The murder of Daniel and Davy Macias by the cowards Rupert Murdoch and Tucker Carlson

This story makes me want to literally strangle certain people (Now wait a minute Rupert, I’m a peaceful man):

Daniel and Davy Macias spent 18 months being very cautious about Covid-19.They wiped down surfaces, showered after work and even had their groceries delivered, but that didn’t stop them from contracting the virus.

Davy Macias, a Southern California labor and delivery nurse, was seven months pregnant with her fifth child in early August when she was hospitalized with Covid-19. Daniel Macias also contracted the virus.

Doctors helped Davy Macias, 37, deliver the newborn early by Cesarean section while she was intubated, but she died before she could meet her baby.

Daniel Macias, 38, was being treated in the same hospital when he learned about the birth of his daughter. Nurses showed him photos of the baby, before he too died from complications of the virus less than two weeks later, leaving the newborn girl without parents or a name.

When the hospital called asking for the baby’s name, Terry Macias, the grandmother who is now caring for the five children, told them: “I’ll wait for my son to name her.”

She has yet to be named. For now, like the hospital did, the family calls her Baby Girl.

The couple was unvaccinated and died on August 26 and September 9, respectively, leaving behind children ranging in age from 3 weeks to 8 years old, Macias told CNN on Monday.”It wasn’t that they didn’t want to be vaccinated — they planned on it,” she said. She was adamant that this was a personal choice and each wanted to learn more about its safety prior to being inoculated.

A former kindergarten teacher who recently retired, Terry Macias believes her son and daughter-in-law contracted the coronavirus after a recent family trip to an indoor water park as a last hurrah before returning to school.

Upon learning about their death, Macias was responsible for telling her grandchildren. The 8-year-old boy and 5-year-old girl understood their parents were gone, Macias said, but she’s not sure they understand their parents are never coming home.

The couple’s 3-year-old daughter woke up Thursday and told Macias she had a dream her father was coming home from the hospital, but learned later that her father had died.

The toddler broke down in tears when she learned the news, reminding her grandmother of her dream.”I know baby, but sometimes, our dreams don’t come true,” Macias said.

There was a subthread about this yesterday in the comments to my post about firing healthcare workers who refuse to get vaccinated. Truffautfan observed, correctly I think, that these people seemed more just sort of vaguely confused than “own the libs rage bots.” (Of course the grandmother could be lying or confabulating to save face, but let’s assume she’s telling the truth, which is after all quite possible).

Replying to that point. WeWantPie made an extremely perceptive observation, that I want to highlight and discuss:

I agree, but that makes me even angrier at the own-the-libs ragebots — what they’ve done is, they’ve created an overall “atmosphere” in much of the country that leads a huge number of people who aren’t really very political, and would, absent wingnut propaganda, have simply gotten vaccinated, to nonetheless “just feel” that something must be hinky about COVID vaccination, otherwise why would it be so “controversial?”

It’s like all of those moderate, not-political people who “just had a feeling” that there was “something” untrustworthy about Hillary Clinton, despite the fact that not a single thing wingnuts ever alleged about her had the slightest basis in reality. Propaganda is poison, and it fucking works.

This is the thing, right there.

There’s a kind of emotionally lazy response to these kinds of stories — I know, because I often have it myself — that people like the now-dead couple are nothing but fascist or proto-fascist right wing idiots, and sure you feel bad for the kids but good riddance all things considered.

WeWantPie’s point is that there are huge numbers of basically apolitical or weakly political people who aren’t right wing zealots, but who are right wing adjacent in some way — they live in social/cultural bubbles where the Republican puke funnel is taken to be news rather than propaganda, and therefore it’s easy for them to just sort of slide into genuine vaccine “hesitancy” in the literal sense of the word. They’re hesitant because they keep hearing that there are a lot of questions about whether these vaccines really work and are really safe, given that they’re “experimental”[sic], and that “the government” is now punishing people for not taking them etc. etc.

Look I’m not letting these people completely off the hook by any means — I mean the woman was nurse for Christ’s sake — but let’s not lose sight of who the real criminals and psychopathic evildoers are here: The prominent [Charlie Sweatpants adds quite rightly, “AND VACCINATED“] politicians and media stars running the propaganda machine that creates this bogus atmosphere of doubt.

So I feel a certain genuine empathy for the genuine hesitancy of people like Daniel and Davy Macias, and I feel white hot rage when I think of their children.

Now I’m not saying I would personally throw Rupert Murdoch out of a helicopter from, oh, I don’t know, 250 feet up in the air, just so he could land on Tucker Carlson after Murdoch’s worthless body had accelerated to however many feet per second second that would be, but I sure as hell would watch the pay per view.