Common Book: The 'demonic energy' of COVID schadenfreude



Sarah Jones, New York: This happened to me recently when I lost my temper with a woman I’d known in college. She is a nurse and wrote on Facebook that she refuses to get vaccinated. I told her that people like her are the reason my grandfather is dead. That wasn’t exactly true — my grandfather died before the vaccines were available — but her indifference toward the virus had irked me. I don’t think I changed her mind. I felt better for an instant and then I went back to feeling angry, both with her and with myself. Whatever compelled me to comment on her Facebook post could have become much uglier if I had allowed it. On the r/HermanCainAward sub-Reddit, people post screenshots of comments from anti-vaxxers who later died of COVID. To some, death has become a spectacle at which they are entitled to gawk. That’s how demonic energy must feel. Right now, it’s everywhere.

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