They Died from Covid. Then the Online Attacks Started
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
1. Celebrating the deaths of people who didn’t get vaccinated because they were pro.
2. Mocking the deaths of anyone who died from Covid under the assumption that it’s being politically over-labeled.
There’s a sign in a funeral home in my hometown with a quote that leaves me very disturbed about our future. “Show me the manner in which a nation or a community cares for its dead and I will measure with mathematical exactness the tender sympathies of its people, their respect for the laws of the land and their loyalty to high ideals.”
- William E. Gladstone
I still feel bad for their families. Not only did they lose a loved one, they learned the relative value their loved one placed on their lives. That is tragic.
I am vaccinated but I don't believe unvaccinated people endanger me or other unvaccinated people, nor that we should mandate vaccination, especially not for young people. I assume that sooner or later we will have a conflict, it is fairly predictable.
The public shaming of figures like Herman Cain who contributed to the anti-vaccination discourse that is leading to thousands of preventable deaths is arguably justifiable when the person who died contributed via public statements to the spread of deadly misinformation.
https://old.reddit.com/r/HermanCainAward/
Notable rule on that subreddit:
> Posts about non-public figures must redact the entire name(s) of everyone in every image. Block it out completely. Don't scribble and allow redacted names to leak through. Profile pictures are not allowed and must be blocked out.
> "Nominees have made public declaration of their anti-mask, anti-vax, or Covid-hoax views, followed by admission to hospital for Covid"
Much of the point of the Herman Cain Award is that the award winners were mocking others for wearing masks, getting vaccinated, and socially distancing.
These anti-mask/anti-vax people have been absolutely prolific in physically assaulting (up to and including murdering) retail staff. Harassing and assaulting flight attendants, with record numbers of . Harassing school committee members and public health officials, such that meetings have had to go virtual or have police presence.
...and here we are clutching pearls because the stuff they posted publicly on social media is being reposted? And occasionally people are figuring out who they are and harassing the families?
It's worth noting that HCA posts regularly include follow-up social media posts by family members or friends expressing anger at the deceased's friends who continue espouse anti-mask/vax views, or who express regret, or encourage people to mask and vaccinate...and that from reading the sub for months, I often see a lot of comments from people empathizing with the family members and friends of the deceased.
I'm not going to ban you right now because I've noticed a few good comments in the mix*, but we badly need you to review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules if you want to keep posting here. Would you please do that? We'd appreciate it.
* e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29360124 (Nov 2021) and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27163099 (May 2021) - those are the kind of thing this site is supposed to be for!
/r/HermanCainAward is the subreddit you're referring to here.
things like /r/covidatemyface and /r/HermanCainAward/ - full of so-called progressives and their endless pseudo-empathy, not seeing this as opportunity to increase understanding about this situation and more as an tribalistic moment to "score points" and have a good laugh at the ignorance and death of others and the pain their families have to endure in the wake of their loss.
My apologies to Meta, “data wins arguments.” All of this loss (r/HCA) was mostly avoidable (based on all available information) with a free vaccine, and the subreddit raised over $56k [1] for vaccine donations to those who were not so lucky to have it freely available.
(Posted while waiting for my child’s COVID vaccination to be administered)
I would say there is some value. Our society will not survive if it is socially acceptable to do this. COVID is exhibit A. Climate science is exhibit B.
Settled scientific matters, like the usefulness of safe vaccines, is not on the same playing field as politics or religion. If there is a belief among some that settled scientific questions are a matter of non-expert public debate, then that needs to be corrected. Public shaming might help.
Settled scientific facts are not the same as politics and policy. They can be useful in determining policy, but are not a default policy. It also depends on how those facts get linked together. You need to question the n-order impacts to devise good policy.
"If there is a belief among some that settled scientific questions are a matter of non-expert public debate, then that needs to be corrected."
Policy should be debated by the people. You need an informed citizenry for democracy to function.
Sure, we can publicly shame people for just about anything (1st Ammendment). What is acceptable depends on what the group or society decides. For example, should we fat shame people to reduce healthcare costs on aggregate?
We also need to weigh societal benefit of shaming against any societal detriment like a reduction in civility.
Except that we are talking about scientific facts here, and not policy. If the political movement accepted that vaccines are seemingly safe and effective, but still rejected getting them based on some other critique, that would be a political topic. Or if say the "anti-mask" movement were solely against mask mandates, while encouraging everyone to be personally responsible and wear a mask, that would be political (I myself would have been in this camp if more people had worn respirators). But rather than making a defensible political point in the wider context of scientific reality, these movements have backstopped their positions with blatantly false scientific-seeming disinformation. And so the overall situation really is a matter of scientific facts having been politicized, and not science being used to dictate policy.
Vaccines are generally safe. There are a number of factors that an individual may weigh to consider their value. Many of the opponents are against mandates so that individuals can weigh the choice themselves.
Sure, there are people who say things that are blatantly untrue (on both sides). We can try to shame them for false information. We still have the question of how civil this shaming should be. It also depends on group/public sentiment on how useful this will be - it could be seen as a badge of honor, group think can play a role too.
And even then winds up doing more harm than good.
Best case scenario, you shame someone into compliance and then there's a good chance they harbor negative feelings over how they were treated.
Calling for people to not subject fact claims to scrutiny because they're considered settled is not a pro-science position. It's anti-science.
Matters of science don't need anyone to come to the universe's aid by telling people to give it a rest. They'll hold up.
There is a difference "subjecting fact claims to scrutiny" and people without scientific training weighing in on scientific questions.
