Ted Nugent spoke to Andy Hall of the Des Moines, Iowa radio station Lazer 103.3 about how he managed to beat COVID-19 eight months ago. He said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): “[The virus] was designed by the communist Chinese and Mr. Fauci [the nation’s top infectious diseases expert Anthony Fauci] to be gain of function — they designed it so everybody would get it — and I happen to be one of those bodies in the everybody team, so I got it. But what I did is I’m really smart. You know how smart I am? I listened to what the government told me to do and I did just the opposite. And whatever the government told me not to do, that’s exactly what I did do, and I was cured in about two days.”
Nugent, an outspoken conspiracy theorist who has refused to take the vaccine, also once again falsely claimed that public health measures taken during the COVID-19 pandemic violate the Nuremberg code, a set of medical experimentation guidelines set after World War Two, as the vaccine is experimental.
“It’s not a vaccine,” he said. “It’s not a vaccine. It is an experimental shot, and you can’t experiment on me and my family. I don’t even need the Nuremberg trials to teach me that; my brain tells me that. So this is a real sad, treacherous time in America where anybody would be foolish enough to listen to Fauci or [U.S. president Joe] Biden or the WHO [World Health Organization] or the CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] — virtually untrustworthy. And if you’re listening to their constant hypocrisy — from Monday to Tuesday, they will contradict themselves over and over again.
“So, I think we can all see the writing on the wall,” he added. “It’s really ugly; it’s really treacherous; I consider it criminal. It breaks my heart to say that the worst enemy of America right now is the American government. What a tragic thing to have to say, but the evidence is inescapable.”
Despite Nugent‘s claim that the COVID-19 vaccines are human medical experiments, they underwent extensive testing before being offered to the population.
According to the nonpartisan, nonprofit web site Fact Check, while vaccines reduce the probability of getting infected, they are not 100% effective, so there is a chance that an unvaccinated person could infect a vaccinated person — particularly the vulnerable, such as elderly and immunocompromised individuals. And, despite vaccination providing excellent protection against severe disease, a small proportion of vaccinated people still require ICU care.
More than 60% of the nation’s population are currently fully vaccinated against the coronavirus, while more than 71% have received at least one shot, according to data from the CDC.
More than 794,000 people have died from the coronavirus in the U.S.
In April, Nugent talked about the darkest days of his battle with COVID-19, saying that he had “never been so scared” in his entire life. The 72-year-old pro-gun activist, who had previously claimed the virus was “not a real pandemic,” said: “It was really scary. I didn’t think I was gonna make it. I literally couldn’t function for about 20 hours, and then they came and they rescued me… The six-foot-two, 225-pound headache [this time] was like nothing I have ever experienced. I mean, from my tip of my toes to the top of my hair, I literally was dizzy and weak and struggled to get up to go to the bathroom. And I would lay in the bathtub a couple of times a day with the water as hot as I could take it just to divert.”
Ted also said that he was being treated for COVID-19 by a group of doctors who made a video last year calling for the use of hydroxychloroquine to battle the novel coronavirus, despite warnings from public health experts. Nugent went on to detail his clinical management of COVID-19, saying he was taking hydroxychloroquine, “a proven drug for 65 years,” as well as ivermectin, “another proven drug.”
Neither hydroxychloroquine nor ivermectin have been approved by the FDA for the prevention or treatment of coronavirus. While ivermectin is used to treat horses for parasites and worms, it has been approved for human use to treat infections such as head lice and skin conditions like rosacea.
In the past, Nugent, a staunch Donald Trump supporter, had referred to the virus as a “leftist scam to destroy” America’s 45th president. He had also repeated a narrative pushed by conservative media and disputed by health experts that suggests the official death count from the coronavirus is inflated.
