Source: "Red Covid" by By David Leonhardt - NY Times - Sept. 27, 2021
{For example:}
A Georgia police officer who frequently posted anti-vaxx messages on Facebook and took an anti-parasitic drug instead of a vaccine has died of COVID-19.
Captain Joe Manning, 57, of the Wayne County Sheriff's Office died on Wednesday after a short battle with the virus, according to local news station WSAV.
In one post, Manning shared an image that said, "I am not vaccinated by choice and that's my right."
In another, Manning encouraged people to stock up on the anti-parasitic drug ivermectin, frequently used to deworm horses, and increasingly being taken by people in a misguided attempt to treat or prevent COVID-19.
"OK Folks Wayne Feed and Seed has some liquid and paste Ivermectin get it while supplies last," Manning wrote on Facebook.
Manning also wrote on Facebook that he had taken ivermectin himself, and criticized Facebook for disciplining him for spreading misinformation, The Independent reported.
Source: "A police captain who refused the vaccine and took the anti-parasitic ivermectin to combat COVID-19 dies from the virus" by Alia Shoaib - Business Insider
Veronica Wolski, the QAnon adherent whose recent hospitalization made her a cause celebre for the controversial medication ivermectin, died in the intensive care unit of AMITA Health Resurrection Medical Center early Monday, a hospital spokeswoman said. She was 64.
For more than a week, her supporters had besieged Resurrection with demands that Wolski be given ivermectin. The medication is typically used to treat diseases caused by parasitic worms, but has been hailed as a COVID-19 cure by some despite a lack of definitive scientific proof or government authorization.
The hospital said last week that its doctors and clinicians, following the guidance of the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, do not use ivermectin for COVID-19 cases.
Over the weekend, some of Wolski’s supporters tried to get the hospital to discharge her. A video posted Sunday night to the Telegram channel of right-wing attorney Lin Wood shows him demanding over the phone that the hospital release Wolski to a person holding her medical power of attorney.
“There’s an ambulance waiting for her outside, there’s a medical doctor waiting for her to treat her,” he said. “If you do not release her, you’re going to be guilty of murder. Do you understand what murder is?”
Wolski was well-known for {. . . } her allegiance to the QAnon conspiracy theory. Her Telegram channel includes numerous posts showing a disdain for masking, vaccines and other mainstream approaches to avoiding COVID-19.
Source: "Veronica Wolski, Chicago woman at the center of ivermectin firestorm, dies of pneumonia due to COVID-19 infection, officials say" by John Keilman - Chicago Tribune - September 13, 2021
An Alabama couple who opposed COVID-19 vaccines on YouTube died from the disease, AL.com reported.
In a video, Dusty and Tristan Graham said the vaccine was "technically not" a vaccine.
The couple's channel had 10,000 subscribers before it was removed from YouTube, Social Blade said.
Dusty and Tristan Graham, of Huntsville, Alabama, ran a YouTube page together
The couple's YouTube channel appears to have been taken down, but one of their last videos {Dusty Graham said in the video} "I've got my own passport. It's called the Bill of Rights." In the video, Dusty Graham said the COVID-19 vaccine was "technically not" a vaccine and called it an "immunity therapy."
"I don't know guys. Here's the deal: It's been a year. I haven't had it yet," Dusty Graham said, before the couple listed a series of other illnesses they'd recovered from.
The couple's channel had about 10,600 subscribers before it was removed, Social Blade said.
Tristan Graham died on August 25 in her sleep, AL.com reported. Last week, the couple's daughter, Windsor, wrote in a since deleted Facebook post that her father was being moved to a ventilator.
Dusty Graham died on Thursday, a GoFundMe page set up to help the couple said.
Dusty Graham started the GoFundMe page from the intensive care unit two days after his wife's death, AL.com reported. The page has raised about $23,000 to help the couple's two children cover medical and funeral costs.
Source: "An Alabama couple who trashed vaccines on their YouTube channel died from COVID-19 within 3 weeks of each other" by Kenneth Niemeyer - Insider - Sep 17, 2021
Just a day after testing positive for COVID-19, Florida Republican official {Gregg Prentice, {. . .} 61, led the Hillsborough County Election Integrity Committee} who battled against mask mandates, attacked the vaccine, and railed at CDC officials has died in Tampa.
