I couldn’t appreciate your disingenuous and lopsided review of the sub Reddit. Your premise that we’re all in it together as one that is immediately abandoned by the nominees themselves and deftly chronicled by the posters who do an excellent job of summarizing their horrible racist sexist misogynistic bigoted history of Facebook posting.
Your hyperbolic reach to make this about eugenics is ridiculous. They make fun of the victims because they thought they were healthy enough to not need a vaccine. You present it like they were singled out for deaths because of their physical characteristics.
You’re an idiot on the level that they are. Except I suspect that they are more ignorant, and you like the purveyors of Covid disinformation, are doing it for your own fame and profit. Shame on you.
You are so focused on a few people who are insulting peoples weight, yet instead of using overweight have called them fat in every description you’ve used. Get a grip.
As you also insult the overweight, you have said zero about the numerous comments of dismay, sadness, and compassion. Nothing about the countless tales of nurses who deal with this or how it’s overwhelming our hospitals.
You ignore that during Trump’s administration there was blatant hatred for non-conservatives and how they were dismissed as humans and referred to using animals as descriptions. This is where bluntness built its wings. The seeds were planted and now you don’t like what’s being reaped.
You think even one of the people awarded would do any of the things you’re saying in your article? I don’t agree with the negative comments and read the posts with grief and fear. I have too many loved ones who could easily be “rewarded” thanks to misinformation from people like you.
You are not saving people by defending comments about IYW’s “fat” people. You are killing people by not focusing on getting them to do what will keep them safer.
Stop deflecting from your misguided attempts at defending bigots. Yes, it's shitty that some people decided that it was appropriate to make lazy jokes about somebody being fat, but you trying to make these people who are viscerally racist, homophobic, transphobic, and anti-Semitic seem like innocent victims is also absolutely repulsive, arguably even more so than the quips about fat people.
People who are racist, homophobic, transphobic, and anti-Semitic (by your definition) don't deserve to die for their beliefs (again, as interpreted by HCA members).
You're misconstruing stuff again, which leads me to believe that perhaps your username is not quite as neutral as you really are.
People called out by HCA actively endanger other people.
People who are racist, homophobic, transphobic and anti-Semitic on the other hand, are just assholes. Disgusting assholes whose beliefs can hurt other people, but at the very least, their beliefs aren't actively hurting other people the way HCA nominees are.
Apples and oranges Observer. Apples and Oranges. Makes me wonder why you keep trying to correlate the two together.
100%. And what is the point many obese people, with asthma got Covid and survived, such as myself. Being poor and unhealthy is not a death sentence or worthy of one.
A lot of people in this here comment section seem to believe that people with shitty beliefs deserve to die for it I guess.
Okay.
That's not going to stop the people who actively profit off those shit beliefs, who inculcate the vaccine hesitancy and distrust of medicine to hock bogus cures or vitamin supplements. Nor will it break up the tech companies that shoved this propaganda at people during an emotionally vulnerable time to take advantage of their attention for their own obscene profits.
These dead grandparents aren't the source of the problem. Aim higher.
Its their now dying devotion to killing the rest of us that illicits the rage, stealing our resources, our time, deliberately spreading lies & misinformation -- all while we have stood by trying to help them. They can only spit in our faces so many times..
By all means, be mad. But be mad because you couldn't help them, or that they wouldn't let themselves be helped. They're sick, or dead. Their loved ones are grieving, or sick, or dying themselves. They aren't winning anything. All of this sucks and killing the part of you that flinches when someone is suffering won't make it any better.
Who appointed you the arbiter of all targets of anger in this pandemic? How dare you imply that this healthcare worker’s anger is misdirected. Try filling their shoes for a week or two and come back and let us know if you’re still flinching.
These are soulless subhuman animals that looked at their children and said 'you are not worth this shot that MILLIONS have taken safely'. They get what they deserve but their children and the medical personnel that treat them for MONTHS in some cases DO NOT.
Bold accusation to assume that everyone who subscribes is entertained by their deaths. I for one read them to see any little thing that I can figure out to use to convince my loved ones who haven’t been vaccinated to get it.
I spend too much time worrying if my loved ones natural immunity will be enough. I shouldn’t have to worry about losing people I love from a mostly preventable virus.
If there’s one thing a person who has lost someone finally realizes or better, if a stanch anti-vaxxer says something that gets just one peer to listen; I’ll read every post.
It’s not entertaining. It’s depressing, sad, and completely unnecessary deaths.
99% of the posts on the subreddit shows social media reposts and shares of misinformation from grifters like Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson. The subreddit frequently highlights and collates these posts.
We are aiming higher while also showcasing the victims, most of whom are anti-abortion, anti-gun-control, extremely transphobic, homophobic, and racist. The more the world knows that these people have suffered and died from trusting the words of these grifters, the better. And r/HCA is doing that.
