Tim Walters — the Republican co-founder of ReOpen Maryland, a right-wing protest group that demanded the quick reopening of the state’s businesses amid the ongoing coronavirus epidemic — has tested positive for COVID-19.
“I was diagnosed yesterday at the ER with COVID-19 and here I am months after not wearing a mask at rallies, churches and so on and so it’s funny how capricious this thing is,” Walters said in several Facebook videos which have since been deleted, according to The Capital Gazette.
The 53-year-old diabetic says he first started experiencing a dry cough in March, just before his group’s protests got underway. Soon after, he developed vision problems, headaches, and a fever.
But while he told people he’d come into contact with to monitor their symptoms, he has refused to work with Maryland contact tracers to help them manage new infections he might have caused. “I will not share anybody’s information with the government. I will not do it,” he reportedly said.
In a video he posted on Friday, he blamed “Satan” for him contracting the disease and said that COVID-19 had never been spread at his anti-lockdown rallies.
“No one ever got sick at any of our rallies, to include me. Start a church, and I get sick. I got it because Satan deemed to get it. Because he wanted to quiet my work, to slow down the building of a church. That’s what this is about. But the world won’t see that. Why? Because they live behind a veil. They choose to hate God,” Walters said.