Vaccination Porn: COVID Death of an Anti-Vaxxer

"Ha! You have it coming."

I delete blog comments that appear to take satisfaction out of the deaths of anti-vaxxers. 

It is unlovely. It is disrespectful. It is politically counterproductive.

The media has a genre I call "vaccination porn." It is the semi-joyful story of comeuppance, in the form of a report on the COVID death of someone who publicly opposed vaccinations and tried to convince others not to be vaccinated. 

I understand the emotion of joyful justice, but I try not to give into it, nor do I let this blog be a venue for expressing it. Life is unfair. Sad, unlucky, painful things happen to people, both guilty and innocent, bad and good. Rain falls on the just and unjust, so I try not to let myself think that someone else's misery is deserved.

The media stories about the COVID deaths of anti-vaxers are an iteration of a classic trope in slapstick comedy, the quick reversal of fortune. Here, Charlie Chaplin, at second-40 tosses a banana peel onto the sidewalk. At second-44 he slips on it. 

Ha! 

The comedy is richest when a person is injured by the very mechanism that he uses to injure another, like Hamlet's two schoolfellows who carried letters that would have had Hamlet killed. Hamlet says, 

For ’tis the sport to have the engineer
Hoist with his own petard; and ’t shall go hard
But I will delve one yard below their mines
And blow them at the moon. O, ’tis most sweet

"Hoist on his own petard" is a memorable phrase, for good reason. It reflects a human emotion.

I call the stories "porn" because there is an element of furtiveness in the media accounts. They don't say aloud the "Ha!" part, but it is there hiding in the shadows, like pornography before the 1970s when fig leaves were removed and it became full-frontal everything. For most of the 20th century pornography was illegal, so there had been an element of tease. There were accidentally-on-purpose flashes of breast. There was a veil semi-hiding the good stuff. 

COVID death news stories look like this:

The "Ha!" is a silent letter, present but unpronounced.

A COVID-conscientious person is continually confronted in public by people who have removed their masks or who wear them under their chins--about 10% of people yesterday in Costco. One can ascribe a hostile attitude to them; darned if they care if you catch something from them. It creates a moment of animosity. Wearing a mask is an inconvenience done for the benefit of others. Vaccinations were originally understood to be primarily about protecting oneself, but now they, too, are a public health matter. Vaccinated people are less likely to spread the disease, less likely to incubate a new variant, and less likely to clog up the hospitals. In the minds of the COVID conscientious, anti-vaxxers and mask removers are like litterbugs, drunk drivers, or people who would smoke a cigar in an elevator. One could delight if the cigar turned out to explode.

Best not. The politics of gloating over comeuppance requires the COVID-vaccinated to invite their better angels. Gloating backfires politically. Anti-vaxxers do not perceive themselves as scofflaw cigar-smokers stinking up someone else's air. They perceive themselves as cautious about the risks of a vaccine, realistic in the perception that COVID "cures" are worse than the disease, and courageous in their defense of all-American freedom. 

Some people will enjoy the karma-justice of the anti-vaxxer hoist on his own petard, but it must be a guilty pleasure, not a proud one. It is guilty. We know how random and unfair misfortune can be. Misfortune happens to everyone. Best to keep that sad reality--not Hamlet's "most sweet"--in mind. If other emotions come unbidden, keep silent.

The unvaccinated have their reasons. Deaths may persuade them. Contempt will not.