Milo Yiannopoulos says he’s caught COVID-19 and is injecting himself with livestock medication
Milo Yiannopoulos joins UK Independence Party (UKIP) in Exeter, southwest England, on 13 May 2019. (Getty/GEOFF CADDICK)
Far-right pundit Milo Yiannopoulos said he has COVID-19 and shared pictures suggesting he had injected himself with livestock medication.
Media watchdog Right Wing Watch posted screenshots from Yiannopoulos’ Telegram account on Twitter on Saturday (28 August).
Yiannopoulos shared an image of a positive coronavirus test result with the caption “Rona” and joked he “didn’t even use soda on the test strip to get time off school”.
It appears that Milo Yiannopoulos has COVID. pic.twitter.com/N2iEc7IgNV
— Right Wing Watch (@RightWingWatch) August 28, 2021
“Most of you got the normal ‘it’s just flu’ rona last year and most of you didn’t even know you had it,” he wrote.
“But I don’t have any friends and don’t leave the house so I only just got the super spreader version from vaccinated people and let me tell you THIS IS NOT FUN.”
Living with COVID is not the same as the flu. According to the Centers for Disease Control, there are similarities between the two including that they share some of the same symptoms and can be spread through aerosols, droplets and contaminated surfaces.
But coronavirus spreads faster than influenza and can cause far more serious illness in some people. The CDC warned serious COVID-19 illness can result in hospitalisation and death even in “healthy people”. So Yiannopoulos’s comparison of coronavirus to “just flu” is not wholly accurate.
Yiannopoulos – who recently claimed that dogs no longer barking at him was a sign from God he should be “ex-gay” – then went on to describe his symptoms for the day. This included headache, chills, foggy head, nausea and difficulty breathing.
He added he had “slept on and off for 48 hours”. When he was awake, he reported being dizzy, “coughing endlessly” and losing most of his ability to taste and smell.
In a separate post, Milo Yiannopoulos shared four images that implied he had injected himself with ivermectin, a medication used to treat parasite infestations in livestock. The ivermectin bottle in Yiannopoulos’ photos had small pictures of a cow and a pig on it, and the syringe pictured read: “For veterinary use only.”
“Now we wait,” Yiannopoulos wrote in the post with the pictures.
Ivermectin has been mentioned by some conservatives as a potential COVID treatment, including Kentucky senator Rand Paul and Texas representative Louie Gohmert.
But the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and medical professionals warned people against using the drug to treat COVID-19. The FDA had a simple message for Americans contemplating using ivermectin instead of getting a COVID jab.
“You are not a horse,” the agency said on Twitter. “You are not a cow. Seriously, y’all. Stop it.”
You are not a horse. You are not a cow. Seriously, y'all. Stop it. https://t.co/TWb75xYEY4— U.S. FDA (@US_FDA) August 21, 2021
In a post on the FDA website, the federal agency confirmed it hasn’t approved ivermectin for use in treating or preventing coronavirus in humans. It also warned people can overdose on ivermectin which can cause nausea, vomiting, low blood pressure, allergic reactions, dizziness, seizures, coma and even death.
Leading US infectious diseases expert Dr Anthony Fauci slammed the use of the dewormer to fight COVID. Dr Fauci appeared on the CNN programme State of the Union and emphatically advised Americans to not take ivermectin.
“Don’t do it,” he said. “There is no evidence whatsoever that that works.”
He added people had “gone to poison control centres because they’ve taken the drug at a ridiculous dose and wind up getting sick”.
In June, a far-right host blamed a COVID-19 newsroom outbreak on a “demonic attack” after hosting Milo Yiannopoulos.
Lauren Witzke, a former Republican Senate candidate and guest host for the Christian news website TruNews, revealed that several staffers became “deathly ill” with the coronavirus after Yiannopoulos appeared on the programme.
She then claimed the outbreak was because God “retaliated” against TruNews for having the former Breitbart editor on the show. Witzke said it was “no coincidence” the staffers became ill “because they stood for Christ and had the spine to bring Milo on and share his platform”.
“Milo was somebody who belonged to the darkness,” Witzke said.
“He was already Satan’s favourite sodomite, wasn’t he? We took him back, Christ took him back.”
