On Jan. 10 Los Angeles Times business columnist Michael Hiltzik wrote the cruelest column I’ve ever seen, titled, “Mocking anti-vaxxers’ COVID deaths is ghoulish, yes – but may be necessary.”

The URL of the column reads, “why-shouldnt-we-dance-on-the-graves-of-anti-vaxxers.”

In the column, Hiltzik gratuitously attacked Republican activist and Orange County Deputy District Attorney Kelly Ernby, who died of the disease on January 4. Although I met her a couple of times, I didn’t know her. By all accounts a wonderful colleague, wife and mother, she didn’t deserve this and other national attacks.

This is part of a trend we’ve seen lately of some of the extremists in the vaccination-mandating crowd, who say they’re just trying to save lives, denigrating the actual lost lives to COVID of those they disagree with. They even admit, to use Hiltzik’s phrasing, but without his lame qualifiers, such character assassination over a policy disagreement is “ghoulish, yes” and “necessary.”

Hiltzik is not a scientist or a medical doctor. The Times ought first to send such attempts at science for peer review by the paper’s owner, Patrick Soon-Shiong, a world-famous surgeon.

Hiltzik wrote Ernby “deliberately flouted sober medical advice by refusing a vaccine known to reduce the risk of serious disease from the virus, including the risk to others.” And, “Obviously, the [vaccine] mandates exist because these diseases threaten not only infected persons themselves, but the community, meaning anyone they come in contact with.”

But on Aug. 5, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky went on CNN and told Wolf Blitzer, “Our vaccines are working exceptionally well. They continue to work well with delta with regard to severe illness and death. They prevent it. But what they can’t do anymore is prevent transmission.” The transcript is online. The quote is at 18:05:00.

Hiltzik apparently hasn’t been following the science on COVID transmission, which is more complicated than people like Hiltzik want to acknowledge.

Hiltzik is upset Ernby’s statements might have convinced some people to not get the vaccine, also allegedly leading to deaths and overloading hospitals. He wrote, “First, we must acknowledge that the enemies needing to be stamped out are the misinformation, lies and stupidity being injected into the fight against COVID.”

But this is America. We discuss everything out in the open. Everything. There is no censorship. If he wants a culprit, Hiltzik should look in the mirror. Probably a lot more people would have gotten the vaxx if it hadn’t been mandated and if we had been able to discuss it freely.

When many Americans hear “mandate” and “don’t talk about it,” they automatically think they’re being bamboozled, especially if it comes from the government. That’s because government isn’t objective about science or anything else. It also isn’t competent, as witness the California DMV and Employment Development Department, or last year’s debacle in Afghanistan.

“It should be clear that opposing vaccine mandates as a substitute for opposing vaccination itself is a fundamentally incoherent position,” Hiltzik contended. “It’s little more than the garden variety small-government Republican ideology. That’s what it was in Ernby’s hands.”

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Except America’s most prominent anti-vaxxer is Robert Kennedy Jr., scion of the country’s most famous liberal Democratic family, and author of the recent No. 1 bestseller, “The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health.”

And Hiltzik himself promoted distrust of vaccines when he tweeted on Sept. 4, 2020, “Column: Trump is plotting a vaccine debacle for November, and people will die.”

Your most precious possession as an American is your freedom. Take that away and you’re an Australian on perpetual lockdown. Make your own decisions. That was Ernby’s message. And how she lived until the Good Lord took her home.

Kelly Ernby was a lovely woman who didn’t deserve these attacks. Whether you think she was right or wrong, she contributed to our most crucial debate of recent years. May she rest in peace.

I’d rather live and maybe die in a rambunctious free democracy than under Hiltzik’s medical authoritarianism.

John Seiler blogs at johnseiler.substack.com