A Texas GOP leader railed against vaccines and masks. Then he died of
covid.
H Scott Apley, a City Council member in Dickinson, Tex., has died of
covid-19. (City of Dickinson, Tex.)
By Jonathan Edwards
August 5, 2021 at 7:04 a.m. EDT

A leader of the Texas Republican Party hopped on Facebook in May to post
about a �mask burning� party 900 miles away in Cincinnati.

�I wished I lived in the area!� wrote H Scott Apley.

The month before, Apley had responded to what Baltimore�s former health
commissioner was heralding as �great news� � clinical trials showed that
the Pfizer vaccine was effective at fighting the coronavirus, including
one of the recent variants, for at least six months.

�You are an absolute enemy of a free people,� Apley wrote in a Twitter
reply.

And on Friday, the 45-year-old Dickinson City Council member republished a
Facebook post implying that vaccines don�t work.

Two days later, Apley was admitted to a Galveston hospital with
�pneumonia-like symptoms� and tested positive for coronavirus, according
to an online fundraising campaign. He was sedated and put on a ventilator.
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On Wednesday, he died, members of his county�s party announced on social
media.

Patrick McGinnis, chairman of the Galveston County Republican Party, said
in a statement that Apley�s death was a �tragedy � magnified by his youth,
his young family especially his very young son.�
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Apley�s wife and their son also tested positive for the virus. Neither had
been hospitalized when Apley first went into the emergency room, according
to the GoFundMe page.

In a little more than a day, the fundraising effort � which has since been
updated to cover Apley�s funeral costs � raised more than $28,000 from
over 300 donors. The man running the Apleys� GoFundMe page and the
Galveston County Republican Party didn�t respond to emails from The
Washington Post late Wednesday.

Apley was elected to the Dickinson City Council in November after a failed
campaign in 2019. He was also serving his first term on the Texas GOP�s
State Republican Executive Committee.
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McGinnis, who did not mention that Apley died of the coronavirus,
remembered his colleague as �an advocate for liberty, limited government
and the highest ideal of American Exceptionalism.�

Texas GOP Chairman Matt Rinaldi noted in a separate statement that Apley
had �a long history of conservative political activism.�

On social media, Apley criticized the idea of businesses using vaccine
passports. Supporters of such passports �are the same ones who were happy
to see you shut down for a year because they were scared to leave their
homes,� a man said on Facebook.

Apley piggybacked: �100 [percent] � right here!!�

When officials at the NRG Park Community Vaccination Center in Houston
started offering goodies like NFL and Disney on Ice tickets to coax people
into getting vaccinated, Apley posted a short, clear assessment to
Facebook: �Disgusting.�
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Apley is one of a growing number of highly publicized cases of people
getting seriously ill or dying after railing against masks, bashing
vaccines, playing down the gravity of the pandemic or merely being
vaccine-hesitant.

Last month, a conservative talk-show host in Tennessee went to the
emergency room after a coronavirus infection gave him pneumonia, The Post
reported. Before getting sick, Phil Valentine had decided not to get
vaccinated and used his radio show to frequently make fun of efforts to
get more people inoculated.

An unvaccinated radio host is sick with covid. His family is �elated�
listeners are now getting the vaccine.

When he got sick, the radio host changed his mind, according to his
brother, who said Valentine will use his show as a pro-vaccine platform
when he gets back on air.

On Tuesday, Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson (R) said he regretted signing a
bill into law in April that banned local officials from imposing mask
mandates. He has called for a special legislative session to reevaluate
the ban as coronavirus infections surge across the state once more.

Over and over, the same refrain from people sick with covid: I wish I�d
gotten the vaccine

A doctor in Alabama, which has one of the lowest vaccination rates in the
country, last month wrote a detailed Facebook post about how a lot of
�young healthy people� were being admitted to the hospital �with very
serious� covid infections.

�One of the last things they do before they�re intubated is beg me for the
vaccine,� Brytney Cobia wrote