Along with others in the Hillsborough County Election Integrity Committee, Prentice was a vociferous critic of the vaccine, mask mandates, and COVID-prevention measures. He railed against top infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci, vowing in a Twitter post to “end Faucism.” He also insisted the U.S. needs “more socialist distancing than we do social distancing” and that the pandemic was created to destroy small businesses.
A spokesperson for the Hillsborough Republican Executive Committee has reportedly said that Prentice’s wife and daughter have also caught COVID-19.
Meanwhile, as the local party reels, Prentice’s associates have spread their own wild conspiracy theories—presented without evidence—on how the official died.
Friend Jason Kimball blames Tampa General Hospital for the 61-year-old’s death, alleging staff “illegally intubated” Prentice the day before he died. During a Sept. 13 Tampa City Council meeting, Kimball requested an investigation be launched. However, members of the City Council denied any wrongdoing or mistreatment from the hospital.
“My public comments are really going to be about Tampa General Hospital,” Kimball said at the council meeting. “There’s a dire situation going on right now... that I don’t think anyone is aware of, and I have firsthand knowledge of it. They’re intubating everyone entering Tampa General Hospital as a first line of action. They’re using fatality-treatment protocol, and I think that the city council really needs to do an investigation... They’re intubating people illegally... When you call 911 and you go to that hospital, you’re going into a bad situation.”
Councilman John Dingfelder quickly shut down Kimball’s comment, blasting it as “dangerous.”
“Though we respect the First Amendment rights from everybody who calls in... I think it’s an extremely dangerous comment to be spreading to the community that they shouldn’t go to Tampa General Hospital... [It] is the top one or two hospitals in this community... There’s no finer place. Doctors and staff are dedicated to saving lives, and if I was sick with COVID... I would go to Tampa General Hospital,” the Democrat representing Tampa’s Third District said.
After praising the medical center, Dingfelder went back to bashing Kimball’s remarks: “That was a very dangerous comment from that individual... People listen to ridiculous comments without doing the right research.”
Other council members chimed in, agreeing with Dingfelder.
That hasn’t stopped Kimball from speaking out on Facebook, where he’s continued to perpetuate the myth that COVID-19 is a “medically engineered virus.”
Source: "Anti-Mask Florida Official Dies of COVID—and Takes GOP Software Secrets With Him" by Brooke Leigh Howard - Daily Beast - September 17, 2021
A Texas man who helped organize protests against pandemic restrictions is fighting for his life after being hospitalized for nearly a month with COVID-19, the San Angelo Standard-Times reported.
Caleb Wallace, a 30-year-old father of three, has been unconscious, ventilated and heavily sedated in the ICU at Shannon Medical Center in San Angelo since Aug. 8, the Standard-Times reported. His wife said on a GoFundMe page for household and medical bills that he was was intubated multiple times, had high fevers, infection and bleeding in his chest.
In July 2020, Caleb Wallace reportedly helped organize a “freedom rally” that billed itself as a protest against the “government being in control of our lives.” He also founded the San Angelo Freedom Defenders, which hosted a separate rally last year to “end COVID tyranny.”
He wrote a letter in April to the San Angelo Independent School District that was published by a local news outlet. In it, he demanded that the school district “rescind ALL COVID-related policies immediately” and falsely claimed that wearing masks had harmful effects on children and that there was “little evidence that masks worked for anyone.”
When he first felt symptoms on July 26, his wife told the Standard-Times, he refused to get tested or seek medical care. He instead began treating himself with a cocktail of Vitamin C, zinc, aspirin and ivermectin, an anti-parasitic drug that has been falsely promoted as an effective treatment for COVID-19 by conservative media. He was taken to the hospital on July 30.
Source: "Texas Anti-Mask ‘Freedom Rally’ Organizer Fighting For His Life With COVID-19" By Josephine Harvey - HuffPost - 08/27/2021
Philip Valentine, whose funeral is this weekend {. . .} was a conservative radio host and vaccine skeptic in Nashville who recently died of COVID-19. Not that I was personally touched by his death; I’d never even heard of him before he was hospitalized.
But he has become the latest symbol of this era’s defining cliche: the COVID denier or vaccine holdout who ends up dying an excruciating death and wishing he had not refused to accept the benefit of other people’s experience. Not to pick on Valentine. He is not the first , sadly, he probably will not be the last. But again, he is the latest on a list that is growing long.
