Ted Nugent Continues To Be Against Vaccinations and Masks: “Your Body, Your Choice”

Given that Ted Nugent recently contracted COVID-19 after spending a year spreading disinformation and baseless conspiracy theories about the virus, one might assume that the Motor City Mehman would now, at last, be on board with taking precautions against the disease.

A logical deduction, but logic has never been a friend to Ted Nugent. So instead of encouraging people to get vaccinated and wear masks in public, he’s co-opting a phrase made famous by the Pro-Choice movement — a movement, it seems worth mentioning, to which he himself is firmly opposed (because of course he is).

Nugent’s refusal to change his position when faced with overwhelming evidence that he’s wrong came about during the most recent episode of his online show, Ted Nugent’s Spirit Campfire. And actually, the batshit craziest thing about it might be that on that very same episode, Nugent admits that he has “never been so scared in all my life” as when he had COVID-19: “I didn’t think I was gonna make it. I literally couldn’t function for about twenty hours.”

Despite this, Nugent went on to encourage his followers to “stand your ground” and “not compromise” when it comes to getting vaccinated, wearing a mask in public, and practicing social distancing. That’s when he unironically uttered a version of the famous feminist slogan:

“Make a choice. Your body, your choice. I don’t believe the masks work. I think that’s a scam. I wouldn’t trust the vaccine; nobody can tell you what’s in it. If you wanna take the vaccine, take the vaccine. But you should know the facts that people who have taken the vaccine have been tested positive after taking the vaccine. People that wear masks and social distance have been tested after wearing masks and social distancing, and they’ve been tested positive. So make your own choice.”

Of the 98 million Americans who have been fully vaccinated to date, only about 6,000 have gone on to contract COVID-19 again, according to the CDC — and those 6,000 people were asymptomatic or had mild symptoms at worst. That’s about .006%. The National Weather Service says that’s roughly the same chance that someone you know will be struck by lightning. So maybe don’t use “the vaccine doesn’t even work” as an argument in favor of not getting the shot.

Insofar as the “my body, my choice” thing goes, it’s worth remembering that in 2013, Nugent said “abortion, not guns, is what’s eliminating the inner-city population.” That was six years after he released Love Grenade, an album made available with a number of variant covers, all celebrating violence against women:

The prosecution rests.

[via]