As more stories from vaccine-hesitant conservatives lead to them contracting COVID-19 and clearly regretting their decision not to get jabbed, here’s the tale of GOP Representative Clay Higgins.
The Republican lawmaker recently took to Facebook (according to the American Press) to share a health update with his followers. In the post, Higgins confirmed that he, along with members of his immediate family (his wife and son), contracted COVID for the second time. Higgins claimed that he and his wife first contracted the virus in early January 2020, “before the world really knew what it was.” Despite experiencing the illness firsthand, Higgins spent much of the past year spreading misinformation when it came to CDC directives on things like mask-wearing. He announced in May that he refused to wear a face-covering, claiming that it actually trapped bacteria in instead of protecting people from contracting the virus.
“Can you smell through that mask?” Higgins said. “Then you’re not stopping any sort of a virus. It’s part of the dehumanization of the children of God. You’re participating in it by wearing a mask.”
Higgins had also refused to disclose his vaccination status though he recently told the American Press that, according to his doctor, he was “naturally immunized” against COVID after surviving a brush with it last year. Apparently, that wasn’t the case. Higgins latest social media announcement revealed that both he and his wife are struggling with this second infection.
Rep. Clay Higgins (R-LA) says he has COVID (again).
He calls it the “Chinese Communist Party biological attack weaponized virus.”
He’s declined to say whether he’s been vaccinated. pic.twitter.com/XicCprnzNN
— Jan Wolfe (@JanNWolfe) July 26, 2021
What’s worse, Higgins’s own father-in-law died from complications of COVID-19 this past December. Despite all this, the GOP rep chose to use his announcement as a way to double down on the right-wing conspiracy theory that posits that the Chinese government secretly engineered COVID to wield as a biological weapon, an accusation that has no basis in fact. But it’s not the weirdest thing Higgins has claimed recently. Last October, the Congressman tweeted a truly bizarre account of a dream that his wife had:
My wife has the gift of premonition.
Last night she dreamed that Federal squads were in our home seizing guns, knives, “unauthorized foods” and stored water. They said we had been “reported”.
Becca awoke crying.
What happened to our freedom? She asked.
What indeed.— Rep. Clay Higgins (@RepClayHiggins) October 23, 2020
She apparently didn’t foresee another positive COVID test in their future.
(Via American Press)