These Sites Compile Stories of Anti-Vaxxers Who Got Sick and/or Died


 I have become aware of a couple of websites that are cataloging anti-vaxxers who are victims of COVID-19. Some of the people are sick, others have died.

The first site is sorryantivaxxer.com, a blog. It describes itself and its purpose thus: 

The purpose of this site is educational,  everyone listed on this site was/is an anti-vaxxer activist who helped spread COVID-19 misinformation on social media. Share to stop others from making the same mistake. GET VACCINATED!

 As of this writing, it lists 171 cases. For each one, the author provides a picture of the person in question, summarizes their anti-vaxxer bona fides, and provides a link to a story where that information was obtained. 

The blog posts allow comments. Some of these provide additional information and quotes from the victim and leave it at that.  Others are sometimes snarky, as we should expect.

The second site is a subreddit called HermanCainAward.  Herman Cain, you may remember, was a former Godfathers Pizze CEO who competed for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, and later supported T****. He was widely ridiculed for some of his statements on the campaign trail.  Cain was an avowed anti-masker. 

The moderators describe the subreddit thus: "Nominees have made public declaration of their anti-mask, anti-vax, or Covid-hoax views, followed by admission to hospital for Covid. The Award is granted upon the nominee's release from their Earthly shackles."  So unlike the previous site they do not encourage posting about people who are sick.

The moderators also state some guidelines about decorum: "Don't be a dick. Don't be gleeful. Don't root for Nominees to be Awarded, especially the Facebook schlubs whose only crime was taking up residence in the misinformation echo chamber."  Surprisingly, people seem to largely follow these guidelines.

The subreddit also encourages posts documenting IPA—Immunization to Prevent Award.  There are quite a few of these.  One is from a self-identified health care worker and is titled "Everyone in my house is extremely anti-vax but this subreddit pushed me to get secretly vaccinated, thanks guys."

When I first heard about these sites, I expected them to be heavy on the schadenfreude, especially the reddit one because it's on, y'know, whose subreddits are not always known for their decorum. There is some of that, but most of the material is remarkably non-snarky and non-celebratory. 

Also the IPA angle on r/HermanCainAward claims a number of successes—if the posts are to believed. Maybe these sites do accomplish their stated purposes as repositories of cautionary tales.

"Schadenfreude (Clay faces at ArtFest 2006), Grand Forks, N.D." by tuey is licensed under CC BY 2.0

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