Most people on this forum would have no problem mocking someone who believed their cell phone worked by magic. Somehow the logic is different when the topic is vaccines.
Tell Faraday.
What is the end goal? What you're describing carries a non-zero risk but provides zero benefit. To repeat: science by its nature doesn't need anyone to ensure the scales are tipped in its favor. They're welded into that position.
> Most people on this forum would have no problem mocking someone who believed their cell phone worked by magic
Should they? If you're doing something for sport, then be honest about it. Don't couch it in pro-science terms when actual belief goes the other way just because circumstances mean you can get by without having to show your work this time.
> Somehow the logic is different when the topic is vaccines.
This is pretty blatantly dipping a toe into waters of both strawmanning and ad hominem. Stop trying to read between the lines. It's not helping you get the right answer here. (I'm vaccinated. Cast your insults and aspersions somewhere else.)
That aside, there is plenty of social value to trashing people that are in the out group. If you meant is there utility for the whole population, sure, if you can guarantee that you are correct in your position and that shaming will have the desired effect. That seems unlikely in general, but especially in the case of a bunch of redditors shitting on dead people.
* Meet other people? The settled science is that you are putting others at risk of infectious disease.
* Drive a car? The settled science is that you are putting others at risk of blunt force trauma.
* Have a barbecue party? The settled science is that you are putting others at risk of food poisoning.
We know it does not protect against transmission or infection. It probably only reduces the severity of the disease. But that data is anything other than settled.
Public shaming of anyone who questions non-experts who only remain experts if they parrot the party line?
Sounds like you've moving into religion.
These follow the same general format: assorted social media posts from the subject over the course of the pandemic to the point they are hospitalized or killed by COVID, often followed by social media posts asking for help with medical bills or funeral expenses.
The social media posts are often reposting memes and agreeing with them. People are using these memes to help make medical decisions. Many seem convinced that by taking advice from memes instead their doctor, local or state departments of health, and similar that they are "doing their own research".
The first thing that surprised me was how weak many of these memes were. For example I've seen several were people seemed to be taking seriously as an anti-mask argument a meme about how underpants and pants can't stop people nearby from smelling your fart so why would you expect a mask to stop a virus?
I don't expect everyone to remember enough from their school days to remember that we sense odor by sensing individual molecules emitted by the source of odor, that these are often quite small (one of the major fart smell molecules just has 3 atoms), and that viruses are much larger (the smallest virus has almost 30k atoms, and the COVID-19 virus has about 6700x as many as that).
But I'd expect everyone, before deciding that a meme is a better info source than the doctor, health departments, etc., to do at least a little checking like Googling what causes farts to smell and Googling the COVID virus and then seeing that the former is a lot smaller, and so yes you should expect some difference in what it takes to filter them.
Furthermore, a lot of these people seem to have quite a few social media friends. So even if they fail to do all of the above I'd expect them to have at least one friend who either remembers how odors and viruses work or who looks it up and warns them that the meme is giving bad advice.
I knew social media exposes you to a lot more misinformation than you would normally get, but I had thought that for people with many social media friends that large friend group would somewhat counter that but that doesn't seem to be the case. For some reason it seems people's friend groups on social media are too homogenous, and so the same weak meme gets them all.
It's similar for most of the other memes common on these posts. Most are as flawed as the fart one, I would have expected a fair number of people to see the flaws immediately just from general knowledge from middle school or high school, and if not I'd have expected many to do the small amount of research to check it out, and for those who do neither I'd have expected some of the friends to do so and post. Seeing how far off my expectations were has been an eye opener.
This is a similar attack coming from the polar side of the political spectrum. You cannot claim the moral high-ground after this.
If the pro-vaccine left does not distance itself from this ugly evil within their midsts, it should go a similar route as the alt-right did, in the eyes of the public: a terrorist and fascist organization.
Should really make you pause the next time someone on Twitter points to a target and says: do your thing.
"the pro-vaccine left [should be seen as] a terrorist and fascist organization"
is insane.
Vaccines are mostly advocated by the technocratic center. There are things to be annoyed at this faction about, but they're not extreme and they're not bad.
Arguably, they're not even especially "left".
And the tribal Democrats who gloat about COVID, while shitty, are not even the dangerous/radical part of that party. They're just the stupid ones, the "football fans".
Yes, they should be told not to act like this. But in the long run they can be ignored.
Who is "you"? An individual decrying the trolling of suicide victims while themselves trolling COVID victims? Then yes, you're right. But "the alt-right" is not a single person, nor is whatever their polar opposite is. This fallacy is at the heart of virtually all political bitterness. I do believe when something horrible happens and is highly correlated with a political group, leaders of that group should denounce it, but when something horrible happens in group A and a similar horrible thing happens in group B, that doesn't inherently mean that anybody is a hypocrite. It just means that horrible people are members of both groups.
This says a lot about you, and makes me suspicious about your posts.
You either assume that someone with a different view is lying, that they don't even believe in their own views, because these are obviously wrong.
Or you are unable to treat posts in good faith, suspecting a commercial incentive.
So, you can not contribute anything to this community. If you disagree, it is because you disagree with liars. And who treats something in good faith, when they suspect the other person is not acting in good faith?
Your suspicion should make you conclude that you have nothing of value to contribute and should look for a community where everybody agrees or promises to act in good faith.
It is quite rude to tell someone that they have absolutely nothing to add just because they confess they have trouble seeing a benign motivation behind your post.
Clearly they have something to contribute: a viewpoint that is their own, that they are willing to talk about without undue animosity.