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An anti-vaccine activist and QAnon believer at the center of a harassment campaign against a Chicago hospital that refused to treat her with ivermectin, has died from complications due to COVID-19.
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Veronica Wolski, who became famous for promoting anti-vax and QAnon conspiracies from a bridge in Chicago, was admitted to Amita Resurrection Hospital in Chicago three weeks ago after contracting COVID-19.
Last week, a campaign backed by QAnon influencers Lin Wood and Michael Flynn urged people to call the hospital and harass the staff with the demand that Wolski be given ivermectin, a drug typically used as a horse dewormer that has not been approved as a treatment for COVID-19.
The hospital said last week that it was flooded with hundreds of phone calls and emails as a result of the campaign. A hospital spokesperson confirmed to VICE News that the patient had passed away but declined to comment further.
That campaign continued right until Wood announced Wolski’s death in the early hours of Sunday morning. Hours before he announced her passing on his Telegram channel, Wood posted a video of himself calling the hospital and telling the person he spoke to that they will be charged with murder unless they give Wolski ivermectin.
“Veronica is being murdered at Amita Resurrection Hospital,” Wood wrote in a post moments before posting the video.
On Sunday night police were called to the hospital following reports of a disturbance. In a video posted online, a woman who Wood said had been given Wolski’s power of attorney, is seen confronting a police officer and demanding that she be allowed into the hospital and perform a “wellness check” on Wolski.
The officer told the woman the hospital was not going to allow that to happen.
As well as offering his sympathies to Wolski’s family, the pro-Trump lawyer used the annoucement of her death as an opportunity to urge his followers to continue harassing healthcare workers.
“Now on Earth, it is our responsibility to ensure that these medical murders stop NOW and the perpetrators be brought to justice,” Wood wrote, before adding: “Now, we go to war.”
In the Telegram channel Wolski once ran, her supporters posted hundreds of messages of sympathy but also urged others to spam the social media account of Amita Health with messages about her “murder.”
Across other QAnon channels where Wolski is being hailed as a martyr, a patriot, and a hero, a common refrain is that she was “kidnapped and murdered” by the hospital and that this “medical tyranny” must end now.
“RIP one of the biggest Patriots of current times. I called that extermination camp Amita many times last night, and police district 16 to report attempted murder,” one typical commenter wrote.
