Yes, the victim, in this case, Ray DeMonia, lived in Cullan Alabama, the small town between Huntsville and Birmingham, the states two largest cities, that hosted Trump’s last rally. No one will ever know whether Trump’s rally brought an extra concentrated COVID population to Cullan, all we do know is that the timing lines up. Ray DeMonia died over the weekend in a MS hospital.
Alabama didn’t have an ICU bed. Again, it’s speculation as to whether the search for a bed played a role in his death. Rachel Maddow surveyed the situation in her show Monday night, we have the transcript from Rawstory: [1]
“Due to COVID 19, CRMC emergency staff contacted 43 hospitals in 3 states in search of a Cardiac ICU bed and finally located one in Meridian, MS.,” the last paragraph of DeMonia’s obituary [2] reads, citing the Cullman Regional Medical Center.
“In honor of Ray, please get vaccinated if you have not, in an effort to free up resources for non-COVID-related emergencies,” the obituary reads. “He would not want any other family to go through what his did.”
“I mean, for everyone who says that getting a vaccine is a personal choice that doesn’t affect anyone else, line that up with Ray DeMonia’s obituary and what his family has just said about his death, right?” Maddow said. “I mean, your decision about your vaccine may feel personal to you. I get it. But you live in a society. You live in a country, and your decision about your vaccine is ultimately the decision that fills up hospital beds, that makes all the difference to your society, your community, your country. It makes all the difference as to whether a man like Ray DeMonia gets that ICU bed or not.”
Getting the vaccine is not purely a political choice. One need only ask DeMonia’s family.
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