California church member Stephen Harmon scoffed at trusting Dr. Anthony Fauci over the Bible. He died of COVID.
Las Vegas dad Michael Freedy declined the vaccine because he was scared of side effects. He died of COVID.
Texas GOP official H. Scott Apley posted a meme mocking the virus. He died of COVID.
West Palm Beach radio host Dick Farrel claimed COVID was overblown. He died of COVID.
Texas piano teacher Lydia Rodriguez thought she didn’t need a vaccine. She died of COVID.
Now there’s Valentine. He said his chances of dying from COVID were vanishingly small. He died of COVID on Aug. 21.
Source: "It’s true: There really are none so blind as those who will not see - BY LEONARD PITTS JR. - Miami Herald - AUGUST 27, 2021
Florida woman Lisa Steadman came home from abeing hospitalized with COVID-19 and tragically found her husband had died of the disease while she was gone. Neither of them had been vaccinated.
Steadman and her husband Ron Steadman, of Winter Haven, were both diagnosed with Covid, but while Mrs. Steadman went to the hospital, Mr. Steadman stayed home to take care of their dogs.
In a heart-wrenching interview, Mrs. Steadman told local ABC station WFTS what she found when she got home, and why she and her husband had not been vaccinated prior to falling ill. WFTSS’ McKenna King reports:
“I could hear our little dogs. They were all in the bedroom together, the dogs and him. I rolled to the bedroom door, I opened the door, and he was on the bed passed away,” said Steadman.
Ron died from COVID-related complications.
Source: "Unvaccinated Florida Woman Comes Home From Covid Hospitalization To Find Unvaxxed Husband Dead Of Covid" By Tommy Christopher - Mediaite - Aug 28th, 2021
Marc Bernier, a prominent conservative radio host from Daytona Beach, Florida, who was an outspoken opponent of COVID vaccines and mask mandates, died Saturday after a nearly month-long battle with COVID-19. He was 65 years old.
Bernier, a native of Rhode Island, moved to the Daytona Beach area three decades ago and became a popular and outspoken voice for conservatism during his three-hour afternoon show at the Florida station — as well as a strident voice against vaccinations of all sorts.
On July 30 {2021}, Bernier posted what would become his final tweet, in which he compared the U.S. government to Nazis in its push to get people vaccinated.
He was responding to a tweet from Nikki Fried, a Democrat set to run against Florida’s Ron DeSantis next year, who wrote:”The greatest generation had to defeat the Nazis to preserve our way of life, you’re only being asked to get a shot. So be a patriot. Turn off the TV and go get vaccinated.”
In response, Bernier quote-tweeted her post saying, “Should say, ‘Now the US Government is acting like Nazi’s. Get the shot!’”
Source: "Marc Bernier, Anti-Vax Florida Radio Host, Dies at 65 From COVID-19" By Andi Ortiz - The Wrap - August 29, 2021
A conservative radio host in Florida who vehemently criticized the coronavirus vaccine has died of covid-19 complications, his fiancee and life partner Kittie Farley confirmed Monday.
On Aug. 4, Farrel Austin Levitt, publicly known as Dick Farrel, died of “severe damage” caused by covid, Farley told The Washington Post. He was 65.
Farrel, a vocal supporter of former president Donald Trump, said on his Facebook page last month that inoculations were “promoted by people who lied [to you] all along about masks, where the virus came from and the death toll.”
However, Farrel swiftly changed his perspective about the vaccine after he contracted the virus, his friends and family said.
{his fiancee and life partner Kittie Farley} wrote on Facebook, according to WPTV. Her profile is now private. “We will always love Dick Farrel, always appreciate his spirit, and miss him greatly. He was known as the other Rush Limbaugh.”
Newsmax TV said in a statement that Farrel was a substitute host for the cable news channel in previous years.
Farrel previously was scathing in his criticism of the vaccine and of America’s top infectious-disease expert, Anthony S. Fauci. Farrel called Fauci a “power tripping lying freak” in a Facebook post last month.
Farrel is among a number of Americans who refused to get vaccinated against the virus — only to apparently later have a change of heart once hospitalized with the disease.
Source: "Conservative radio host and vaccine critic dies of covid-19 complications" By Adela Suliman and Paulina Villegas - Washington Post - August 12, 2021
Robert David Steele, a former CIA officer who was vocal about his belief that COVID-19 was a hoax, has died of the virus. He was 69.
