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 should have listened to her friends, and especially the nurse. 

It all started promisingly enough, with our friend Red asking what people thought about the vaccine. 

However, it became quite clear, quite quickly, that she wasn’t actually undecided. 

All perfectly reasonable concerns. On one hand, you have the entire medical and scientific establishment behind the vaccines; on the other hand, you have YouTube videos of people sticking spoons to their face and claiming the vaccine made them “magnetic.” 

Ah yes, it’s totally suspicious that the FDA approved it, unlike all the other meds she almost assuredly takes that were approved by the … (checks notes) … FDA. 

Maybe she saw that stupid meme claiming the FDA approved cigarettes. (False, obviously.)

So clearly she just wanted her fears validated. And so many were happy to oblige. It’s a toxic circle of self-reinforcing disinformation. 

THE FDA APPROVED IT AND THEY APPROVED BAD THINGS AND THE CDC ADMITTED STUFF BUT I WON’T OFFER A CITATION, JUST MAKE THE CLAIM AND YOU READ THIS COMMENT AND ‘DID YOUR OWN RESEARCH.’

Also, they don’t understand how studies work. By not taking the vaccine, they are literally the control group. Who needs a placebo group when we have asshats happy to willingly endanger themselves? That’s why we know, without any doubt, that today’s pandemic is a pandemic of the unvaccinated. 

Honestly, I continue mitigation strategies not to avoid infecting the unvaccinated. They’ve made their choice. And yes, I am mindful that small children and some immunocompromised people can’t vaccinate, and I appreciate that I help keep them safer. But the biggest reason I remain extra cautious? Because I don’t want to get sick. I don’t want COVID, no matter how ‘mild” the symptoms would likely be given my age, health, and triple-jabs. I don’t want the flu. I don’t want the common cold—I just had one last week and I hated it. I don’t even want a paper cut. Can I get a paper-cut vaccine, please? 

It was nice going two years without any illness until last week. So if all I have to do to maximize my health is to wear a mask and keep a reasonable distance away from people? Easy! 

There are so many things I don’t understand about conservatives, and this is one of them—why will yourself to get sick when it’s so easy to avoid? I mean, “I had it last year and I recovered” is so nonsensical a rationalization to me. I had the flu like five years ago and I wanted to die. I DON’T WANT IT EVER AGAIN. It’s like getting hit in the head with a baseball bat and being like, “I survived, so I’m good getting hit again.” Or “I was already shot and the bullet didn’t kill me, so I’m fine getting shot again.” WHO THINKS THAT WAY?

THEY are the control group. And it’s not looking good for them.

Ah look, this friend agrees with me! This person and their mate had COVID and were like FUCK THAT we ain’t going through that again! They vaccinated. They’re also neighborly, don’t want to hurt other people. All so sensible! And the response? 

Crickets. 

Oh look, a medical professional—probably a nurse, maybe a doctor. She or he has first-hand experience on the frontlines of the pandemic. The advise is sage, and easily backed up by data. The response? 

Tumbleweeds. 

Another health care worker! This woman has good friends, with good knowledge and information! The problem was that Red wasn’t actually looking for actual advice. She wanted her own decision validated, and these stupid friends were just getting in the way of that. She had already Done Her Own Research (TM), and no actual professional or experts would pry her away from whatever shit she saw on her Facebook stream. 

It would end up being a costly mistake. 

She was warned this was a possibility. But hey, the vaccine was approved by the FDA, which was so suspicious. 

If there’s a god, you know she’s up there, head in her hands as she mutters, “I sent them a fucking vaccine—what more do they want?”

Does it ever sink in, at any moment, that perhaps a lack of sufficient prayers isn’t really the problem? 

Enter her son. He’s under-employed, does “marketing” for a small podcast which “discuss[es] everything from conspiracy theories to other random subjects,” and is half-assedly looking for a flexible part-time job in his small Pennsylvania town. He has a Meatloaf “Bat out of Hell” tattoo, but never mentioned COVID when he memorialized him on his Facebook feed.