I don't get you, Talia. You wrote so eloquently about how these antivaxxers misappropriate the victims of Nazi by wearing the star of David and sharing holocaust memes and yet you think some redditors have gone too far by pointing out (correctly) that these people didn't have a clue their obesity might kill them even without getting Covid-19?
Look, we all have our triggers. I get triggered every time someone on r/HCA says "dead cat bounce" because I love cats more than I love humans, but as a queer immigrant POC, I also get extremely triggered (and scared for my life) when every one of these nominees and awardees share how much they hate trans and queer people, how much they're against "critical race theory," and how low they regard immigrants.
So I just look past the "dead cat bounce" comments and focus on the fact that there's one less person who might come up to me and do bad things because my existence and identity are an affront to their belief.
"A lot of people in this here comment section seem to believe that people with shitty beliefs deserve to die for it I guess."
Nobody deserves to die for their beliefs. But if putting your beliefs into practice kills you due to those beliefs being shitty, then you only have yourself to blame.
We have known what this virus is and how its spread for two years now. And we've had a vaccine for one. We have people who have spit in the face of both of these. They called people trying to get the virus under control criminals and Nazis. They said that the vaccinated would be dead in a few years. They knew, or they should have known, the consequences of their stupidity.
Now, many of them are dead. They will be remembered, if at all, as being morons. They don't get to live to keep pushing the goalpost on their claim of vaccine lethality.
I am a severely disabled person living in Europe. I have stayed home since the pandemic started except for vaccine and other necessary appointments. It's a scary shit show.
While it is not quite as bad (yet) as in the States, we see a lot of the same things happening. Fewer, shorter lockdowns are one example. Seemingly not caring about exhausted healthcare or workers in general are another. Politicians abdicating responsibility and fully bowing to business owners and doing everything in their power to keep things up and running, dying people be damned.
The careless disregard of vulnerable life, of life that is deemed lesser-than, is disturbing. If you can't be productive for the capital owners, you are not worth keeping alive. It's always been this way under capitalism, this time around we are seeing it more explicitly.
We are under no obligation to mourn or grieve for people that have essentially signed their own death warrant. What the comments you cite point out about all of the awardees and nominees is a flagrant disregard for public safety. No one is chastising these people for being obese or having diabetes. What the posters are highlighting is that IF YOU HAVE HIGH RISK FACTORS FOR COVID and refused a free vaccine, it's your fault if you die of Covid. We're pointing out that you shouldn't go begging people for medical expenses because you were too ignorant to get yourself health insurance or protect yourself. These people deserve no sympathy, and no, we're not sorry their bigotry and ignorance is no longer in the world.
This gave me a real “Are we the baddies” moment. I was disgusted with Walensky but I too lurk on Herman Cain and privately revel in their self obliteration. Thanks for making me connect the two..
It's not because they are fat that we ridicule them. It's just shows some are extra stupid that despite multiple comorbidities they still spread anti-vax nonsense and get themselves and others killed and destroy families. I feel no remorse for people so deliberately stupid they post such hateful, racist, misogynistic, homophobic narcissistic bull crap, fat or not.
We also don't really hate goatees, ballcaps, Harleys, big trucks and guns, but when that combo together with Trump is the only thing that gives their lives meaning, I see nothing to feel bad about when they leave us. They are an infection of our society as dangerous as Covid.
Eugenics is done by people to other people. The willfully unvaccinated are doing this to themselves AND harming people who have done the right thing by getting vaccinated, in the process. Terrible analogy.
They see themselves as white, straight Christians first, and their financial status comes in at a *very* distant second as far as how they identify. You are not going to find class solidarity with them. You think they don't know that things would be better for them if they stopped voting for right wing candidates? They know, they just don't care because they'd rather LGBT people and minorities lose rights and die than their own lives improve. These people would burn their own homes down so long as they could stuff their homes full of gay black people before they set it on fire.
The way these people treat anyone who disagrees with them is far more disgusting.
Maybe be upset at the people endangering others for no reason, rather than the ones calling them out for it, and encouraging others to take care of themselves.
Who do you think these conservatives have been coming after? They wanted everything reopened bedamned about the elderly and disabled. The people who can’t change their circumstances.
They have literally said in posts that they aren’t concerned about them. The old have had long lives and the disabled are a strain on resources.
Where’s your disgust for that? Wanting a civil war? Hateful comments about BIPOC and LGBTQ?
Kill the enemy comments? No one is wishing them dead or threatening to kill them. They ARE!
You’re literally describing my 17 year old nephew who, despite pleading with him over the last year to get vaccinated, refuses to do so because he’s young, naive and thinks he’s going to live forever—which is exactly how I felt at 17.
But…he just got his first job and thinks he’s underpaid making $11/hr so he’s finally coming around on the idea of a higher minimum wage.
