Columnist Michael Hiltzik, who writes for the LA Times, wrote an article that said that mocking the deaths of “anti-vaxxers” is “necessary.”
The article, which has had its headline changed multiple times, tries to argue that mocking the unvaccinated and vaccine-hesitant after they die encourages others to get the jab.
Disturbingly, the URL was originally titled ‘Why Shouldn’t We Dance On The Graves of Anti-Vaxxers?’
However, its final incarnation is now published as ‘Mocking anti-vaxxers’ COVID deaths is ghoulish, yes — but may be necessary.’
The changing of the headline suggests that the newspaper was trying to minimise the inevitable backlash that would occur.
Most of the article was focused on mocking the death of conservative activist Kelly Ernby, who campaigned against mandatory covid vaccines for children as a condition of going to school, but subsequently died from “covid complications.”
Hiltzik wrote: “Kelly Ernby’s friends and family ask us to remember her for her career as a public servant and as a devoted spouse and mother. But let’s not mince words: Her campaigns against public health measures negated whatever good she may have done in her other endeavors.
“The policies Ernby advocated may well have contributed to the spread of COVID and to the damaging of the public health infrastructure in her own community. Even before this pandemic, she spoke out for measures that would threaten California schoolchildren with exposure to deadly childhood diseases. There were no scientific or medical grounds for her opposition to mandates; there was only political ideology.”
He added that the media should report on the deaths of people who question the vaccines and covid restrictions.
“But mockery is not necessarily the wrong reaction to those who publicly mocked anti-COVID measures and encouraged others to follow suit, before they perished of the disease the dangers of which they belittled,” he wrote.
