Are you willing to get the Covid vaccine when offered?

Among all the ways that COVID-19 affects our lives, the pandemic confronts us with a profound moral dilemma:

How should we react to the deaths of the unvaccinated?

On the one hand, a hallmark of civilized thought is the sense that every life is precious.

On the other, those who have deliberately flouted sober medical advice by refusing a vaccine known to reduce the risk of serious disease from the virus, including the risk to others, and end up in the hospital or the grave can be viewed as receiving their just deserts.

That's even more true of those who not only refused the vaccine for themselves, but publicly advocated that others do so.

It has become common online and in social media for vaccine refusers and anti-vaccine advocates to become the target of ridicule after they come down with COVID-19 and especially if they die from it.

Witness the subreddit HermanCainAward, which Lili Loofbourow of Slate identified in September as "a site for heartless and unrepentant schadenfreude."

The site is named for the former Republican candidate for president who became one of the first political notables to succumb to the disease after publicly defying social distancing measures.

Like another site, sorryantivaxxer.com, the subreddit hosts snippets and photographs of anti-vaccine advocates, often taken at their deathbeds.

The issue of how to think about the deaths of unvaccinated has been thrown into high relief locally by the case of Kelly Ernby, a prominent Orange County Republican and deputy district attorney who advocated against vaccine mandates and died of COVID around New Year's Day, unvaccinated.

Ernby's death promptly came to symbolize the rift in the social fabric caused by the ravages of COVID.

Some online commenters greeted her demise with glee, provoking her political friends to push back against what Ben Chapman, a Costa Mesa GOP official, called "bigotry and hate" directed against her.

My colleague Nicholas Goldberg recently lamented eloquently the rift in the social fabric that this species of callous commentary represents. "Mocking anti-vaxxers when they get sick has become a bit of a sport," he wrote.

I have a slightly different take..............

https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/me...sh-yes-but-necessary/ar-AASDwXu?ocid=msedgntp