Vaccine regret stories

Some stories are coming out about people who did not get vaccinated and then got infected and became sick. Ones who did not get sick probably don't regret their decisions. Others who are sick now continue to deny they are infected with COVID and firmly believe they have the flu. The New York Times writes:

Some people hospitalized with the virus still vow not to get vaccinated, and surveys suggest that a majority of unvaccinated Americans are not budging. Doctors in Covid units say some patients still refuse to believe they are infected with anything beyond the flu.

“We have people in the I.C.U. with Covid who are denying they have Covid,” said Dr. Matthew Sperry, a pulmonary critical care physician who has been treating Mr. Greene. “It doesn’t matter what we say.”

Still, some hospitals swamped with patients in largely conservative, unvaccinated swaths of the country have begun to recruit Covid survivors as public health messengers of last resort.  

Theirs are Scared Straight stories for a pandemic that has thrived on misinformation, fear and hardened partisan divisions over whether or not to get vaccinated.

One woman in Utah who regretted not getting vaccinated now worries that her hospitalized husband will die from his COVID infection. She wrote on her Facebook page: “We did not get the vaccine. I read all kinds of things about the vaccine and it scared me. So I made the decision and prayed about it and got the impression that we would be ok. If I had the information I have today, we would have gotten vaccinated.”

The woman in Utah with her family at home 

while dad is in the hospital critically ill

She told the NYT, “I have such incredible guilt. I blame myself still. Every day. I will always regret that I listened to the misinformation being put out there. They’re creating fear.” In that, one can clearly see the destructive power of dark free speech and disinformation about COVID. Some people believe it. Some who are infected refuse to believe the literal reality of their situation.

This again shows that dark free speech leads some people to firmly believe things that are clearly false. The NYT described people's fear as coming from “a rabbit hole of conspiracy theories touted by anti-vaccine lawyers and YouTubers, and videos in which anti-vaccine doctors and nurses decried the Covid-19 shots as bioweapons.” 

Questions: What responsibility, if any, do people and groups, e.g., Fox News, the Republican Party, etc., that spread lies about COVID bear for the suffering and deaths their deceit has caused, even if they themselves were deceived? Do people who fall for the lies and emotional manipulation bear full responsibility? Does it matter for those who now express regret are honest and public about their mistake? 

Fox News doing its best to keep 

the pandemic alive and growing

Go Laura! Keep on lying to the public!

Keep on killing people!!

Politifact has a huge list of COVID

lies