In his final blog post on Aug. 17, Steele wrote, “I will not take the vaccination, though I did test positive for whatever they’re calling ‘COVID’ today, but the bottom line is that my lungs are not functioning.”
Steele, who was also a supporter of QAnon conspiracy theories, included a hospital selfie that showed him wearing a breathing mask, but insisted he would be fine.
“The good news is that I will survive with a few days off,” he wrote. “I should be back up and at least functional soon. This is been a near death experience, very much like a new death experience the whole country is going through right now. We will never be the same because now we know that we’ve all been lied to about everything. But, now we also know that we can trust each other. I’m alive today because I had a network that put me into a good hospital in Florida.”
Source: "Former CIA Officer Who Called COVID a ‘Hoax’ Dies From Virus" By Lindsey Ellefson - The Wrap - August 30, 2021
Volusia County {Florida} Councilman Fred {. . . }Lowry, a 67-year-old registered Republican, is midway though his second four-year term on the Volusia County Council, representing Deltona, Enterprise and parts of DeBary and Osteen.
He attracted controversy this summer for promoting conspiracy theories, including some about the coronavirus pandemic, in a sermon at Deltona Lakes Baptist Church.
"We did not have a pandemic, folks. We were lied to," Lowry said in the May 30 sermon.
He referred to Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, as "Dr. Falsey" — "I did not mispronounce that. That’s the way I wanted to say it." — and labeled him a liar and pervert. He also took issue with media coverage of the COVID-19 treatment hydroxychloroquine and the theory coronavirus originated in a Wuhan lab.
Lowry is hospitalized with COVID-19, County Chair Jeff Brower announced Tuesday.
"He is in the hospital wrestling with COVID-19," Brower said as Tuesday's council meeting kicked off with Lowry's chair empty for the second consecutive week.
"He's pretty darned sick," Councilwoman Billie Wheeler added in the late afternoon, saying Lowry had texted her an update.
Source: "Volusia County Councilman Fred Lowry 'in the hospital wrestling with COVID-19'" by Mary Helen Moore - The Daytona Beach News-Journal - 9/7/21
Bob Enyart, a conservative Christian radio host and pastor of Denver Bible Church, has died from COVID. He was 62.
The death was confirmed by Fred Williams, the co-host (with Enyart) of the wildly misnamed "Real Science Radio".
{Let's} go through a list of reasons Enyart's condition wasn't generating much sympathy from the broader public.
- This is a guy who used to mock AIDS victims on his TV show by reading their obituaries while plays Queen's "Another One Bites the Dust" in the background.
- This is a guy who filed a lawsuit against Colorado's COVID restrictions, only to have a Trump-appointed judge grant a temporary restraining order that allowed indoor churches to open to the masses without having to wear masks. How many people caught the virus because of that irresponsible lawsuit?
- This is a guy who had "sworn off" taking any of the available vaccines because "they tested these three products on the cells of aborted babies. (That's' not accurate.)
- This is a guy who urged people to boycott Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson to "put pressure on the child killers"
Source: "Bob Enyart, Who Mocked AIDS Victims and Spread COVID Lies, Has Died of COVID" by Hemant Mehta - Friendly Atheist - 9/13/21
One of Israel’s top anti-vaxx activists has died of COVID-19, two days after posting a final message to his followers that ordered them to “keep fighting” against the shot that could have saved his life.
Hai Shoulian, 57, spent much of the pandemic organizing protests against coronavirus rules—including mask mandates and Israel’s vaccine-passport scheme, the Green Pass. He lost his life to COVID-19 on Monday morning after spending 10 days at Tel Aviv’s Wolfson Medical Center.
In his last Facebook post, Hai Shoulian complained about how awful his symptoms were, but remained defiant against the vaccine.
In a video showing him receiving oxygen support, he wrote: “I’m in a very bad shape, it is serious... If I take the oxygen out I can’t walk three meters. I can’t talk or respond to people. It took me about an hour to figure out who I am. Where am I and what am I doing here... Lack of oxygen is a terrible thing.”
Despite his condition, he managed a final stand against Israel’s Green Pass, saying: “It has nothing to do with the coronavirus. It has nothing to do with vaccines. It has to do with coercion... Keep fighting.”
Two days later, he died from the virus.
