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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThe Unbelievable Grimness of HermanCainAward, the Subreddit That Catalogs Anti-Vaxxer COVID Deaths
This is not a forum that attempts to change minds. Its much darker.
By Lili Loofbourow
HermanCainAward, one of the fastest-growing subreddits on Reddit.com, is exactly what it sounds like: an archive of those who have been hospitalized and/or killed by COVID and didnt believe the disease could harm them. It is named after Republican Herman Cain, the onetime candidate for president who succumbed to COVID some weeks after attending a Trump rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, at which he was photographed maskless in the summer of 2020. Cains Twitter account would continue to downplay the virus even after his death.
The Herman Cain Award concept is simple and ugly. A single entry to the subreddit consists of anywhere between two and 16 screenshots of a social media profile (usually Facebook, with last names scrubbed out) belonging to someone who died after aggressively rejecting precautions that could have protected them and others. The idea is to track the individuals journey from COVID theory, so to speak, to COVID practice: what a person posted or commented about masks or shots, or those who advocated for either before getting sick, and how they and their community narrated their disease once they were ill. As the forum has grown, entries have started following a fairly standard format: The first few screenshots typically feature the individual in question deploying a remarkably consistent set (there are 30 or so) of memes. Some vilify Dr. Anthony Fauci or champion the right to be unvaccinated. Others warn people theyre experimental rats or offer scripts that will properly punish wait staff for daring to inquire about vaccination status. Some deride masked liberals as sheep and the unvaccinated as proud free lions or refer to immigrants as vectors of disease or compare vaccination requirements to the Holocaust. Most of them treat the pandemic as a joke and frame ignoring it as brave or clever or both. The final few screenshots typically announce the disease, its progress, and the eventual death announcement, frequently followed by a GoFundMe for the family. If someone is merely hospitalized, the flair on that entry reads Nominated. When they die, it changes to Awarded.
It is cruel, a site for heartless and unrepentant schadenfreude. This is a place where deaths are celebrated, and it is not the only one. While endless ink has been spilled on the anger of Trump voters and Fox News viewers and QAnon adherents, there are other angers that havent been nearly as well explored. The exhaustion and fury doctors and nurses feel, for example, as they deal yet again with overwhelmed ICUs. Instead of being hailed as heroes, this time around theyre risking their lives to serve while walking through anti-vax protesters and being called murderers or worse by misled family members demanding or indeed suing for sick unvaccinated relatives on ventilators to be dosed with ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine or vitamin C. There is the anger of family members of those without COVID who are dying or sicker than they should be because treatment was delayed or denied to them at dozens of hospitals that had no beds available. Theres the frustration of parents trying to keep their children safe, the constant, destabilizing calculations and adaptations people are forced into when (for instance) the governor of Texas prohibits schools from taking safety measures and then two teachers at a single school die, forcing closures once again. Theres the run-of-the-mill anger of those weary of living under pandemic conditions and demoralizedin the most literal senseby the selfishness of their compatriots.
Subscriptions to the HermanCainAward subreddit are increasing exponentially, from 2,000 subscribers on July 4 to 5,000 at the beginning of August to more than 100,000 on Sept. 1 to 243,000 Friday to 276,000 today. If that rate is any indication, rage is growing toward anti-vaxxers deliberately prolonging the pandemic out of an anti-social and deadly understanding of their rights. Now, its true that not everyone on the subreddit assents to its spiteful premise: One exhausted nurse wrote a long post about how much one of her anti-vax patients suffered, as an attempt at counterbalance. She acknowledged her own compassion fatigue but also urged readers to think harder about how we got to this sorry pass. Plenty of the discussions do orbit around that basic question. But most of the comments are angry. A collection of screenshots generally elicits a common sentiment: The person got their just desserts.
https://slate.com/technology/2021/09/hermancainaward-subreddit-antivaxxer-deaths-cataloged.html
( I posted this story for several reasons...as our society comes to grips with a pandemic and is fortunate to have a remedy that is free we begin to feel many emotions when people refuse it. I for one have no patience with my nephew who will not have his teen vaccinated, yet begs for sympathy from other vaccinated family members to continue to have family gatherings with them. I refuse to do so and hope vaccine mandates will make it near impossible for people to refuse the vaccine.)