And…his unvaxxed grandfather is currently dying in ICU of Covid so he’s coming around on the vaccine.
Life experiences are a big part of how people change their thinking. But I guarantee if he saw some of the shit y’all post on r/HCA, he’d probably think twice about getting vaxxed. Ridiculing people doesn’t work. Educating people will help but it ultimately has to be their idea.
I really enjoyed your piece and while I am only a very occasional viewer of r/HCA I appreciated your calling out the way the posters seem to take glee in the obesity and poverty of the "nominees". It looks like the comments on your post only demonstrate just how accurate your description of otherwise progressive and liberal posters as vile eugenicists actually is. I don't usually venture into the comments section, and I honestly regret having done it here.
Keep up the wonderful writing! I enjoy all your posts and am a faithful follower on Twitter. I'm cheering for you!
You should probably lurk more. We mock them for the glee they express at being willfully ignorant, obese, obtuse and obstinate, and then watching them suffer the consequences of not taking a single iota of personal responsibility to protect themselves, their neighbors and their loved ones. The vax is free. Hell, we've tried to literally bribe people to get the vax. The choice to die was there's alone.
"You cannot solve a pandemic ....by getting a jab" maybe not, but it would certainly help keep our hospital systems from collapsing. Perhaps you would see more value in getting vaccinated if someone you cared about had a heart attack or stroke right now. No ICU beds means no ICU beds for anyone. It's astonishing that everyone is to blame except the unvaccinated themselves.
You are killing me with your attitude of picking and choosing what is okay to be offended by. Blood banks are at critical levels. Hospitals are at critical levels. When will it be sufficient?
Talia is upset because we called them fat. Thus, our arguments of science, ethics, morality, statistics, etc. To Talia, none of that matters because we called them fat. Oops.
She calls them fat. She needs to recognize her own behavior. Haven’t seen her use overweight once. She’s constantly complaining about people calling people fat, by calling people fat. What a hypocrite.
I was in rural Ohio when it was time to get my booster. We had to drive 20 miles to get it and when we got there they had run out. Now imagine you are poor, no car or no money for gas. Or elderly and can’t get around/can’t drive. Or imagine your parents are poor and working all the time and you can’t drive. So yeah, it’s free, but there is still a cost that many people can’t afford. The unvaxxed are more than just the anti-vaxxed.
Long campaigns of trust building through education, testing, contact tracing, masking distancing, quarantine and lockdowns of various scale. Pandemics have never been solved through vaccines alone when a disease is so contagious. Smallpox took decades to eradicate worldwide. It doesn’t need to take that long for Covid but first we have to start by acknowledging that everything we are doing right now is wrong.
You mean the same people who screamed Communist at us for wanting universal healthcare are now dying broke AF because of their multiple bad choices? Well color me shocked.
You miss the point on HCA members pointing out HCA recipients being uninsured. It's not to criticize people's poverty. Far from it. Its purpose is in highlighting the irony (and tragedy) of the awardee's support of a political party that has fought tooth and nail against single payer universal healthcare.
That same party also fights tooth and nail against regulations that would guarantee healthy food, clean drinking water, reasonable work hours, housing, and many other things that would improve people's lives and medical outcomes should they get COVID.
Corn subsidies destroyed the health of this country and are a huge component of the obesity epidemic.
While I'm definitely not a fan of just going "oh hey look at that fatass" because that could imply fat people deserve to die, I still don't really feel bad for really anybody catalogued in this subreddit.
Why?
I live in a very red city in a red state. There's a local coffee shop I go to every once in a while in the morning or afternoon. This is a coffee shop run by liberal and lefty zoomers, however the clientele is often the very people you see catalogued here in this subreddit. Their conversations over coffee consist of only one subject every time I show up:
They want to kill me. They want to kill me because I didn't vote for Trump. They want to kill *everyone* who did not vote for Trump. Sure, they also want to kill everyone who has ever worn a mask during the pandemic, anyone who has taken the vaccine, but most importantly if you did not vote for Trump, if you at any point said anything mean about him, they want to kill you. They want to shoot you in broad daylight, they want your execution broadcasted on national television. That's all they talk about. And they're very loud and open about it, too. Just casual conversation about how they're going to shove all the libtards in the back of a truck, drive them to the center of town, put them up against the wall and ventilate our heads.
They no longer see any of us as Americans, or even as human beings anymore. I'm not a radical leftist by any means, but because I don't suck Trump's dick 24/7, that means I deserve to be tied up, blindfolded, and have my head blown off when "the storm" comes.
You cannot reach out to these people. You cannot reason with them. Given the chance, they would just straight up fucking gun you down and they'd laugh gleefully while they did. They think you're a pedophile baby eating communist.
