I don’t want to get too far into the vaccine debate because like most people I’m nowhere near smart or qualified enough to know what the truth is, but one thing we can’t ignore is the growing number of anti-vaxxers/COVID-deniers who have wound up catching the virus and dying.
58-year-old Leslie Lawrenson is a recent example. Here’s a guy who is intelligent, articulate, educated and thoughtful, but who ultimately made the wrong choice for himself when it came to getting the vaccine or not. Here’s a video he had put out while battling symptoms shortly before he died:
Before being found dead at home, Leslie Lawrenson made this video about being glad he got COVID because he didn’t trust vaccines.
Family said he was “brainwashed by the stuff that he was seeing on YouTube and social media.”
More: https://t.co/tw6SNtZqHppic.twitter.com/Q7zo5ZCGM3
— Leah McElrath 🏳️🌈 (@leahmcelrath) August 7, 2021
Man, that’s a disturbing watch. As you might expect, the online comments around Leslie’s death are pretty awful, with a load of people talking about Darwin Awards and ‘natural selection’ and just generally being assholes about it. Others say Leslie’s story is proof that not only ‘stupid’ people are vulnerable to disinformation – Leslie Lawrenson was a Cambridge graduate and clearly a bright bloke in general.
His partner Amanda Mitchell, 56, who was seriously ill with Covid at the same time, told BBC Radio 5 Live:
I feel incredibly foolish. Les died unnecessarily.
It was a daily thing that he said to us: ‘You don’t need to have it, you’ll be fine, just be careful.’
He said to me: ‘It’s a gene thing, an experimental thing. You’re putting something in your body that hasn’t been thoroughly tested.’
Les was highly educated… so if he told me something, I tended to believe it.
Obviously people can and should be able to decide for themselves whether they take the vaccine or not, but clearly a pattern is forming that shows a number of sceptics regretting their decisions not to. Of course it’s too early to say whether the opposite will prove to be true as well, but that’s what the staunchest anti vaxxers are more concerned about. Fair enough I suppose.
To watch a dude launch his bike through the window of an COVID-denier’s car, click HERE.
