This 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 was a Texas retired firefighter and paramedic. 

Were other vaccines not urgent or needed? Uh, yeah. This dude took them all to attend school.

What are other countries doing? A lot more. And why would an “America First” person care what other countries are doing? 

Why does he care who gets it first, if he’s passing on it anyway? 

Will the vaccine cost more? Uh, no. Didn’t cost anything. 

The fact that he passed when these “questions” were so easily answered is proof that they were never asked in good faith. About the only good thing that could be said is that he wasn’t ranting against the Mark of the Beast and 5G microchips. 

In other words, this guy had more sense than Robert Kennedy Jr. 

LOL at the idea that the virus “disappeared” from China. But as far as memes go, it’s a clever twist on the “anti-COVID measures are communism” narrative. 

Although maybe it’s not so clever, if you’re admitting that communism is the best way to safeguard the population against a deadly global pandemic. 

Wearing a mask is just like white violence against Black women. 

This was some serious assholery going on in this guy’s Facebook feed.

Turns out, no one is indefinitely good to go, hence the boosters. 

Oh yeah, more racism. Why not? 

So this guy is a total asshole, right? Irresponsible, arrogant, ignorant, and stupid. 

Just four weeks later:

And 10 days later: 

Woah.

WOAH.

Holy shit. 

I was really hating this guy, but this… this is tragic. 

I can’t fathom knowing you were going to die, yet still being able to bid everyone on your social media adieu, and then doing it with an unambiguous plea for people to do the very thing he had spent two years mocking. 

Redemption stories are so rare, yet here we are, perhaps the most impactful one yet. 

“I’m going to die. Love you all. Don’t do the thing I did.”

Wow. 

It’s easy to hate on these people, but they are victims of the disinformation they consume on Facebook, Fox News, OANN, and all their other reality-altering “news” outlets. He was a firefighter, a paramedic, yet this propaganda overrode his life’s purpose of saving people. Worse, it led him to actively endanger everyone around him.

He lasted two weeks after his last “this is the end of the line for me” post. He likely wrote it before getting intubated, knowing darn well his chances of emerging on the other side of life support were slim. 

If that’s his legacy, convincing other holdouts to vaccinate, then his death will not have been totally wasted, as is the case with most of these stories.