Former Newsmax host and ‘pioneering shock jock’ Dick Farrel died of Covid-19
(Picture: Newsmax)A right-wing radio host who was against vaccination changed his mind and urged people to get the coronavirus vaccine after he was admitted to hospital with the virus.
Dick Farrel, who had described Dr Anthony Fauci as a “power-tripping lying freak”, reportedly changed his opinion about vaccines before passing away on August 4 aged 65.
“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 [the vaccine]!” close friend Amy Leigh Hair wrote on Facebook.
Farrel, who supported Donald Trump and believed that there was election fraud in the 2020 presidential election, anchored radio shows in Florida and also acted as a stand-in anchor for the rightwing news outlet Newsmax. He was described as a pioneer “shock talk” host.
He frequently questioned the efficacy of coronavirus vaccines. “Why take a vax promoted by people who lied 2u all along about masks, where the virus came from and the death toll?” he wrote on Facebook on 3 July.
In another post, he said:
But it seems he then regretted his stance. Hair told WPTV: “I was one of one the people like him who didn’t trust the vaccine. I trusted my immune system. I just became more afraid of getting Covid-19 than I was of any possible side effects of the vaccine. I’m glad I got vaccinated.”
Radio veteran Dick Farrel has passed. pic.twitter.com/dxxPcKSQHA
— T.A. Walker (@timallanwalker) August 6, 2021
He is not the only person to tragically change their mind about the vaccine when it is too late.
Curt Carpenter, of Pell City, Alabama, allegedly told his family the disease was “not a hoax” after believing in the fringe conspiracy and falling-ill in March. His mother, Christy Carpenter, also believed the virus was not real.
“It took watching my son die and me suffering the effects of Covid for us to realise we need the vaccine,” she told The Washington Post in a recent interview. “We did not get vaccinated when we had the opportunity and regret that so much now.”
Meanwhile, construction worker Gumerocindo Vergara, who was hospitalised in July after contracting the virus previously believed that if he got vaccinated the government would try to put something in his body to track him.
He then told FOX 11 that he was thankful to God he’s alive and survived and said he wished he had received the vaccine.
Farrel’s partner, Kit Farley, said: “He was known as the other Rush Limbaugh. With a heavy heart, I can only say this was so unexpected. He will be missed.”