Honestly, I'd love to see the reaction they had to you, somebody who is not only openly socialist but Jewish as well, telling them that we're "all in this together". Do you really think they're going to react well to somebody saying that they're in any way similar to you? No. They'd be fucking infuriated because contrary to your sheltered yuppie socialist beliefs, these people are not one conversation away from becoming comrades in the proletariat. They don't care about class. They don't care about the fact that they're poor and they have more in common with impoverished minorities than rich whites.
They hate minorities more than they love themselves, and they will never, EVER be your friend, no matter how much you try to reach out to them.
So no. I don't feel bad for somebody who would shoot me in the head the minute the opportunity presented itself. I refuse. I'm tired of it. Fuck these people. Let them die.
For an observer from Canada, you sure seem to be missing the mark quite a bit. Maybe you should be observing actual Democrats, instead of spending your time with Republicans who call themselves Democrats?
"You cannot solve a pandemic by ... getting a jab"
I am sure you are shooting for Plato but what I read here is Play-Doh. It may not solve a Pandemic on it's own but if it keeps the vast majority of infected from the Hospital it's doing it's job and the "Fredos" of society should take note. In the words of the immortal author that wrote Trump's finest T-Shirts, "F*ck Your Feelings".
Except when the vast majority got vaxxed and returned to life as normal while spreading their asymptomatic infections around the country. That false sense of security is also a big part of the problem. What we are seeing now is exponential growth of infections and while hospitalizations were down just a few weeks ago, they are already starting to spike because we’ve got 10-15x the number of cases and some simple math tells you that the spread is not coming from just from the unvaxxed. Meanwhile we can’t even apply enough pressure on our government to do the right thing because so many vaxxed have the mentality that it’s totally fine to go back to normal because “fuck you, I got mine”.
Mocked because they MAKE me watch them die. They are killing others.. a fat fuck with a gun kills your mom, or a fat fuck anti vaxxer kills your mom..? You still focusing on the "fat fuck" part? Says a lot about your perspective, its not about YOU, its about other people. Its about their utter contempt for anyone telling them ANYTHING. As a fellow liberal, let me ask, what will it take for you to fight? What would it take for you to actually realize the end of democracy is nigh, and these fuckers are dying to usher it in? Believe me, it'll be a bunch of fat fucks with CPAPs and shitty Russian ammo in their AR-15s that come to hang you & me.
Its not a daily jog and a jab -- get fucked. Its absolutely part of it. Knowing what the danger is, is mitigating your chances of dying from it, 100%.
Their point is that a few people focusing on someone's weight means that both those specific posters and you (by focusing on them) have missed the point of the sub.
These are the same people that were throwing temper tantrums when Michelle Obama wanted to make school lunches healthier. Obesity itself is not a moral failing. But doing literally everything and anything to spite other people because 'Muh Freedumb', even at the expense of your own health, is.
At least include what makes Herman's death so 'comical' please. He continued tweeting after his death about how covid is no big deal...despite dying from covid.
The single through line of the Herman Cain Awards, SorryAntiVaxxer, and their ilk, is not mockery of the poor, the overweight, the undereducated, or the ill. It is shaming the first, second and third tier spreaders of disinformation. That they frequently hold hateful beliefs, is a bonus for shaming them.
I will grant you that the mockery of obese middle aged people in the HCA community is in poor taste. It is limited in it's spread, and perhaps you are more sensitive to it so you notice it more.
People in the quiverfull movement, who have large broods of children, clearly have the financial means to obtain health or life insurance. That they opt to have more children rather than provide for the children they have should their circumstances change is irresponsible. Similarly, refusing vaccination while having children and not having some provision for your death is highly irresponsible.
This is a pandemic of the unvaccinated. However, none of the HCA nominees and recipients are folks who lack access to vaccines. They are not mocked for comorbidities alone. They are not folks who cannot take the vaccine due to existing health issues. Or people who would get the vaccine if they could only afford the time off work. They are not even quiet antivaxxers. They are loud and proud, anti-vaccine, anti-mask, anti-government, anti-establishment, anti-lockdown, anti-distancing, advocates AND victims.
I couldn’t appreciate your disingenuous and lopsided review of the sub Reddit. Your premise that we’re all in it together as one that is immediately abandoned by the nominees themselves and deftly chronicled by the posters who do an excellent job of summarizing their horrible racist sexist misogynistic bigoted history of Facebook posting.
Your hyperbolic reach to make this about eugenics is ridiculous. They make fun of the victims because they thought they were healthy enough to not need a vaccine. You present it like they were singled out for deaths because of their physical characteristics.
You’re an idiot on the level that they are. Except I suspect that they are more ignorant, and you like the purveyors of Covid disinformation, are doing it for your own fame and profit. Shame on you.
The way you guys talk about fat people in particular is absolutely repulsive.
You are so focused on a few people who are insulting peoples weight, yet instead of using overweight have called them fat in every description you’ve used. Get a grip.
