It’s become an all-too familiar and tragic story: Conservative radio host tells their listeners vaccines are bull. Conservative radio host catches COVID. Conservative radio host dies. It’s happened to two such figures in August alone, including Phil Valentine. And now there’s a third: a Florida personality who was so against life-saving medication that he called himself “Mr. Anti-Vax.”
As per The Guardian, Marc Bernier, who spent three decades on the Daytona Beach station WNDB, passed away three weeks after being hospitalized with COVID-19. He was 65 years old.
Bernier was known for inviting those with viewpoints different from his own, including Democrats, on his show. But over much of the last year Bernier had been emphatically against vaccines. Back in December, he told one guest, “I’m not taking it … Are you kidding me? Mr Anti-Vax? Jeepers.” As his own station manager put it after he wound up in the hospital, “If you’ve listened to his show, you’ve heard him talk about how anti-vaccine he is on the air.”
Bernier is the third conservative radio host to die after railing against the measure that could have saved their lives. As per Politico, fellow Floridian (and Newsmax fill-in anchor) Dick Farrel, real name Farrel Austin Levitt, died in early August after spreading doubt about the vaccine’s efficacy and trashing Dr. Anthony Fauci. He changed his stance after testing positive.
A few weeks later, Phil Valentine, of Nashville, Tennessee, was a strong proponent of vaccines not being mandatory but that it should be about “personal choice.” He, too, did a 180 after he contracted the disease that ultimately took his life. Now Bernier has joined them — the second Florida radio host, in a state that is being run roughshod by the Delta variant and the lack of attention being paid to it by its leaders. Please get vaccinated if you haven’t.
(Via The Guardian and Politico)