Ziggysmom
(3,406 posts)accept the truth in science. Their stupidity would be funny if their poor family members were not suffering due to it.
BeckyDem
(8,361 posts)Our obligation to each other is to end the pandemic, they see it otherwise.
hatrack
(59,583 posts)It's "cruel" to be the dog wagged by its gangrenous tail for a fucking YEAR and counting, as the dead keep piling up, day after day and week after week?
It's "cruel" to be unwilling to accept the idea that stupid, ignorant people should somehow be ordained to dictate how the rest of us live because they're "Real Americans" and we're not?
Whatever. All out of sympathy.
BeckyDem
(8,361 posts)the enormous difficulty their refusals have on human emotions.
ProfessorPlum
(11,256 posts)who read the HCAs.
MiHale
(9,721 posts)Its the anti-vaxxers taking away peoples freedom too self-involved to see it.
BeckyDem
(8,361 posts)Johnny2X2X
(19,041 posts)It's just unreal, but I don't think their deaths are teaching many people not directly associated with them a lesson. The Right is incapable of empathy and learning from others' misfortunes.
As you scroll through the story, what strikes me is the hatefulness. It will be an anti vaxxer posting nasty and evil things about Biden/Fauci/anyone who is pro vaccine. Then the person will get sick, they'll beg for prayer warriors. Then when they die, it's a post about how great of a person they were and how they loved everyone. No! We just saw a sample of their social media, they weren't a great person, they didn't love everyone, they were a hateful ignorant goon whose entire being seemed wrapped up in selfishness and posting memes that are hurtful and evil.
Of course, the majority of them then have someone start a GoFundme for their family to handle the expenses of the illness. The few who survive and then say get vaccinated are still not sorry for what they've done to others. It's still outside their field of vision that they should not just be sorry for the harm they caused themselves, but for the harm they caused others. Just no moral compass, no awareness that the garbage they had a hand in spreading killed people.
I hate what this is doing to me. Because reading those stories is cathartic, but it leaves me feeling that the world is a better place now that these people are not in it. That's not something I am proud to feel. This appeals to the worst part of my humanity. But there is good too, there's a lot of stories of people reading the Reddit and then changing their minds an getting vaccinated.
BeckyDem
(8,361 posts)no patience left either but I do believe we must talk about it. Talk about what their refusal to be vaccinated means for us at present and the future...we should all have had a common cause. Ending the pervasive nature of the variants should have been more than enough for a society to join forces together. The remedy is FREE..but here we are.
GusBob
(7,286 posts)But your point about,, " he was such a great person" after they died.....they said that about that radio host in Colorado who would play "another one bites the dust" during the AIDS epidemic, made me sick
Scrivener7
(50,949 posts)A primary characteristic of those who "do their own research" is monstrous hubris.
The site is a counterpoint to that hubris.
BeckyDem
(8,361 posts)that difficulty.
Crunchy Frog
(26,579 posts)as I would expect from a Slate article. They might wish to spare a little bit of their shock and outrage for the people that are driving this insanity, like the governors from Florida and Texas and other red states, to the major media figures like Tucker Carlson.
The site is in fact making a positive difference, as there has been a recent slew of posts from vaccine hesitant people who have finally decided to get vaccinated after reading the site.
It is definitely a place for catharsis and venting of anger, and maybe that doesn't look pretty. Most normal people are sick and tired of our country being held hostage by the people who choose to keep the pandemic raging. We've spent the past six years getting constantly lectured about the anger of the T***p supporters. They need to come to terms with the fact that other people are starting to get really angry too.