As you also insult the overweight, you have said zero about the numerous comments of dismay, sadness, and compassion. Nothing about the countless tales of nurses who deal with this or how it’s overwhelming our hospitals.
You ignore that during Trump’s administration there was blatant hatred for non-conservatives and how they were dismissed as humans and referred to using animals as descriptions. This is where bluntness built its wings. The seeds were planted and now you don’t like what’s being reaped.
You think even one of the people awarded would do any of the things you’re saying in your article? I don’t agree with the negative comments and read the posts with grief and fear. I have too many loved ones who could easily be “rewarded” thanks to misinformation from people like you.
You are not saving people by defending comments about IYW’s “fat” people. You are killing people by not focusing on getting them to do what will keep them safer.
Stop deflecting from your misguided attempts at defending bigots. Yes, it's shitty that some people decided that it was appropriate to make lazy jokes about somebody being fat, but you trying to make these people who are viscerally racist, homophobic, transphobic, and anti-Semitic seem like innocent victims is also absolutely repulsive, arguably even more so than the quips about fat people.
People who are racist, homophobic, transphobic, and anti-Semitic (by your definition) don't deserve to die for their beliefs (again, as interpreted by HCA members).
You're misconstruing stuff again, which leads me to believe that perhaps your username is not quite as neutral as you really are.
People called out by HCA actively endanger other people.
People who are racist, homophobic, transphobic and anti-Semitic on the other hand, are just assholes. Disgusting assholes whose beliefs can hurt other people, but at the very least, their beliefs aren't actively hurting other people the way HCA nominees are.
Apples and oranges Observer. Apples and Oranges. Makes me wonder why you keep trying to correlate the two together.
100%. And what is the point many obese people, with asthma got Covid and survived, such as myself. Being poor and unhealthy is not a death sentence or worthy of one.
A lot of people in this here comment section seem to believe that people with shitty beliefs deserve to die for it I guess.
Okay.
That's not going to stop the people who actively profit off those shit beliefs, who inculcate the vaccine hesitancy and distrust of medicine to hock bogus cures or vitamin supplements. Nor will it break up the tech companies that shoved this propaganda at people during an emotionally vulnerable time to take advantage of their attention for their own obscene profits.
These dead grandparents aren't the source of the problem. Aim higher.
Its their now dying devotion to killing the rest of us that illicits the rage, stealing our resources, our time, deliberately spreading lies & misinformation -- all while we have stood by trying to help them. They can only spit in our faces so many times..
By all means, be mad. But be mad because you couldn't help them, or that they wouldn't let themselves be helped. They're sick, or dead. Their loved ones are grieving, or sick, or dying themselves. They aren't winning anything. All of this sucks and killing the part of you that flinches when someone is suffering won't make it any better.
Who appointed you the arbiter of all targets of anger in this pandemic? How dare you imply that this healthcare worker’s anger is misdirected. Try filling their shoes for a week or two and come back and let us know if you’re still flinching.
These are soulless subhuman animals that looked at their children and said 'you are not worth this shot that MILLIONS have taken safely'. They get what they deserve but their children and the medical personnel that treat them for MONTHS in some cases DO NOT.
how are you better when you are so entertained by their deaths
Bold accusation to assume that everyone who subscribes is entertained by their deaths. I for one read them to see any little thing that I can figure out to use to convince my loved ones who haven’t been vaccinated to get it.
I spend too much time worrying if my loved ones natural immunity will be enough. I shouldn’t have to worry about losing people I love from a mostly preventable virus.
If there’s one thing a person who has lost someone finally realizes or better, if a stanch anti-vaxxer says something that gets just one peer to listen; I’ll read every post.
It’s not entertaining. It’s depressing, sad, and completely unnecessary deaths.
Is that what you think they think? Perhaps they live in a bubble where they are told the shot will harm them?
thank you.
99% of the posts on the subreddit shows social media reposts and shares of misinformation from grifters like Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson. The subreddit frequently highlights and collates these posts.
We are aiming higher while also showcasing the victims, most of whom are anti-abortion, anti-gun-control, extremely transphobic, homophobic, and racist. The more the world knows that these people have suffered and died from trusting the words of these grifters, the better. And r/HCA is doing that.
I don't get you, Talia. You wrote so eloquently about how these antivaxxers misappropriate the victims of Nazi by wearing the star of David and sharing holocaust memes and yet you think some redditors have gone too far by pointing out (correctly) that these people didn't have a clue their obesity might kill them even without getting Covid-19?
Look, we all have our triggers. I get triggered every time someone on r/HCA says "dead cat bounce" because I love cats more than I love humans, but as a queer immigrant POC, I also get extremely triggered (and scared for my life) when every one of these nominees and awardees share how much they hate trans and queer people, how much they're against "critical race theory," and how low they regard immigrants.
