The far-right, anti-Muslim, anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer says she’s tested positive for the coronavirus, after suffering from severe symptoms that she wrote left her feeling like she “got hit by a bus.”
In a post on the Trumpist social network Gettr, Loomer complained that she started suffering from “fever, chills, a runny nose, sore throat, nausea and severe body aches” on Wednesday that she said felt like “a bad case of the flu... So I took a COVID test and it came back POSITIVE.”
She added: “I have not taken the COVID-19 vaccine, and I don’t plan on ever taking it because it is unsafe and ineffective. Today, I immediately started a treatment of Azithromyacin and Hydroxychloroquine. I’m also taking the OrthoMune dietary supplement.” She said she’s also received the Regeneron antibody treatment used by ex-President Donald Trump.
Last year, Loomer expressed a wish that she could catch COVID to show everyone that it was no big deal. She wrote on Parler in December 2020: “I hope I get COVID just so I can prove to people I’ve had bouts of food poisoning that are more serious and life threatening than a hyped up virus. Have you ever eaten bad fajitas? That will kill you faster than COVID.”
However, in follow-up messages on her Telegram channel late Thursday, she made it clear that she was suffering severe symptoms. “Just pray for me please,” she wrote. “Can’t even begin to explain how brutal the body aches and nausea that come with COVID are. I am in so much pain.”
She then posted more vaccine conspiracy theories, writing that the government “doesn’t want you to know what it really does,” despite the scientific fact that it would have offered her some protection.
Loomer, a far-right activist who was embraced by Trump, lost a U.S. House bid in Florida last year. She has been banned from most mainstream social networks—as well as Uber and Lyft—for blatant Islamophobia.
In June, she was thrown out of a cryptocurrency conference in Florida after heckling Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey about her ban from the platform.