Politics - News Analysis

MAGA Anti-Masker From Florida Gets Month in Jail for Coughing on Cancer Patient

Historians and psychologists/sociologists will be left to figure out how it was that masks became the center of gravity in the national COVID response. We do know that if we had a real government with a real president and a mature populace, we likely would not have led the world in deaths. What if Trump set up a government program in which the government sent masks to each household every week? What if he even put a letter in the box, signed as if Trump paid for them himself, like the relief checks?

It would be disgusting, but it would have saved lives. Instead, we did the opposite. To be a MAGA meant to reject masks and the people who wore masks. It meant not only refusing to wear a mask but becoming enraged upon being asked about it. Some went beyond enraged, some became violent. Coughing on someone could have been an assault with a deadly weapon if one knew they’d been exposed.

Yet it happened, over and over, but finally a Karen is headed to jail for it. From Crooks and Liars:

A Fernandina Beach woman seen giving the finger to another shopper on video that went viral then coughing in her face at a St. Johns Town Center store before storming out has been sentenced to 29 days in jail for assault.

The decision ended several hours of testimony and questions during Debra Jo Michele Hunter’s sentencing hearing that went into Thursday evening and came despite an August plea agreement that had consisted of only probation with conditions.

Debra Jo Hunter gets emotional as she testifies during her sentencing hearing via Zoom on Thursday. Duval County Court Judge James Ruth first heard testimony from Hunter’s husband, friends and family who said she has a “really huge heart” and is “broken-hearted” over how she coughed on cancer patient Heather Sprague. But after they spoke on behalf of Hunter, Sprague told the judge about the confrontation that happened only months after she underwent brain tumor surgery.

Sprague said she watched Hunter, 53, give at least 15 minutes of what she called “escalating bullying,” swearing and threats to Pier 1 staff about a broken item with Sprague’s children nearby. It was only when Sprague said she started shooting video in the final minute of the tirade that she was yelled at, then coughed on.

A cancer patient, someone with a compromised immune system already. A cancer patient. This woman is lucky she didn’t get six months.

*****
Peace, y’all
Jason
[email protected] and on Twitter @JasonMiciak

meet the author

Jason Miciak is a political writer, features writer, author, and attorney. He is originally from Canada but grew up in the Pacific Northwest. He now enjoys life as a single dad raising a ridiculously-loved young girl on the beaches of the Gulf Coast. He is very much the dreamy mystic, a day without learning is a day not lived. He is passionate about his flower pots and studies philosophical science, religion, and non-mathematical principles of theoretical physics. Dogs, pizza, and love are proof that God exists. "Above all else, love one another."

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