Cockburn will concede that when a public figure stakes their life on a certain medical opinion and dies a preventable death as a result, the irony is enough to merit a news story. But he would be remiss if he didn’t observe that standards for this sort of thing seem a tad inconsistent. Losing weight is another entirely controllable way to reduce COVID risk, too, but the same publications that gloat over dead vaccine skeptics have published a Pravda’s worth of takes explaining that COVID-related fat shaming is not funny and not OK…

The demand for COVID death porn is so great that, much like with hate crimes, demand outpaces supply. In July 2020, lurid tales told of vibrant young adults holding COVID parties, only to admit their error mere moments before they ghoulishly expired, ‘Masque of the Red Death’-style. In November, a South Dakota nurse tweeted of dying patients gasping that the virus was fake even as they were intubated. Both of those stories were, it turns out, fake, and Cockburn doesn’t feel much better about Alabama doctor Brytney Corbia, who sent a tingle down every CNN producer’s leg when she described staring down plague victims and telling them it was ‘too late’ to get a vaccine.

Will these stories convince any fence-sitters to get the vaccine? A few, maybe. But so far they’ve been far more effective at spreading hatred of the press.