So I just look past the "dead cat bounce" comments and focus on the fact that there's one less person who might come up to me and do bad things because my existence and identity are an affront to their belief.
"A lot of people in this here comment section seem to believe that people with shitty beliefs deserve to die for it I guess."
Nobody deserves to die for their beliefs. But if putting your beliefs into practice kills you due to those beliefs being shitty, then you only have yourself to blame.
We have known what this virus is and how its spread for two years now. And we've had a vaccine for one. We have people who have spit in the face of both of these. They called people trying to get the virus under control criminals and Nazis. They said that the vaccinated would be dead in a few years. They knew, or they should have known, the consequences of their stupidity.
Now, many of them are dead. They will be remembered, if at all, as being morons. They don't get to live to keep pushing the goalpost on their claim of vaccine lethality.
That's a lot of big words to say "I'm an antivaxxer".
I am a severely disabled person living in Europe. I have stayed home since the pandemic started except for vaccine and other necessary appointments. It's a scary shit show.
While it is not quite as bad (yet) as in the States, we see a lot of the same things happening. Fewer, shorter lockdowns are one example. Seemingly not caring about exhausted healthcare or workers in general are another. Politicians abdicating responsibility and fully bowing to business owners and doing everything in their power to keep things up and running, dying people be damned.
The careless disregard of vulnerable life, of life that is deemed lesser-than, is disturbing. If you can't be productive for the capital owners, you are not worth keeping alive. It's always been this way under capitalism, this time around we are seeing it more explicitly.
We are under no obligation to mourn or grieve for people that have essentially signed their own death warrant. What the comments you cite point out about all of the awardees and nominees is a flagrant disregard for public safety. No one is chastising these people for being obese or having diabetes. What the posters are highlighting is that IF YOU HAVE HIGH RISK FACTORS FOR COVID and refused a free vaccine, it's your fault if you die of Covid. We're pointing out that you shouldn't go begging people for medical expenses because you were too ignorant to get yourself health insurance or protect yourself. These people deserve no sympathy, and no, we're not sorry their bigotry and ignorance is no longer in the world.
Talia is just triggered, this article is silly on many levels.
This gave me a real “Are we the baddies” moment. I was disgusted with Walensky but I too lurk on Herman Cain and privately revel in their self obliteration. Thanks for making me connect the two..
It's not because they are fat that we ridicule them. It's just shows some are extra stupid that despite multiple comorbidities they still spread anti-vax nonsense and get themselves and others killed and destroy families. I feel no remorse for people so deliberately stupid they post such hateful, racist, misogynistic, homophobic narcissistic bull crap, fat or not.
We also don't really hate goatees, ballcaps, Harleys, big trucks and guns, but when that combo together with Trump is the only thing that gives their lives meaning, I see nothing to feel bad about when they leave us. They are an infection of our society as dangerous as Covid.
The way the subreddit talks about the bodies of fat and poor people is disgusting.
Eugenics is done by people to other people. The willfully unvaccinated are doing this to themselves AND harming people who have done the right thing by getting vaccinated, in the process. Terrible analogy.
That is not true. Several HCA redditors have stated the gene pool is better off with the unvaccinated dying off. That's eugenics talk.
>poor people
They see themselves as white, straight Christians first, and their financial status comes in at a *very* distant second as far as how they identify. You are not going to find class solidarity with them. You think they don't know that things would be better for them if they stopped voting for right wing candidates? They know, they just don't care because they'd rather LGBT people and minorities lose rights and die than their own lives improve. These people would burn their own homes down so long as they could stuff their homes full of gay black people before they set it on fire.
What does any of this have to do with getting a vaccine?
The way these people treat anyone who disagrees with them is far more disgusting.
Maybe be upset at the people endangering others for no reason, rather than the ones calling them out for it, and encouraging others to take care of themselves.
I am upset at them. I wrote that the anger is justified.
That's why it's so much more frustrating that you somehow think you can talk them out of their racial anger fueled stupors.
Who do you think these conservatives have been coming after? They wanted everything reopened bedamned about the elderly and disabled. The people who can’t change their circumstances.
They have literally said in posts that they aren’t concerned about them. The old have had long lives and the disabled are a strain on resources.
Where’s your disgust for that? Wanting a civil war? Hateful comments about BIPOC and LGBTQ?
Kill the enemy comments? No one is wishing them dead or threatening to kill them. They ARE!
You’re literally describing my 17 year old nephew who, despite pleading with him over the last year to get vaccinated, refuses to do so because he’s young, naive and thinks he’s going to live forever—which is exactly how I felt at 17.
But…he just got his first job and thinks he’s underpaid making $11/hr so he’s finally coming around on the idea of a higher minimum wage.
And…his unvaxxed grandfather is currently dying in ICU of Covid so he’s coming around on the vaccine.
