Texas anti-mask protester Caleb Wallace dies of COVID-19
Wallace began to feel COVID-19 symptoms this July, but his wife stated that he refused to be tested for COVID-19.
Caleb Wallace, a San Angelo, Texas, resident who organized an anti-mask rally last year, has died of COVID-19.
His death was announced Saturday by his wife, Jessica Wallace, on a GoFundMe page used to raise funds for his health care. “Caleb has peacefully passed on,” she wrote. “He will forever live in our hearts and minds.”
Wallace was a founder of the group, “The San Angelo Freedom Defenders.” The purpose of the group is “to educate and empower citizens to make informed choices concerning local, statewide, and national policy and to encourage them to actively participate in their duty to secure God-given and constitutionally protected rights,” according to The New York Daily News.
On July 4, 2020, he organized an anti-mask demonstration called “The Freedom Rally.” The event, as stated on its flyer, was for peaceful protesters who were “sick of the government being in control of our lives,” as reported by the San Angelo Standard-Times. He was quoted at the rally, “We are not real happy with the current state of America at the moment.”
That December, Wallace would write a post on San Angelo’s official Facebook page, expressing his beliefs that masks aren’t effective in preventing contracting COVID-19. “Show me the science that masks work,” Caleb wrote. “Show me the evidence that school closures work. Show me the evidence that lock-downs work.”
However, Wallace began to feel COVID-19 symptoms this July, but his wife stated that he refused to be tested for COVID-19. Jessica explained that rather than be hospitalized, he began to self-remedy himself with aspirin, zinc, Vitamin C, and ivermectin, which is used on livestock for deworming, according to Huffington Post.
“He was so hard-headed,” Jessica told the San Angelo Standard-Times. “He didn’t want to see a doctor, because he didn’t want to be part of the statistics with COVID tests.” His condition worsened and he was finally hospitalized on July 30.
“He couldn’t breathe on his own,” Jessica said. “The first week he was able to be on oxygen. By the morning of (Aug. 8), he had to be ventilated.”
Jessica then started the GoFundMe campaign to help cover his medical expense and household bills. She stated that Caleb had to be “intubated due to COVID hitting his lungs hard.”
Wallace leaves behind his wife, their three kids, and a fourth child due to arrive in September, according to the GoFundMe. He was 30 years old.
Wallace is the latest example of people dying of COVID-19 after protesting masks or the virus’ even existence. In July 2020, a San Antonio, Texas, resident attended a “COVID party” in an effort to prove that the virus was a hoax. He died after contracting COVID-19, as reported by Metro.
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