Here's the link if anyone wants to check it out. https://www.reddit.com/r/HermanCainAward/
BeckyDem
(8,361 posts)Why is it raw? Because we are living a pandemic where refusal to be vaccinated has proven not merely a death sentence but will continue to threaten our ability to reach herd immunity. That said, thank you for the link.
GusBob
(7,286 posts)Cain's twitter account continued to downplay the virus even after his death
Edit, yet at the end of the article it mentions Cain promoted masks and social distancing on his radio show
This is a very intense article
BeckyDem
(8,361 posts)roamer65
(36,745 posts)Zero sympathy for the award winners.
hlthe2b
(102,225 posts)She too has a young dog that she constantly frets over and I've felt compelled to stop and reassure her from time to time even though she's always been a bit irritating and self-absorbed. She provides some kind of services to celebrities, even while living in Colorado, and, in fact, was part of those supporting Clive Davis in his efforts to put on the Central Park concert rained out by the recent hurricane. So, she flies constantly.
While I really didn't feel like stopping yesterday as my own dog has developed a limp that I was anxious to get home and access, I stopped a moment to ask her how her travel has gone. She IMMEDIATELY launched into an angry tirade about "the communistic" mask orders and vaccine requirements at restaurants in San Francisco as well as traveling on planes. She no more than got the word "communist" out of the mouth then I said, I have to go and that I support public health attempts to save lives including through mask mandates and vaccines, turned on my heels, and started home. That apparently shocked her and I could hear her yelling after me that she believed in vaccines and whatever other excuse, but I just kept on going towards home. Anything I would have said beyond that would have made no difference, but at least she has had the experience of someone not tolerating that kind of bullshit discourse.
I understand the anger as more of my colleagues in the ERs have faced death threats (beyond the constant threat of being around so much COVID) as well as those desperately trying to perform public health in this environment.
Should those venting on Reddit feel "guilty" for doing so at the expense of others' suffering? Well, I'm no theologian. All I can say is that I fully understand why they do so.
BeckyDem
(8,361 posts)Venting and looking at it for what it is essential imho.
GusBob
(7,286 posts)Its not like they are cheering car wrecks, plane crashes or executions even...
There is venting as you say, frustration at so many things (the ignorance and the on going pandemic), the fear that someday despite vaccinations it could be you or someone you know
BeckyDem
(8,361 posts)themaguffin
(3,826 posts)Cuthbert Allgood
(4,916 posts)this is awesome. I've taken part in death pools in various years. I have $5 on Trump to die before Putin though my sports betting site. Nothing wrong with this. I'm pushing 60, so I've lived long enough to know not everyone enjoys things that are dark, but a lot of us do.
DenaliDemocrat
(1,475 posts)This sub and Leopards Ate My Face and COVIDiots. = pure gold
liberal_mama
(1,495 posts)documenting this stupidity for future generations. It is important to bear witness to history. Also some people that are on the fence about the vaccination and Covid precautions might be swayed by the well documented stories of covidiots having bad outcomes posted on this subreddit. There is also a Herman Cain Award group on Facebook.
dalton99a
(81,455 posts)If they want to die, they should do it at home and practice what they preach: Modern medicine is evil - Avoid doctors and hospitals.
Stupid, selfish fuckers
BeckyDem
(8,361 posts)is telling us how best to prepare for the future. These same people don't call their elected reps and tell them to do what is necessary to curtail the impact of climate change. When I saw Moms screaming for no masks, I was convinced humans are the greatest threat on earth.
ProfessorPlum
(11,256 posts)The author says the subreddit does not aim to change minds, but then notes that a lot of people announce their vaccines and change their minds after reading it. It talks about how "cruel" the site is, without noting that most of the cruelty comes from the anti-vaxxers themselves.
It scolds the readers, then notes how frustrating and scary what the antiva idiots are doing to themselves. So why the arrogant, scolding tone?