Covidiots

Wichita Falls’ NBC News affiliate reports: A man is in the Wichita County Jail facing a third degree felony charge after police say he attacked a security guard at Kell West over the hospital’s COVID-19 mask policy. It happened around 11: 45 a.m. Wichita Falls Police went to Kell West about a disturbance between 37-year-old Chad Staelens and the security …

The Las Vegas Review-Journal reports: A majority of the Clark County Commission took a formal stand Tuesday against COVID-19 misinformation, declaring it a public health crisis amid concerns from other lawmakers that doing so might agitate a deep division within Southern Nevada. The 5-2 vote made the county one of few jurisdictions in the U.S. to label falsehoods related to …

Newsweek reports: Joseph Ladapo—the doctor appointed on Tuesday as Florida’s new surgeon general by Republican Governor Ron DeSantis—once appeared in a COVID-19 conspiracy video featuring Dr. Stella Immanuel. Immanuel, a pediatrician and religious minister, gained notoriety in 2020 for her bizarre theories, including that “demonic seed” causes endometriosis and ovarian cysts. In July 2020, Ladapo appeared in a 43-minute viral …

The Orlando Sentinel reports: Gov. Ron DeSantis appointed a new state surgeon general Tuesday who has written essays questioning the safety of COVID-19 vaccines, the effectiveness of masks and favoring hydroxychloroquine, a drug touted by former President Donald Trump to treat the virus. “Florida will completely reject fear,” Dr. Joseph Ladapo, an assistant professor at the UCLA School of Medicine …

The New York Times reports: President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil kicked off the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday by defending the use of ineffective drugs to treat the coronavirus and by pushing back on criticism of his government’s environmental record. Brazil’s far-right president said doctors should have had more leeway in administering untested medications for Covid-19, adding that he …

The Orlando Sentinel reports: The owner of a waterfront restaurant and tiki bar in Cape Canaveral says that since God told him not to get the COVID-19 vaccine, he will not require it for any of his employees despite a federal mandate. “I believe God told me not to take this vaccine,” Joe Penovich wrote in a letter to employees …

New Music Express reports: Eric Clapton has given a performance in New Orleans at a venue that requires evidence of a COVID-19 vaccine or negative test result, effectively undoing the stance he took against such measures earlier this year. In July, Clapton vowed never to perform at a venue that required proof of vaccination, shortly after UK Prime Minister Boris …

Mediaite reports: Tucker Carlson hopped back on the ivermectin train on Monday night, stopping in Quackville to speak with a psychiatrist who claimed the anti-parasite drug is also an effective treatment for Covid-19. (It is not.) The Fox News host cited a paper in the American Journal of Therapeutics suggesting that ivermectin led to “significant reductions in mortality.” What he …

Hawaii News Now reports: In October 2020, Chris Wikoff helped co-found the Aloha Freedom Coalition — a group in Hawaii that’s been vocal against vaccine mandates and COVID rules. At the time, he shared the coalition’s views that government shutdowns and mandates were ruining businesses and threatening individual liberties. “They were talking about vaccine passports and vaccine mandates and it …

“The fighting strength of the military is young, healthy people, virtually all of them at extremely low risk of dying from COVID. In fact, to this day, only 46 members of the entire U.S. military have died from the coronavirus over the last year and a half. “Suicides, by contrast, kill many, many times more. In just a few months …

The Daily Beast reports: Donald Trump’s son Eric Trump will give the keynote speech next month at an anti-vaccine conference, marking the latest alliance between the Trump family and the GOP’s fringiest elements. Trump is set to speak at the Truth About Cancer Live! convention between Oct. 22 and 24 in Nashville, joining a speakers’ lineup that includes some of …

The Salem Statesman Journal reports: An estimated 1,000 people rallied at the Oregon Capitol Saturday to protest COVID-19 vaccine and mask mandates. Protesters identified themselves as health care workers, teachers, emergency services workers and state employees. Gov. Kate Brown has ordered those groups to be vaccinated by Oct. 18. Rally-goers lined both sides of Court Street in front of the …

From the far-right Christian site Charisma News: Spirit-filled Pastor R. Loren Sandford, lead pastor at the nondenominational New Song Church and Ministries in Denver, Colorado, died Friday due to complications from COVID-19. Sandford was 70. According to the church’s Facebook page, Sandford had languished for weeks in the hospital with COVID. For several years, Sandford was a regular writer and …

Dallas’s CBS News affiliate reports: It was last week when Natalie Wester and her husband went to Hang Time, a bar and restaurant in Rowlett, with a few friends. Something they say they don’t do often as new parents. “If you’ve ever been new parents, having those couple of hours out like once or twice a month is so important …

“I think we’ve just reached a point of where we just have to all say this doesn’t make sense. It’s time for civil disobedience. It’s time for the people who are rational and have common sense to say, enough is enough. “I’m not going to be ruled by these people. And I’m not going to be sucked into the beginnings …

Reuters reports: A school district in the Canadian province of British Columbia will be locking down schools starting Monday due to ongoing anti-vaccine protests, the district said late on Friday. The “hold and secure” protocol was enacted on Friday after people protesting vaccines and masks, who the district said had been targeting schools all week, entered two school buildings in …

Salon reports: Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican, keeps mentioning the failed campaign to vaccinate Americans against the AIDS virus as an example of the pitfalls of healthcare mandates. Except the AIDS vaccine doesn’t exist. And there sure wasn’t a failed campaign to mandate it. He made the comments most recently on an episode of the right-wing commentator Erick Erickson’s …

The Associated Press reports: A man who spent more than 30 years reporting the weather on TV in northern Michigan is out of a job. Karl Bohnak says he was fired at WLUC after refusing to get the COVID-19 vaccine. Bohnak says control over his body should be up to him. He says he was fired at WLUC for not …

The Daily Beast reports: Nicki Minaj sicced her fans, the Barbz, on reporters Friday and threatened them herself. The rapper posted the phone numbers of two reporters to her Instagram Story, inviting spam calls and threats. The journalists had been trying to contact her cousin’s friend with the swollen balls, the man she cited in now-infamous tweets as one of …

The Daily Beast reports: A teenage city council member in Morgan County, Alabama, who tested positive for COVID-19 on Wednesday after railing against mask mandates said he’s now battling coronavirus-related pneumonia in the hospital. “I am still shallow in breathing but my oxygen remains okay for now,” Decatur City Councilman Hunter Pepper, 19, wrote on Facebook Thursday. He received a …