A Texas GOP leader railed against vaccines and masks; he just died of COVID-19
By JONATHAN EDWARDS
The Washington Post
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 for at least six months, including one of the recent variants.
“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 “pneumonialike symptoms” and tested positive for COVID, 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, chairperson 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.”
http://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/a-texas-gop-leader-railed-against-vaccines-and-masks-he-just-died-of-covid-19/
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