A 60-year-old Ohio man who dismissed the state’s coronavirus lockdown as a ‘political ploy’ and claimed the governor didn’t have the authority to close businesses because of the pandemic has died of COVID-19, Daily Mail reports.
John W. McDaniel tested positive for the coronavirus in late March and died at Riverside Methodist Hospital in Columbus last Wednesday.
On Facebook, he had dismissed the killer virus as a ‘political ploy’ that he said officials were using to exert control over the public.
‘Does anybody have the guts to say this COVID19 is a political ploy? Asking for a friend. Prove me wrong,’ he wrote in a March 13 post.
He later claimed governors did not have the ‘authority’ to shut down bars and that anyone who was worried about becoming sick should ‘just’ not go out.
