Man Who Mocked Vaccines Dies Of COVID-19

A California man who mocked COVID-19 vaccines has died after being infected with the virus.

Stephen Harmon, 34, died at Corona Regional Medical Center in California on Wednesday after being diagnosed with the novel coronavirus. Prior to his hospitalization, Harmon posted several tweets mocking the vaccines.

“If you’re having email problems, I feel bad for you, son. I got 99 problems but a vax ain’t one!” he wrote in one tweet.

“Biden’s door-to-door vaccine “surveyors” really should be called JaCovid Witness,” another tweet read, referring to the administration’s efforts to push vaccines and combat misinformation.

Harmon, who attended the Hillsong Church, received treatment for pneumonia and low oxygen levels. He had also announced that he was being intubated and asked his followers to pray for him.

“I’m choosing to go under intubation, I’ve fought this thing as hard as I can but unfortunately it’s reached a point of critical choice & as much as I hate having to do this I’d rather it be willingness than forced emergency procedure. don’t (sic) know when I’ll wake up, please pray,” he wrote on his now-protected Twitter account, as reported by KCBS-TV.

Brian Houston, the founder of the megachurch, later paid tribute to Harmon, calling him generous. He also argued that while their church encourages its members to get vaccinated, it is still a “personal decision.”

“While many of our staff, leadership and congregation have already received the Covid-19 vaccine, we recognize this is a personal decision for each individual to make with the counsel of medical professionals," Houston said in a statement to CNN.

COVID-19 cases across the country are on the rise as the more contagious Delta variant spreads. The number of infections has now reached an average of 51,000 new cases a day, up by four times the rate reported in June, according to The New York Times.

In California, the vast majority of COVID-19 cases are seen among people who are yet to receive a vaccine. This led the state’s Department of Public Health to record nearly 8,000 new infections Friday and put the testing positivity rate at more than 5%.

In Los Angeles, health officials recorded 3,000 new COVID-19 cases on Friday for the first time since February, according to NBC News.

COVID-19 has so far claimed 610,891 lives and infected 34,443,064 people in the United States, according to Johns Hopkins University data.