God Helps Those Who Help Themselves, But Karma Can Be A Bitch

If you can't be bothered, you get what you deserve

Kelly Ernby was no doubt a good person, a friend to her friends, a companion to her husband, a crime-fighting prosecutor. She presumably had all the decent qualities we usually celebrate after a person dies, when we generally say only the kindest things we can think of.

But she was also a vocal critic of vaccine mandates whose posts on social media risked lives, denied science and confused Americans. She was an activist with a mini-megaphone — an Orange County deputy district attorney, a local Republican Party official and a 2019 GOP candidate for state Assembly — spreading the message of a dangerous populist movement.

So when Ernby died of COVID-19 this week at age 46 (unvaccinated, of course), her death set off an ugly public debate, reflecting all the bitterness, polarization and frustration in American pandemic society. A resident of Huntington Beach, she suddenly became a symbol rather than a person, a blank slate onto which we could all project our harshest gut reactions.

One of the unexpected moral dilemmas of the COVID-19 pandemic has been how to react to the deaths of the unvaccinated. When someone “whose posts on social media risked lives, denied science and confused Americans” dies, how are we to react?

Kelly Ernby made her (poor) choice- and she paid for it with her life. She had every opportunity to avail herself of a free, safe, and readily available vaccine that probably would have saved her life. Instead, she gave herself over to ignorance, selfishness, and politicization. Her death is directly attributable to her own ignorance and hubris.

The untimely death of anyone is a tragedy, but when that passing is the result of a choice that person made, do they deserve our sympathy? Are they owed grief, or should we be honest and remember them for having ignorantly made the choices that led to their demise?

Supporters praised her as a hero and bemoaned the “leftist ghouls” they said were reveling in her death. People on the left either held out her death as a cautionary lesson or crowed nastily with a sort of macabre, I-told-you-so pleasure.

“She did this to herself.”

“Congratulations on winning your very own Darwin Award.”

“Freedumb!”

“Another Trump MENSA member hits the dirt.”

“I feel worse for all the innocents that believed her BS.”

Mocking anti-vaxxers when they get sick has become a bit of a sport. Sorryantivaxxer.com, for instance, is a website that runs names, photos, social media posts and commentaries about people who have preached anti-vax messages and then died of COVID. (“Suicide by COVID,” as some have called it.) On the site’s page on Ernby (which already has more than 60,000 page views and nearly 4,000 comments), she’s described as “another bullheaded conservative who made the wrong choice.”

There’s certainly a grain of truth in those comments, especially when Ernby could’ve made a different choice that almost certainly would’ve saved her life. Unfortunately, while I’ve participated in some of the piling on, I’m not convinced it’s unwarranted.

After two years of pandemic politicization, I no longer possess sympathy for those who play stupid games and win stupid prizes. Ernby and others like her had every chance to make a simple and easy choice that would’ve saved their lives. Instead, they chose “suicide by COVID-19.”

How are we to feel about people like Kelly Ernby, who not only made a poor choice but actively worked to spread dezinformatziya and falsehoods about COVID-19 and the vaccines? Ernby did what she could to disseminate information that was not only false but potentially harmful. Worse, she could’ve infected others while she was carrying the coronavirus.

People who are vaxxed and boosted are far, far less likely to be infected, to be hospitalized or to die, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and others. So, yeah, maybe she did do this to herself.

And not just to herself. When she became sick, she may have infected others. Furthermore, as an outspoken anti-vaxxer, her misinformation may have persuaded still others that vaccines were not necessary — or, worse yet, dangerous — leading more people to become infected. “The vaccine is not the cure to COVID,” she wrote on her Facebook page, “and mandates won’t work.” So, yes, we should certainly be concerned for the innocents who believed her.

Ernby’s decision-making and her actions were irresponsible. They resulted in her death and possibly the illness and death of others with whom she crossed paths. There’s no argument to be made that could justify that sort of absurdity. I wonder how someone so ostensibly intelligent and capable could’ve been so incredibly stupid and irrational. It’s one thing to be irresponsible with your own life, but to imperil others with whom you come into contact? Good people don’t engage in that sort of behavior.

I’ll own up to at times almost reveling in the deaths of those too stupid and irresponsible to take a simple and easy step to save themselves. I’ve refused to grieve those who made their bed and now sleep in it for eternity. While I still occasionally feel some of that, I’m tired of the carnage more than anything. I’m exhausted from the senseless suffering and death.

I’m also furious at people like Kelly Ernby for the burden they’ve placed on our healthcare system and the stresses they’ve forced nurses and doctors to endure. They refused to believe science long enough to get vaccinated, but they demanded that science save them when they became deathly ill. Unfortunately, karma caught up with Ernby and thousands who @!#$&% around and found out.

Though I won’t mourn her passing, I’m sorry Ernby died. Even if she didn’t value her life, those in her orbit loved her. I’m saddened that her husband has needlessly become a widower. It didn’t have to be this way, and yet here we are. Of course, there will be many more Kelly Ernbys; people who think they know more than doctors and scientists. They will pay for their arrogance and self-righteousness with their lives, and they will leave behind people who love them.

How arrogant and self-absorbed is that??

I’m not going to gloat over the deaths of people like Kelly Ernby. But neither will I shed tears for someone who had every opportunity to save her life and refused. We gain nothing by mourning those who default to arrogance and ignorance and pay for it with their lives.

Many of those who died called themselves Christians, yet they ignored the Sunday School lesson about God helping those who help themselves. If they don’t respect their faith and their life enough to get vaccinated, why should I mourn their passing?

Karma can be a real bitch.

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