedience and tried to blame the victims when it crashed, either.

Go ahead and attack politicians who engage in demagoguery, but celebrating the death of the little guy, whether through COVID or engaging in deeply misguided rioting at the Capitol, is f**king disgusting.

No one is being "experimented" on.

If the COVID vaccines are so dangerous, why did Donald Trump and Joe Biden and Mike Pence and Kamala Harris get it?

Why have all the Republicans who are pandering to the anti-vaxxers quietly gotten themselves vaccinated?

It's not only Republicans who are anti-vaxxers. Minorities, particularly African-American, have far lower vaccination rates. Many AA are anti-vaxxers because of the us's history of killing them under the guise of treating them.

That’s a major problem with marketing and at this point, many of these people need to start seeing these conspiracy theories as something violating their Civil Rights rather the vaccine that members of all levels of privilege have participated in.