Source: "Israel’s Top COVID Truther Claimed COVID That Killed Him Was ‘Poison’ Attack" by Jamie Ross, Noga Tarnopolsky - Daily Beast - September 14, 2021
{For a more comprehensive index of the deluded, visit this site:
}
{But the people who are egging them on . . . }
Most top Republicans, including every Republican governor, have been vaccinated and have encouraged others to do so. But most have also stopped short of supporting inoculation requirements and have opposed masking requirements.
The pandemic, public health officials say, is now largely one of the unvaccinated, and the virus is raging particularly in conservative states with far lower inoculation rates and more relaxed attitudes toward group gatherings. Of the 10 states with the most cases per capita in recent days, nine voted Republican in last year’s presidential race and nine are led by Republican governors, according to The New York Times coronavirus database.
In Arkansas, Gov. Asa Hutchinson, a Republican, saw his party’s pushback firsthand on a 16-stop tour to promote vaccination.
Mr. Hutchinson signed a law this spring banning mask mandates, but with cases rising again this month, he said he regretted it. In Siloam Springs, he was pelted with questions from frustrated constituents, including one woman who told him that she had been “praying that God himself will step in so that Christians are not forced by their employers and a mandate to get the vaccine.”
“Yet even if God does not, I will not bow,” she said to raucous cheers.
One Republican strategist privately lamented, only half-jokingly, that the party was going to kill off part of its own base with its vaccine hesitancy.
Source: "G.O.P. Governors Fight Mandates as the Party’s Covid Politics Harden" By Shane Goldmacher - NY Times - Aug. 31, 2021
{For a more comprehensive index of the deluded, visit this site:
SorryAntivaxxer.com }
{And then of course, there's this . . . }
{E}ven though the FDA explicitly warns against it, some people believe they’ve found a better solution {than the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine} in ivermectin, an antiparasitic medication used to deworm cows and horses.
It may sound off-the-wall, but ivermectin ingestion is becoming a bit of a problem. Texas has seen a 552% increase in poison calls about the drug, according to WFAA, and The Dallas Morning News reports it's flying off feed-store shelves.
“I don’t understand how many people have to be poisoned before people just decide the best thing to do is to act like a normal human being and take human medicine, like FDA-approved human medicine for a human virus,” {said Dr. Erin Carlson, an associate clinical professor in the College of Nursing and Health Innovation at the University of Texas at Arlington}. “I’m just at a loss. I don’t even have words.”
Similar trends have come and gone before. Last year, accidental poisonings from disinfectants increased after then-President Donald Trump suggested injecting bleach could fight the coronavirus, according to Time.
Carlson said the uptick in poison calls frightens her.
Between anti-vaxxers and bleach-drinkers, she doesn’t know “how many times we have to go down this road.”
“You just keep thinking we’ve seen it all … every kind of crazy you could have possibly seen, and now this,” she said. “I don’t know where the crazy stops.”
Source: "Horsin' Around: Poison Calls Spike as Texans Take Livestock Dewormer" by SIMONE CARTER - Dallas Observer - AUGUST 28, 2021
Calls to poison control centers about ivermectin exposures have risen significantly, jumping fivefold over their baseline in July, according to C.D.C. researchers, who cited data from the American Association of Poison Control Centers. Mississippi’s health department said this month that 70 percent of recent calls to the state poison control center had come from people who ingested ivermectin from livestock supply stores.
Source: "Demand surges for a deworming drug despite no evidence it can treat Covid" By Emma Goldberg - NY Times - 8/30/2021
{And finally, even though this story has nothing to do with Covid or vaccines, the principle -- and most of the practitioners -- are the same: }
A man was found dead at a downtown Dallas hotel late Saturday after he accidentally shot himself while cleaning a gun, a witness told police.
Dallas police said they were dispatched about 11:35 p.m. to reports of a shooting at the Omni Dallas Hotel{. . . }, where the man was found with a gunshot wound to his upper torso.
The shooting happened three days after a new state law went into effect that allows people to carry firearms to and from their hotel room. The law was one of more than 650 that took effect in Texas on Wednesday {9/1/21}.
Source: "Man dies after he accidentally shoots himself at Omni Dallas Hotel, police say" By Kelli Smith - Dallas Morning News - Sep 5, 2021
Source: Daily Kos - 9/4/2021
Source: New York Times, MIT Election Lab, US. Census via Daily Kos
Source: {Unknown}