There was a time when Ted Nugent said that COVID-19 was “not a real pandemic”, however the ‘Motor City Madman’ seems to have changed his tune.
The 72-year-old guitarist revealed that he had been diagnosed with COVID-19 in a video on Monday (April 19), saying that he had never felt so sick in his entire life. He also said many people had warned him against announcing his diagnosis.
Ted previously referred to the virus as a “leftist scam to destroy” America’s 45th president, Donald Trump. “It’s not a real pandemic and that’s not a real vaccine, I’m sorry,” he argued in a video posted late last year.
Nugent however seems to be singing a different tune now as he recently spoke to Florida’s ABC7 earlier this week, saying: “There’s been worse conditions and health problems in the past in this country and around the world where nobody ever shut down mom-and-pop diners and shut down entire economic societies in the United States of America. That’s what I believe, and I will continue to believe that that’s a hoax. But the pandemic is real, and the people that are sick are real.”
In the past, Nugent had always disputed health experts and suggested the official death count from the coronavirus was inflated. He had also mocked people who wear face masks, despite the fact that both the CDC and World Health Organization have urged their universal use.
On Tuesday (April 20), Nugent took to Facebook Live to call out the mainstream media for allegedly distorting his previous comments about the virus.
“The lies I’ve seen that I’ve been doing these public appearances knowing I had the COVID-19. False,” Ted said. “Saying that I claimed COVID-19 was a hoax. False. I’ve always said… We have actually footage of me saying, if not hundreds, thousands of times… Of course there’s a Chinese virus. Hello? Who thinks that I claimed there’s no Chinese… There’s a Chinese virus. They call it COVID-19. I’m well aware of that.”
When Nugent first revealed his COVID-19 diagnosis, he described having a “stuffed up head,” body aches and that he “literally could hardly crawl out of bed the last few days.” “I thought I was dying,” he said.