Anti-vaxx Florida radio host urged audience to get vaccinated just before his own COVID-19 death – By Aysha Qamar (Daily Kos) / Aug 9 2021
Lately, we’ve seen a trend among COVID-19 deniers that, frankly, we wish we didn’t have to see: deathbed pleas for the unvaccinated to get the shots. After denying the effectiveness of vaccines fighting against the coronavirus, a former fill-in anchor for Newsmax and right-wing conservative radio show host in Florida had a change of heart; he urged individuals to get the vaccine after contracting the virus. Farrel Austin Levitt, known as Dick Farrel, died of COVID-19 complications at the age of 65 on Wednesday. Friends of his told NBC News affiliate WPTV that Farrel regretted not getting the vaccine and texted them all not to make the same mistake.
“He is the reason I took the shot,” Amy Leigh Hair, Farrel’s close friend, told WPTV. “He texted me and told me to get it. He told me this virus is no joke, and he said, ‘I wish I had gotten it!’”
Before experiencing the virus, Farrel constantly mocked the pandemic, referring to it as the “scamdemic.” Farrel’s Facebook page, which has since then been made private, consists of numerous posts advocating against vaccines including one that called Dr. Anthony Fauci—long-time National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) director and the nation’s leading coronavirus expert—a “power tripping lying freak.”
“Why take a vax promoted by people who lied 2u all along about masks, where the virus came from and the death toll?” a post read. “Vaccine Bogus Bull Shid!, Two peeps I know, got vaxed, now have Corona, hospitalized critical,” he wrote in another post on July 1. “Thank you Moderna, FOR NOTHING!”
