Last week, H. Scott Apley, a Republican lawmaker from Texas, posted a meme questioning the efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccine. Now his family is asking for donations to cover his funeral; Apley died of COVID on Wednesday morning. He was 45.
The Dickinson City Council member – who also served on the State Republican Executive Committee – leaves behind a wife and infant son. Both have tested positive for the virus but neither has required hospitalization.
Apley routinely mocked pandemic-era safety precautions. When a former public health official took to Twitter to celebrate the news that the Pfizer vaccine was effective after six months, Apley responded, “You are an absolute enemy of a free people.”
In May, he cheered a group in Cincinnati that was throwing a mask burning party, writing on Facebook, “I wished I lived in the area!”
In other social media posts, he called vaccine incentives “disgusting” and said supporters of vaccine passports “are the same ones who were happy to see you shut down for a year because they were scared to leave their homes.”
Patrick McGinnis, chairman of the Galveston County Republican Party, said Apley’s death was a “tragedy … magnified by his youth, his young family especially his very young son.”
The Daily Beast contextualizes Apley’s death as part of a growing trend of vaccine skeptics who’ve passed away:
Apley’s untimely passing comes as COVID skeptics across the country have died or become extraordinarily sick after rejecting the constant calls by public health officials to get vaccinated and mask up. In Nashville, a right-wing radio host who repeatedly spread misinformation about the virus and mocked the vaccine, is now hospitalized as he fights for his life. A Brooklyn woman who called COVID a “fraud” died after rejecting the vaccine in favor of natural supplements like zinc and Vitamin D.
The family of a Florida woman who refused the COVID vaccine and died in June still refuses to get the jab. A Florida track coach who had resisted calls by friends and colleagues to get vaccinated finally agreed to make an appointment for his shots. However, he contracted COVID a day or two before getting his first dose and died in the hospital after slipping into a coma, leaving behind a wife and four children.
