Dusty and Tristan Graham were a couple of Alabama eBay resellers, who made videos of their collecting trips which were interspersed with denunciations of vaccines and pandemic responses and all the usual ridiculous complaints by the gullible victims of rightwing ideology. Can you guess what happened a few weeks after they put out a video insisting that they weren’t never gonna get no vaccine? Of course you can. If it weren’t so deadly, it would be a joke.
According to a GoFundMe page set up by their children, Dusty died Thursday after battling COVID-19 for three weeks. His wife had “passed suddenly in her sleep” weeks earlier due to coronavirus complications on Aug. 25.
“Unfortunately Dusty and Tristan have both passed away,” the couple’s daughter, Windsor Graham, said. “Thank you for all the kind words and helping us during this difficult time. We will be using the money to pay for funeral expenses.” The announcement of their deaths follows an announcement from Dusty weeks earlier that he was in the ICU “battling it [COVID-19] out.”
Look, people. I’ve got two choices for you:
- Stop declaring to the world how useless the vaccine is and you aren’t going to take it. Pride goeth before the fall and all that. It’s just going to make you a target for derision if you do come down with it, and you’ll have enough anguish to deal with without the libs poking at your corpse.
- GET THE DAMN SHOT.
The worst part of it is that they’ve left behind a couple of kids (maybe adult children, at least) who have to deal with all of this grief and chaos.
For the love of god, get vaccinated. These stories are terrible and completely unnecessary. You don’t have to tell anyone, just go in and get the shot in secret, and take your loved ones in to get it too.
I’m still trying to get my brother to have his vaccine. It’s causing me a great deal of anxiety and grief. At least he isn’t one of these deniers who pretends it doesn’t work, but that’s going to be cold comfort if he does catch it and gets seriously ill.
There are hundreds of stories like this.
There are several websites that collect them.
One is http://www (dot) sorryantivaxxers dot com
This is the latest disaster on that website.
A lot of these dead antivaxxers are fundie xians, mostly from the US south. Married couples that both die are common. They tend to leave a lot of young children behind. This couple leaves 4 orphans behind.
The current estimate for new Covid-19 virus orphans in the USA is 120,000 children. There will be more for sure.
This isn’t the first time an active-genocidalist’s relatives have pleaded for money for a “funeral”; e.g., a snippet from a recent page of the Infinite [Pandemic and Political Madness] Thread:
Why the feck should anyone chip in to help pay (the almost certainly overpriced) cost of a funeral for those who were actively attempting to make many people sick, perhaps deathly sick? (This (getting vaccinated if and when possible) is science, not law, the intent of the active-genocidalists isn’t important.)
I don’t know the cost of the seemingly more appropriate biohazard waste disposal.
(My disdain doesn’t apply to people who are vaccinated, are partially-vaccinated, or cannot be vaccinated (due a valid reason, e.g., health or eligibility, or because of vaccine unavailability (sadly the case in much of world!)), and unfortunately get sick and possibly die. And I am slightly tame about vaccine-refuseniks who aren’t trying to spread the madness. But the active-genocidalists… I tried to tone down this comment!)
@3 blf
Even worse, the GoFundMe was originally set up by (now) dead husband.
While the Covid needs the vaccine to be dealt with effectively, winter is coming, and this means flu shots too. Modeling predicts a a higher than normal flu season.
I got my senior flu shot this morning. After a month, I can get the covid booster if approved by the FDA for us senior citizens.
Wonder how much the unpaid hospital bill is.
It’s not that they many think that the vaccine is “useless.” It’s that they think that it’s dangerous and is a weapon to be used against them:e Those who take it will die shortly afterwards. It will make you magnetic. It fulfills the “Mark of the Beast” prophecy from The Bible. It will render you sterile. It makes users “shed” the REAL virus that’s the true culprit for the pandemic.
That’s the actual narrative that we’re fighting against.
I cant feel bad for these people. They brought it on themselves, and as soon as they realize how sick they are, many of them still refuse to believe its their actions that put them where they are or that they actually have covid. If it werent so damned sad it would be funny. As for how much the unpaid hospital bills are, it doesnt matter, they cant make the orphaned children pay them although I wouldnt be surprised to see some states (coughTexas and Florida cough) try to pass a law saying orphans would be legally liable for their dead parents debt.
Dr. Meyers,
You mentioned these Covidiots. They’re not alone, you find them in even north of you in Manitoba. This Winkler Manitoba respiratory therapist posted on Twitter one of the more crazy messages he’s received since writing an op ed piece in the Winkler paper about the necessity getting the COVID vaccine. Seriously the person who left thi message is bat shit crazy to say the least.
https://twitter.com/pvbiker75/status/1439949229460439046
Laura Loomer is anti-vaxxer who hoped she would get COVID to prove it wasn’t a problem. Well, she got her wish and now: Political activist Laura Loomer, who wished for COVID, now has it: ‘In so much pain’. As she put it in a recent post, “Just pray for me, please. Can’t even begin to explain how brutal the body aches and nausea that come with COVID are. I am in so much pain.”
