Legions of right wingers are dropping dead because of their insane fealty to conspiracy theories. Here are just a couple of examples:
A leading QAnon promoter who urged both her followers and strangers she passed on the street not to take the COVID vaccine died Thursday of the coronavirus, making her just the latest vaccine opponent killed by the disease.
Cirsten Weldon had amassed tens of thousands of followers across right-wing social media networks by promoting the pro-Trump QAnon conspiracy under the screenname “CirstenW.” She was prominent enough to become a sort of QAnon interpreter for comedian conspiracy theorist Roseanne Barr and started recording videos about QAnon with her.
Weldon focused on attacking vaccines and other efforts to fight COVID-19, saying in one video that Dr. Anthony Fauci “needs to be hung from a rope.” She claimed the vaccine killed people and even recorded herself yelling at people standing in line to receive vaccines.
“The vaccines kill, don’t get it!” Weldon warned the waiting vaccine recipients in an undated video posted to one of her online accounts. “This is how gullible these idiots are. They’re all getting vaccine!”
In late December, however, Weldon started showing symptoms of coronavirus infection. In her last video, posted on Dec. 28, Weldon struggled through her remarks about the coming overthrow of the United States government, coughing and complaining that she was exhausted.
Three days later, Weldon was hospitalized in Camarillo, California. She posted a picture of herself wearing an oxygen mask to Instagram and claimed she had “bacterial pneumonia.” Weldon wrote in a post on the social media network Telegram that she refused to take coronavirus treatment remdesivir, calling it “Dr Fauci’s Resmedervir (sic).”
Weldon’s death from COVID is just the latest instance of a far-right personality who opposed vaccination being killed by the virus. On Jan. 3, radio host Doug Kuzma died while infected with the coronavirus. In August, QAnon promoter Robert David Steele died of the virus shortly after posting a picture of himself in an oxygen mask and vowing to still refuse the vaccine.
In September, a QAnon follower named Veronica Wolski became a cause celebre in QAnon circles after she was hospitalized with the coronavirus. QAnon fans besieged the hospital with phone calls demanding that Wolski receive ivermectin, the deworming drug used by some as an unproven coronavirus treatment. Wolski died of the disease later that month.
In the face of these deaths, their surviving friends and supporters have started to allege that the dead QAnon figures are being murdered, either because they were refused internet folk remedies like ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine, or because they were killed by the deep-state to cover up their conspiracy theories. In December, Kuzma and a number of other conspiracy theorists were sickened with COVID-like symptoms after appearing together at a conference. Rather than acknowledge that they had COVID, the far-right influencers suggested they had been targeted by an anthrax attack.
After Weldon’s death, her QAnon allies threatened to pursue violent action against staff at the hospital where she died. Scott McKay, a QAnon personality known as the “Patriot Streetfighter,” said he would publicize the names of doctors and nurses involved in treating Weldon, saying he wanted to “put the fear into these medical professionals” in a Telegram post. McKay proposed the hospital staff be sentenced to death, or be murdered in vigilante violence.
“If it’s not done in a military tribunal then it’s going to be done in the street eventually and not to my wishes,” McKay wrote. “That’s my greatest fear. But if it’s necessary, it’s going to be necessary.”
Far-right podcast host Douglas Kuzma—who was an outspoken critic of the COVID-19 vaccine—has died while battling the coronavirus, which he contracted after attending a QAnon-friendly gathering in Texas that right-wingers baselessly claimed was the victim of an anthrax attack.
“I really loved him and I would do anything for him,” Amanda Kuzma told The Daily Beast on Thursday morning while confirming her father’s death earlier this week. “He was a great father.”
Kuzma, who hosted a program on the far-right “Frog News Network” and called his listeners “froganites,” had come down with COVID-19 after attending the right-wing “ReAwaken America Tour” gathering held in Texas in mid-December. Friends of Kuzma told The Daily Beast that Kuzma had fallen ill following the event and was later admitted to the hospital, causing many of his loyal allies to lose touch with him.
The news initially kicked off with pro-Trump attorney Lin Wood posting to Telegram in later December that Kuzma had “taken a turn for the worse” as his lungs aren’t responding to treatment. “Doug is suffering from Covid after returning from a recent patriot conference. Anna [a friend of Kuzma] informs me that Doug has taken a turn for the worse,” Wood wrote. “His lungs are not responding to treatment.”
Tim Greer, a fellow right-wing podcaster and good friend of Kuzma’s, told The Daily Beast in late December that his longtime pal tested positive for COVID-19 after attending Clay Clark’s right-wing event. The same conference was recently rife with right-wing rumors over the accusation that Clark had pumped anthrax through fog machines.
“Well, he didn’t have it before he went there, let’s say that,” Greer said.
Kuzma’s fellow right-wing radio host further told The Daily Beast that the Frog News Network radio host had been hospitalized. “Well, he [Kuzma] was tested positive for COVID, so COVID is what it is,” Greer told The Daily Beast while tossing cold water on the rumors that he might be sick due to anthrax poisoning. (Amanda Kuzma confirmed to The Daily Beast on Thursday morning, that her father had been admitted to the hospital before his death.)
“I do know he’s not responding on the telephone for the past three days,” Greer told The Daily Beast back at the end of December.
Clark, ReAwaken America Tour’s lead organizer, and his assistant didn’t respond to multiple request from The Daily Beast.
In a series of Telegram messages posted to Frog News Network’s channel on Christmas Day, a channel administrator claimed that Kuzma was in desperate need of prayers and had been sedated on a ventilator.
Rumors had begun circulating after the ReAwaken America Tour event around a baseless theory that attendees were victims of a “bioweapons” attack stemming from anthrax being pumped through fog machines—not the deadly virus that has been sweeping the globe for the last 18 months.
Clark has denied the anthrax rumors and insisted in an interview with The Daily Beast: “There was not anthrax through the fog machines!”
It’s got to be lead in the water, right? How else can we explain this lunacy?