In the spring, Rick Rose drew the wrath of strangers after he practically shouted on Facebook that he wasn’t buying a face mask.
Two months later, he contracted COVID-19 — and, he posted, he was struggling to breathe. Days later, on July 4, he was dead.That post, among the Ohio man's final public words on Facebook, attracted attention in the form of more than 3,100 “haha” laughing face emoji and a torrent of criticism from strangers.“If they would have known him, they would have loved him like everybody else did,” says Tina Heschel, mother of the 37-year-old Rose.
She says she’s “tired of all the hate.”“I just want him to rest,” she says.Shaming people who get sick or don’t follow the rules in a public health crisis has been a thing since.