I just don’t know what to say anymore. What a horrible waste:
Caleb Wallace, a leader in the anti-mask movement in central Texas, became infected with the coronavirus and has been in an intensive care unit for the past three weeks, barely clinging to life, his wife, Jessica, said.
Mrs. Wallace said that her husband’s condition was declining and that doctors have run out of treatment options. On Saturday he will be moved to a hospice at Shannon Medical Center in San Angelo, Texas, so that his family can say their goodbyes, she said.
Mr. Wallace, 30, has lived in San Angelo for most of his life and works at a company that sells welding equipment. He checked into the Shannon Medical Center on July 30. Mrs. Wallace set up a GoFundMe page that has collected over $35,000, to cover the cost of medical bills.
Earlier that month, Mr. Wallace had organized a “Freedom Rally” for people who were “sick of the government being in control of our lives.”Caleb Wallace, a key figure in anti-mask protests, is hospitalized with Covid-19.Credit…Jessica Caleb Wallace, via Facebook
He founded the San Angelo Freedom Defenders, a group that hosted a rally to end “Covid-19 tyranny” according to a YouTube interview with him.
“They believed the coronavirus was a hoax and they felt that the government was being too heavy-handed when it came to masks,” San Angelo’s mayor, Brenda Gunter, said in an interview.
In April, Mr. Wallace penned a letter to the San Angelo Independent School District demanding they “rescind ALL COVID-related policies immediately,” and questioning the science and efficacy of masks for schoolchildren.
Mr. Wallace’s father, Russell Wallace, said his son firmly believes mask and vaccination requirements are a violation of personal liberties. “After watching all the government overreach here he decided he wanted to do something about it,” Russell Wallace said.
Mrs. Wallace, who is pregnant with the couple’s fourth child, told the San Angelo Standard-Times that when her husband first felt ill, he took a mix of vitamin C, zinc, aspirin and ivermectin — a drug typically used to treat parasitic worms in both people and animals that has been touted as a coronavirus treatment but was recently proved to be ineffective against the virus.
She said her husband respected her own decision to wear a mask. “We joked around about how he was on one side and I was on the other, and that’s what made us the perfect couple and we balanced each other out,” she said.
She added that her three children are up-to-date on their vaccines and that she herself planned to get a coronavirus vaccine after the birth of her baby in late September. “We are not anti-vaxxers,” she said.
Still, Mrs. Wallace said her husband strongly believed the decision to get vaccinated or to wear a mask should rest with an individual and not with the government. “That is one of the few things I agreed with my husband on,” she said.From left, Jessica, Brooke, Aubrey and Kate Wallace talk to Caleb Wallace on a video call on Aug. 19. Mr. Wallace is hospitalized with Covid.Credit…Colin Murphey/San Angelo Standard-Times
Mayor Gunter said Mr. Wallace had an overwhelming love for his city. During the state’s record-breaking winter storm in February, Mr. Wallace and his father volunteered to drive out to residents trapped in their homes.
“When we are called to action, we forget about those differences and just do the right thing,” she said. Shannon Medical Center currently has 70 percent of its intensive care beds full. This August in Tom Green County, which is home to San Angelo, the seven-day average of new cases has risen to the highest level since November 2020, according to a New York Times database.
Russell Wallace, who also had Covid-19, said that he was in the hospital for 13 days, but his condition improved enough for him to return home.
Despite his own illness and his son’s dire condition, Russell Wallace said he still firmly believed that masks are ineffective and that the government should not mandate them or vaccinations. He has, however, decided to “look into” getting the shots.
“Personally for me, I’m not so hesitant about the vaccinations now,” he said. “I’ve stared down that barrel and quite honestly, it scared the hell out of me.”
The family is now asking for donations with a gofundme:
“Caleb won’t make it much longer. He will be moved to comfort care tomorrow and I will get to be there with him until it’s his time to return to our father in heaven,” said Wallace. “I appreciate everyone all the good and the bad. You all have the right to feel the way you feel as Caleb once fought for his beliefs. He was an imperfect man but he loved his family and his little girls more than anything.”
“To those who wished him death, I’m sorry his views and opinions hurt you. I prayed he’d come out of this with a new perspective and more appreciation for life. I can’t say much more than that because I can’t speak for him.”
Caleb is the father to three young daughters, ages 5, 3, and 1. The couple is expecting their fourth daughter next month.
It is tragic. But I have to wonder how many other people are dying because of Caleb’s views, people who couldn’t protect themselves. Like these people:
Helpless to improve her infant son’s breathing as he was about to be intubated, Catherine Perrilloux did the only thing that came naturally to her in that moment, the worst of her life: She looked away and prayed. The boy, known as Junior, was two months old and gravely ill with Covid-19.
“I see a bunch of them crowding around the room with the ventilator machine, and then they pull out the tubing, and I’m just losing control,” Ms. Perrilloux, a dean at a nearby private school, recalled last week in her son’s room in the pediatric intensive care unit. “There’s nothing that you could say to make it better. You can’t do anything. It’s just paralyzing.”
At Children’s Hospital New Orleans, where the intensive care unit has been jammed with Covid-19 patients, scenes like this have played out unrelentingly over the past month. Nurses raced around monitoring one gut-wrenching case after another. One child was getting a complicated breathing treatment known as ECMO, a last resort after ventilators fail, which nurses said was almost unheard-of for pediatric cases. About a half-dozen others were in various stages of distress.
His own kids seem to be ok, so that’s a blessing. But they’ve lost their father. For no good reason.
Again, what a waste. All for the “freedom” to die of this horrible disease. But he owned the libs, defied the woke, and I guess that’s all that matters.