Fred Lowry, a councilman for Florida’s Volusia County and a loud COVID-19 denier, is in the hospital with a severe case of COVID-19, according to the County Chair Jeff Brower. “He is in the hospital wrestling with COVID-19. It’s been about three weeks now,” Brower said on Tuesday as Lowry, 66, missed a county council meeting for the second time.

Lowry, a Republican halfway through his second term on the Volusia County Council, spread COVID-19 disinformation and conspiracy theories, going so far as to say the pandemic was a hoax. “We were lied to,” he said in a sermon at Denton’s Lakes Baptist Church. Lowry often criticized Dr. Anthony Fauci, whom he nicknamed “Dr. Falsey,” and insisted the top health official was a liar and pervert. Other conspiracies Lowry promoted had to do with media coverage of hydroxychloroquine and the Wuhan lab-leak theory.