Ted Nugent has tested positive for COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, and has been suffering from symptoms unlike anything the musician has previously endured, he said Monday.
Mr. Nugent, a guitarist and conservative activist, disclosed his diagnosis on the heels of having repeatedly dismissed both the COVID-19 pandemic and the public health measures designed to curb it.
“Everybody told me that I should not announce this, but I have had flu symptoms for the last 10 days,” Mr. Nugent said in a video streamed live on his official Facebook page. “I thought I was dying.”
Mr. Nugent, a former columnist for The Washington Times, said he saw a doctor earlier Monday, was told his symptoms could mean he contracted the novel coronavirus, and subsequently tested positive.
“I’ve been around a long time — 72.4 years, to be exact — and it’s been quite an adventure,” Mr. Nugent said in another Facebook video later Monday. “But I have never been so sick in all my life.”
Mr. Nugent said his symptoms include head congestion and body aches, and he could be seen and heard coughing occasionally throughout each of the videos he shared on the social media service.
“I literally could hardly crawl out of bed the last few days,” Mr. Nugent said in one of the videos. “I am sicker than a dog,” he said in the other video seconds prior to coughing on camera.
Mr. Nugent, who rose to fame as a rock guitarist in the 1970s, made a number of dubious or dismissive statements and claims about COVID-19 since practically the start of the coronavirus pandemic.
In an interview last August, for example, Mr. Nugent alleged the pandemic was a “leftist scam” to destroy former Republican President Donald Trump, whom he campaigned for in both 2016 and 2020.
“We don’t earmark a safety net during a scamming pandemic,” Mr. Nugent reiterated during a live Facebook video streamed in December. “It’s not a real pandemic, and that’s not a real vaccine,” he said.
Mr. Nugent has also repeatedly denied face masks are effective at slowing the spread of COVID-19, a contagious disease transmitted in respiratory droplets, despite medical experts asserting otherwise.
“The mask thing is a lie,” Mr. Nugent stated last month.
Several other successful rock artists were accordingly quick to make light of Mr. Nugent having tested positive for COVID-19 after months of the “Stranglehold” guitarist downplaying the pandemic.
“HAHAHAHAHA…er, I mean, that’s so sad,” Twister Sister frontman Dee Snider said on Twitter in response to a post about Mr. Nugent testing positive. “It’s just…so…beautiful!” he said in another.
“I’ve said it many times and I’ll say it again, @TedNugent is a gigantic village idiot,” Canadian guitarist and singer Danko Jones said from his verified Twitter account Tuesday morning.
More than 31 million people in the U.S. have contracted the coronavirus since the pandemic started, including over 560,000 who later died, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
More than 85 million Americans have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19 since vaccines became publicly available in December, meanwhile, or around 25% of the U.S. population, according to the CDC.
• Andrew Blake can be reached at ablake@washingtontimes.com.
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