Life experiences are a big part of how people change their thinking. But I guarantee if he saw some of the shit y’all post on r/HCA, he’d probably think twice about getting vaxxed. Ridiculing people doesn’t work. Educating people will help but it ultimately has to be their idea.
I really enjoyed your piece and while I am only a very occasional viewer of r/HCA I appreciated your calling out the way the posters seem to take glee in the obesity and poverty of the "nominees". It looks like the comments on your post only demonstrate just how accurate your description of otherwise progressive and liberal posters as vile eugenicists actually is. I don't usually venture into the comments section, and I honestly regret having done it here.
Keep up the wonderful writing! I enjoy all your posts and am a faithful follower on Twitter. I'm cheering for you!
You should probably lurk more. We mock them for the glee they express at being willfully ignorant, obese, obtuse and obstinate, and then watching them suffer the consequences of not taking a single iota of personal responsibility to protect themselves, their neighbors and their loved ones. The vax is free. Hell, we've tried to literally bribe people to get the vax. The choice to die was there's alone.
"You cannot solve a pandemic ....by getting a jab" maybe not, but it would certainly help keep our hospital systems from collapsing. Perhaps you would see more value in getting vaccinated if someone you cared about had a heart attack or stroke right now. No ICU beds means no ICU beds for anyone. It's astonishing that everyone is to blame except the unvaccinated themselves.
My favorite relative has leukemia. I have relatives who are on covid wards. I said the anger is justified, just not sufficient.
You are killing me with your attitude of picking and choosing what is okay to be offended by. Blood banks are at critical levels. Hospitals are at critical levels. When will it be sufficient?
Talia is upset because we called them fat. Thus, our arguments of science, ethics, morality, statistics, etc. To Talia, none of that matters because we called them fat. Oops.
She calls them fat. She needs to recognize her own behavior. Haven’t seen her use overweight once. She’s constantly complaining about people calling people fat, by calling people fat. What a hypocrite.
"You cannot solve a pandemic by getting a jab?" How have the other ones been resolved!?
Don't forget, they're free for everyone, approved for children, and you know, easy to find like at Walmart and Target.
I was in rural Ohio when it was time to get my booster. We had to drive 20 miles to get it and when we got there they had run out. Now imagine you are poor, no car or no money for gas. Or elderly and can’t get around/can’t drive. Or imagine your parents are poor and working all the time and you can’t drive. So yeah, it’s free, but there is still a cost that many people can’t afford. The unvaxxed are more than just the anti-vaxxed.
Long campaigns of trust building through education, testing, contact tracing, masking distancing, quarantine and lockdowns of various scale. Pandemics have never been solved through vaccines alone when a disease is so contagious. Smallpox took decades to eradicate worldwide. It doesn’t need to take that long for Covid but first we have to start by acknowledging that everything we are doing right now is wrong.
You mean the same people who screamed Communist at us for wanting universal healthcare are now dying broke AF because of their multiple bad choices? Well color me shocked.
You miss the point on HCA members pointing out HCA recipients being uninsured. It's not to criticize people's poverty. Far from it. Its purpose is in highlighting the irony (and tragedy) of the awardee's support of a political party that has fought tooth and nail against single payer universal healthcare.
That same party also fights tooth and nail against regulations that would guarantee healthy food, clean drinking water, reasonable work hours, housing, and many other things that would improve people's lives and medical outcomes should they get COVID.
Corn subsidies destroyed the health of this country and are a huge component of the obesity epidemic.
While I'm definitely not a fan of just going "oh hey look at that fatass" because that could imply fat people deserve to die, I still don't really feel bad for really anybody catalogued in this subreddit.
Why?
I live in a very red city in a red state. There's a local coffee shop I go to every once in a while in the morning or afternoon. This is a coffee shop run by liberal and lefty zoomers, however the clientele is often the very people you see catalogued here in this subreddit. Their conversations over coffee consist of only one subject every time I show up:
They want to kill me. They want to kill me because I didn't vote for Trump. They want to kill *everyone* who did not vote for Trump. Sure, they also want to kill everyone who has ever worn a mask during the pandemic, anyone who has taken the vaccine, but most importantly if you did not vote for Trump, if you at any point said anything mean about him, they want to kill you. They want to shoot you in broad daylight, they want your execution broadcasted on national television. That's all they talk about. And they're very loud and open about it, too. Just casual conversation about how they're going to shove all the libtards in the back of a truck, drive them to the center of town, put them up against the wall and ventilate our heads.
They no longer see any of us as Americans, or even as human beings anymore. I'm not a radical leftist by any means, but because I don't suck Trump's dick 24/7, that means I deserve to be tied up, blindfolded, and have my head blown off when "the storm" comes.
You cannot reach out to these people. You cannot reason with them. Given the chance, they would just straight up fucking gun you down and they'd laugh gleefully while they did. They think you're a pedophile baby eating communist.
