One of the more vile and infuriating of these types of stories I've come across lately. Some of these anti-vaxxers are just pure evil. There's no other explanation.

Arkansas must be full of them, as the state is currently grappling with one of the worst outbreaks in the country.

Source: Wall Street Journal

While the number of Arkansans getting vaccinated in the last couple of weeks has risen, some say they will never be persuaded. Shanda Parish, a nurse who lives in the Fort Smith-Greenwood area, said she won’t get the shot, even after losing both her father and stepmother to the virus in recent weeks.

Robert and Vi Herring, both in their 70s, were lifelong residents of the area, married 34 years with five children between them. They didn’t like the idea of getting the vaccine, their children said. They became sick after attending a 52nd high school reunion and died within three days of each other at a Fort Smith hospital in late July.

Ms. Parish, who considered her father her hero, is devastated, she said, clinging to waves of numbness between grief and anger. The deaths have caused a rift within the family, whose children remain split on their views of the vaccine.

Ms. Parish said she still won’t get it; she simply doesn’t trust a newly created vaccine. She doesn’t regret that her parents didn’t get vaccinated, she said. It was their choice. Instead, she regrets that she was quarantining ahead of a cancer treatment when they fell ill and couldn’t be involved in pushing to get them hospitalized sooner.

As always with these people, it's about them, not the deceased.

Since the Herrings died, Ms. Parish has felt judgment from friends and acquaintances asking why her parents weren’t vaccinated—why she didn’t make them get vaccinated.

“We didn’t kill them, but some people make us feel like it’s our fault they’re gone,” she said, crying. “No one should try to make you feel guilty because someone died.”

A nurse who lost both her parents to Covid-19 says she does not regret their decision not to get the vaccine, but that she resents judgment from friends asking why they didn't get the shot: “Some people make us feel like it’s our fault they’re gone.” https://t.co/xh4tqiSdwh

— The Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) August 8, 2021

A recent photo of Robert and Vi Herring.