Slow motion COVID rapture.
Caught On Video: Carmine’s Hostess Attacked After Asking Tourists For Proof Of Vaccination – CBS New York
https://newyork.cbslocal.com/2021/09/18/carmines-hostess-attacked-indoor-dining-vaccine-mandate/
The most infuriating thing to me is that the self-deceived who survive will STILL blame the doctors and not those who caused their own deaths, and be all the louder.
They won’t be happy until every US is state is like Idaho, operating under crisis care.
I am just fucking DONE with these people. If they want to be plague rats, they can go swarm a deserted island somewhere and have their little disease-fest, but they cannot be allowed to do it here.
I agree with WMDKitty — fuck these people. Don’t waste any sympathy on them. If their politically driven ignorance is more important than over a year of data about the efficiency of masks and a huge amount of data on the vaccines then they deserve what happens.
Last Friday one of my sisters-in-law just had to spend most of a day on a gurney in a hallway in a Pigeon Forge hospital after a stroke because the hospital was full of these anti-vacc dirtbags sick with covid — and there were 27 people ahead of her all waiting for a room. They finally decided to move her paste those people and take a guy out of his room because of how serious she was. (She is showing good signs of recovery now.)
I’ve gone back and forth on this. I am a bit frustrated and angry that these people are still refusing to accept reality…at least until they suffer the horrible symptoms and then sometimes die. If they do realize their error then it came too late.
But I wonder what it was in my life course that made me not like them. I could have somehow turned out like them. Should I be angry with them for their plight and the foisting it on others or at the ignorance and stupidity itself. Or if there are people deserving blame it would be any manipulating how people see the world for some sort of political gain whatever that could be.
From one hand, I’m prone to thinking “how the hell do you manage to get people to act so against their own interests!?”
OTOH, when I think about it, people happily go to war to kill and get killed to fulfill someone’s egomania… Why the fuck are we so bad at being selfish?
F.O.,
‘Cos we’re good at being stupid.
Of course there is the even more insane “spin” on it that one nut job came up with – “Liberals telling conservatives to get the vaccine, which I admit is the greatest thing Trump ever invented, are using ‘reverse psychology’ to prevent conservatives from getting it, because, of course, knowing that the libs are out to kill us all, we will naturally do the exact opposite!”
So.. in other words the whole freaking GOP and its electorate are all in the stage of child development in which you have to tell them to do the complete opposite of what you want them to do, or they will refuse, and do the total opposite? Got it…..
These people are all, as the British would say, “mental”.
I can’t help thinking that for every one of these stories that hits the news, there are a dozen ‘conservative anti-vax crusader caught covid and is fine, thanks.’ stories that are never going to get this kind of play.
20) @ Ian King: Not sure what your point is, but we already have dozens of such stories. See Rand Paul, TFG, Chuck Grassley, Ron Johnson, Mike Lee, Louie Gohmert, Greg Abbott, Mike Meadows, Ben Carson, Rick Scott, and many, many more. They don’t die though because they get the top shelf medical care that us peons can’t afford or have the clout to muscle our way to the head of the line to get.
I can understand the macho idea that I don’t need the shot. Trump pretended to be macho that way.
But don’t endanger everybody else by fighting against herd immunity. And claim you’re doing the “Christian” thing.
The Orange lump was apparently sick enough to cause panic among his staff, and they frantically demanded he must have an experimental, very expensive treatment that cured his infection but did nothing about his massive cognitive and emotional shortcomings.
Honest question: any tips for anxious family members? I mean in the clinical sense. Family has risk no risk factor, its not “vaccinations are evil” just “I can’t leave the house”, but might need someone with them assuring them at the time
Seriously not sure how to try to help
@5 I think one of the reasons that last years flu season was so mild was that sensible people around the world were wearing masks and using hand sanitiser .
The “fighting covid” thing bugs me. Your body fights covid – you don’t really do anything. Also, medical professionals fight covid for you – they are the ones actually doing something.
Why no health insurance introduced different rates for vaccinated and unvaccinated people? Unvaccinated people are a risk of huge expenses to cover.
Is there some kind of law against it?
Sometimes I just wish my government (we have public healthcare system) introduced increased health security rate and low priority in line to covid treatement for people unvaccinated witout valid medical reason – most of them would vaccinate and the rest can die if they want to, but I live in Trump loving cleptocratic enclave on the outskirts of EU and my government can’t keep power without appeasing pro-death cult.
This is natural selection in all its glory. If those predisposed to believe the right wing, anti vax BS are dying at a higher rate than the general population, excuse me if I don’t shed any tears.