Los Angeles Times columnist writes that mocking anti-vaxxers' deaths is 'ghoulish' - yet necessary

If you’ve spent any time on Twitter — maybe you leave it up to us, the professionals — you’ve probably seen one of the few memes from the Left that doesn’t outright suck; it’s a black banner with the words “Let’s Go Darwin” on it. The gag, obviously, is that we should cheer on anti-vaxxers — all of whom are anti-Biden Republicans, apparently — killing themselves off by not getting the vaccine that doesn’t prevent you from catching or spreading COVID-19.

We’ve seen lefties cheer on the deaths of conservatives quite a few times now — Herman Cain comes to mind — but now Los Angeles Times columnist Michael Hiltzik isn’t just giving the OK to the cheers … he’s arguing that they’re “necessary.”

From @hiltzikm:

Column: Mocking anti-vaxxers' deaths is ghoulish, yes — but necessary

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— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) January 10, 2022

Beyond the clickbait headline, Hiltzik’s column is really about Kelly Ernby, a prominent Orange County Republican who died unvaccinated, and the vaccine mandates against which she advocated. (An obvious reminder: there’s a difference between being anti-vaccine and anti-mandate.) But still, Hiltzik looks into online ridicule of the unvaccinated who die of COVID and concludes:

It may be not a little ghoulish to celebrate or exult in the deaths of vaccine opponents. And it may be proper to express sympathy and solicitude to those they leave behind.

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.

Nor is it wrong to deny them our sympathy and solicitude, or to make sure it’s known when their deaths are marked that they had stood fast against measures that might have protected others from the fate they succumbed to themselves.

There may be no other way to make sure that the lessons of these teachable moments are heard.