We saw him above, responding to his mom’s question, reinforcing her refusal to take the vaccine by claiming he had already gotten it and had recovered, so why worry? He also claimed the CDC had admitted to making up numbers, which is clearly something he saw on some meme. As you’re about to see, he’s not going to take his mother’s hospitalization well.

His mother didn’t take the vaccine, so why is he foaming at the mouth about the companies and taking them? If the vaccines don’t work, and he and his family didn’t take them, then so what? 

Problem is, at some deeper level, they know that they’ve fucked up. So they have to reinforce their a priori position by reiterating the misinformation the led them astray in the first place. 

“Your mom wouldn’t be in the hospital if she had vaccinated.” 

OH YEAH THEY ARE CRIMINAL IT DOESN’T WORK JAIL FAUCI. 

Politicians are absolutely getting sick. HIS BOY DONALD TRUMP got COVID. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has it right now. But of course, there are no Facebook memes informing him of vaccinated politicians having mild-to-no-symptom cases. 

On the other hand, the mis- and disinformation machine loves to dramatically amplify every breakthrough case to underscore the notion that vaccines don’t work. Well, they were never billed as absolute infallible protection against the virus. We were excited when clinical trials pegged the mRNA vaccine effectiveness in the low 90s, but that still meant that 1 in 10 vaccinated people were likely to catch it. Breakthrough cases aren’t that rare, or even notable if the symptoms remain zero to mild. 

But again, her son has that voice torturing him from the back of his skull, telling him that it’s his fault for encouraging his parents to remain unvaccinated. So he has to continuously reinforce his shaky belief that the vaccines really don’t work. 

Yet even here, he is confused. In his simplistic black-and-white view of the situation, if vaccinated politicians aren’t getting sick, then there has to be a vaccine that works. 

Yeah, he’s losing his shit. 

The big irony, of course, being that had they listened to Fauci, odds are good his mother wouldn’t be in dire straits. He tried to save her life, and they are furious about it, to the point of wishing him dead. 

SICK PEOPLE IN THE HOSPITAL ALWAYS GET BETTER BUT IF THEY DON’T IT’S SUSPICIOUS THE HOSPITALS ARE KILLING THEM. 

When stuff like this pops up, I usually say, “If they don’t like it, why go to the hospital? Why not go to church and find someone to pump them up with horse dewormer?” And yes, that still applies here. But it does bear noting that we have seen a marked increase in these stories where people are dying at home, afraid to go to the hospital. So this mis- and disinformation machine is now short-circuiting even basic survival instincts. 

Red might be in the hospital, but Blue and those four dumbasses who liked that comment might be less likely to go to the hospital when it’s their turn with a serious illness. 

He has to blame others, otherwise he’d have to look at himself in the mirror. 

Three simple jabs, and his parents wouldn’t need Remdesivir or ventilators or ICU beds or any of that stuff. 

MY MOM WAS FINE UNTIL SHE GOT SICK AND HAD TO GO TO THE HOSPITAL. WHYYYYYY???!!!

And if you ever wondered what “doing your own research” means, it means asking Dr. Facebook instead of, you know, digging up the studies and information readily available online. 

Like this. 

You know what costs less than a dose of Remdesivir? 

You all know. 

Meanwhile, there isn’t a single country that uses horse dewormer to treat COVID. But he read somewhere that India was dosing Ivermectin and of course it’s now “common knowledge” in these Facebook circles. Not true, of course. One of the sources of that bit of disinformation? Jim Hoft of the Gateway Pundit, literally the dumbest man online. 

We literally have all the vaccination information. Here it is for Pfizer. It’s all public information. Of course we know “what’s in it”; the ingredients aren’t secret. In fact, they have memes that list the ingredients in an attempt to scare people away from vaxxing. Like this one: 

Not understanding what’s in it is not the same thing as not knowing what’s in it, as this funny exchange illustrates: 

As I post this, Red is holding on; no update on her husband. But her son keeps posting about how she’s “getting worse,” so the prognosis isn’t good. She’s on the vent, so yeah, not good. 

All of it could have been avoided with a simple jab, but rather than point to any redemption, all signs point to increased radicalization and calls to violence against all the people who supposedly wronged this family by warning them about the dangers of the pandemic.