Anti-vaxers are dropping like flies. Here is a handful of some better known ones.
Longtime radio talk-show host Marc Bernier has been hospitalized with COVID-19, according to a top official at WNDB (1150 AM, 93.5 FM).
“I don’t have an update on him at this point, other than he has been hospitalized,” said Mark McKinney, the station’s operations director.
It wasn’t immediately clear on Monday which hospital Bernier had been admitted to, or his condition.
Bernier, one of Volusia County’s signature voices on politics and local news for three decades, was off the air and at home sick all last week, McKinney said.
According to McKinney, Bernier went to the doctor on Friday and received his diagnosis. The talk-show host was hospitalized on Saturday, McKinney said.
News of Bernier’s diagnosis comes as Florida this past week reported 22,783 coronavirus cases on Friday — a new daily record, according to the Florida Hospital Association.
The state also set a weekly case record with 134,506 new cases reported from July 30 to Aug. 6, according to the Florida Department of Health’s weekly update.
The state’s positivity rate jumped to 18.9%, with Volusia, Flagler and St. Johns counties all above 23%.
The number of eligible Floridians vaccinated ticked up to 63% this week, compared to 61% the week of July 23 to 29, according to the FDOH. That leaves 37% vulnerable to the virus.
While he did not have specific knowledge of Bernier’s vaccination status, McKinney said that the host has made his anti-vaccination opinions well known on the air.
“If you’ve listened to his show, you’ve heard him talk about how anti-vaccine he is on the air,” said McKinney.
Listeners will be advised of Bernier’s diagnosis today during his show’s 3 to 6 p.m. time slot, McKinney said. The syndicated “Sean Hannity Show” will air in Bernier’s time slot until he returns, McKinney said.
“We will be airing announcements several times an hour that he is recovering from COVID-induced pneumonia and that we hope to have him back on the air soon,” McKinney said.
Now in his 30th year on WNDB, Bernier’s show has attracted a lengthy list of nationwide guests ranging from leaders on Capitol Hill and the White House to well-known opinion makers.
The show has yielded Bernier a spot on radio industry trade publication Talker Magazine’s Top 100 most important talk show hosts for the past 14 consecutive years.
In 2009, Bernier joined the staff at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University as moderator and producer of “The President’s Speakers Series,” a program of interviews with public policy experts on foreign and domestic policy.
In 2019, Bernier left Embry-Riddle and now has a speaker series at Daytona State College with a focus on local and regional issues.
Raised in Rhode Island, Bernier hosted morning radio shows in New England before moving to Florida continue his career in 1990.
It’s a “scam-demic,” he said. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the country’s leading infectious disease expert, is a “power-tripping lying freak,” he said.
Then the tune changed. “Get the vax,” he said.
Now Dick Farrel, a former Newsmax commentator and all-around coronavirus-denying, vaccine-resistant right-wing radio talk show host, is dead of COVID-19 complications at age 65.
As recently as June, he was expounding on the evils of the coronavirus vaccine, urging others not to get it. And true to his word, he opted out as well.
Doctors are focusing on treating the lungs of conservative talk radio host Phil Valentine, in what his family has described as a “critical issue.”
Valentine, who hosts a show on Nashville, Tennessee-based radio station SuperTalk 99.7 WTN, was diagnosed with COVID in mid-July.
He hit headlines after his family said he regretted “not being more vehemently ‘Pro-Vaccine'” after publicly expressing skepticism about COVID shots before being hospitalized by the disease.
They said he now plans to “vigorously advocate” for them.
On Monday, fellow SuperTalk 99.7 WTN host Dan Mandis told Phil Valentine’s fans in a Facebook post on his family’s behalf: “They are working on his lungs, that’s the critical issue right now. Other problems will come along but right now the focus is on his lungs. I’m hoping to have another update soon. #PrayForPhil.”
A leader of the Texas Republican Party hopped on Facebook in May to post about a “mask burning” party 900 miles away in Cincinnati.
“I wished I lived in the area!” wrote H Scott Apley.
The month before, Apley responded to what Baltimore’s former health commissioner was heralding as “great news” — clinical trials showed the Pfizer vaccine was effective at fighting the coronavirus, including one of the recent variants, for at least six months.
“You are an absolute enemy of a free people,” he wrote in a Twitter reply.
And on Friday, the 45-year-old Dickinson City Council member republished a Facebook post implying that vaccines don’t work.
Two days later, Apley was admitted to a Galveston hospital with “pneumonia-like symptoms” and tested positive for coronavirus, according to an online fundraising campaign. He was sedated and put on a ventilator.
On Wednesday, he died, members of his county’s party announced on social media.
Patrick McGinnis, chairman of the Galveston County Republican Party, said in a statement that Apley’s death was a “tragedy … magnified by his youth, his young family especially his very young son.”
Activists:
A TRUMP supporter who spread conspiracies against Covid vaccines and mask-wearing, as well as sharing QAnon messages, died on Friday due to complications with the virus.
Linda Zuern, 70, was praised as a “mighty warrior” by friends for her work for conservative causes, adding that she “loved this country.”
Zuern had been in a coma on a ventilator since June when she had been flown to Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.
It is unclear when contracted Covid.
Friends told the Cape Cod Times she fell ill after she returned to the Cape from South Dakota with her mother following the death of her father.
Her mother had also contracted Covid but survived.
Friends told the Times that Zuern had not been vaccinated.
The activist was among the first members of the pro-Trump group the United Cape Patriots and had been a former member of the Bourne, Massachusetts Board of Selectmen.
She had previously voiced her opposition to wearing masks, vaccines, her disbelief in climate change, and insistance that President Joe Biden stole the election from Trump.
As Trump would say: sad!