Honestly, I'd love to see the reaction they had to you, somebody who is not only openly socialist but Jewish as well, telling them that we're "all in this together". Do you really think they're going to react well to somebody saying that they're in any way similar to you? No. They'd be fucking infuriated because contrary to your sheltered yuppie socialist beliefs, these people are not one conversation away from becoming comrades in the proletariat. They don't care about class. They don't care about the fact that they're poor and they have more in common with impoverished minorities than rich whites.
They hate minorities more than they love themselves, and they will never, EVER be your friend, no matter how much you try to reach out to them.
So no. I don't feel bad for somebody who would shoot me in the head the minute the opportunity presented itself. I refuse. I'm tired of it. Fuck these people. Let them die.
You might want to consider moving. Or at the very least, having them thrown out of that coffee shop for threatening your life.
But what strikes me as very odd is why they frequent that coffee shop. Seems very off brand.
“Hi, yes, I’d like a skinny, non-fat vanilla latte and your commie head on a spike.”
Funny. I think a lot of Trump supporters would say the same thing about the way liberals/Democrats talk.
For an observer from Canada, you sure seem to be missing the mark quite a bit. Maybe you should be observing actual Democrats, instead of spending your time with Republicans who call themselves Democrats?
Astonishing response. I hope that you’re safe.
The awesome-est take of the article:
"You cannot solve a pandemic by ... getting a jab"
I am sure you are shooting for Plato but what I read here is Play-Doh. It may not solve a Pandemic on it's own but if it keeps the vast majority of infected from the Hospital it's doing it's job and the "Fredos" of society should take note. In the words of the immortal author that wrote Trump's finest T-Shirts, "F*ck Your Feelings".
Except when the vast majority got vaxxed and returned to life as normal while spreading their asymptomatic infections around the country. That false sense of security is also a big part of the problem. What we are seeing now is exponential growth of infections and while hospitalizations were down just a few weeks ago, they are already starting to spike because we’ve got 10-15x the number of cases and some simple math tells you that the spread is not coming from just from the unvaxxed. Meanwhile we can’t even apply enough pressure on our government to do the right thing because so many vaxxed have the mentality that it’s totally fine to go back to normal because “fuck you, I got mine”.
Mocked because they MAKE me watch them die. They are killing others.. a fat fuck with a gun kills your mom, or a fat fuck anti vaxxer kills your mom..? You still focusing on the "fat fuck" part? Says a lot about your perspective, its not about YOU, its about other people. Its about their utter contempt for anyone telling them ANYTHING. As a fellow liberal, let me ask, what will it take for you to fight? What would it take for you to actually realize the end of democracy is nigh, and these fuckers are dying to usher it in? Believe me, it'll be a bunch of fat fucks with CPAPs and shitty Russian ammo in their AR-15s that come to hang you & me.
Its not a daily jog and a jab -- get fucked. Its absolutely part of it. Knowing what the danger is, is mitigating your chances of dying from it, 100%.
It seems like you missed the point Talia made in this piece. Your contempt for fat people is disturbing. Being fat isn't a moral failing.
Their point is that a few people focusing on someone's weight means that both those specific posters and you (by focusing on them) have missed the point of the sub.
These are the same people that were throwing temper tantrums when Michelle Obama wanted to make school lunches healthier. Obesity itself is not a moral failing. But doing literally everything and anything to spite other people because 'Muh Freedumb', even at the expense of your own health, is.
Referring to overweight people as fat is. If you are going to pretend you care at least know how.
At least include what makes Herman's death so 'comical' please. He continued tweeting after his death about how covid is no big deal...despite dying from covid.
The single through line of the Herman Cain Awards, SorryAntiVaxxer, and their ilk, is not mockery of the poor, the overweight, the undereducated, or the ill. It is shaming the first, second and third tier spreaders of disinformation. That they frequently hold hateful beliefs, is a bonus for shaming them.
I will grant you that the mockery of obese middle aged people in the HCA community is in poor taste. It is limited in it's spread, and perhaps you are more sensitive to it so you notice it more.
People in the quiverfull movement, who have large broods of children, clearly have the financial means to obtain health or life insurance. That they opt to have more children rather than provide for the children they have should their circumstances change is irresponsible. Similarly, refusing vaccination while having children and not having some provision for your death is highly irresponsible.
This is a pandemic of the unvaccinated. However, none of the HCA nominees and recipients are folks who lack access to vaccines. They are not mocked for comorbidities alone. They are not folks who cannot take the vaccine due to existing health issues. Or people who would get the vaccine if they could only afford the time off work. They are not even quiet antivaxxers. They are loud and proud, anti-vaccine, anti-mask, anti-government, anti-establishment, anti-lockdown, anti-distancing, advocates AND victims.