Veronica Wolski Biography – Wiki
Veronica Wolski, the QAnon adherent whose recent hospitalization made her a celebrity cause for the controversial drug ivermectin, died in the intensive care unit at Amita Health Resurrection Medical Center, a hospital spokeswoman said.
Wolski’s family could not be reached for comment Monday. A person who answered the door of his home on the Northwest Side said no one was available for an interview.
Wolski was known for her political activism. She gained attention in 2016 by standing on a pedestrian bridge over the Kennedy Freeway with banners supporting presidential candidate Bernie Sanders.
“It’s like having a Bernie rally,” she told the Tribune at the time. “To have thousands of like-minded people, you feel like a community. And these are my people. ”
She referred to then-candidate Donald Trump as “a fool” during the interview, but at some point, she became a huge Trump supporter and a believer in the QAnon conspiracy theory. The messages from her bypassing her started saying things like “Q sent me” and “COVID fraud.”
Joseph Uscinski, a University of Miami political science professor who studies conspiracy theories, said that kind of evolution is not unusual for people who hold the worldview that the system is rigged. QAnon originated from Internet message boards, but many of its tenets reflect conspiracy beliefs that are decades, if not centuries, old, he said.
“Once they get to that point and say that everything is corrupt and manipulated, it is very easy to say that modern medicine is rigged, politics is rigged, the media is rigged because they see all of those things exactly through the same lens “. he said.
Wolski’s Telegram channel includes numerous posts showing contempt for masks, vaccines, and other conventional approaches to avoiding COVID-19. In late July, she posted a video in which she described her suffering from prolonged fever, body aches, and violent coughing spells that she attributed to a cold.
She says in the video that she felt better after taking a five-day course of ivermectin. Photos and videos of her posted over the next three weeks show her returning to the overpass she called “The People’s Bridge.”
But her channel also shows that by August 20 she was in the emergency department. None of the subsequent posts included a request for ivermectin, although an August 24 upload shows the location of the hospital and asks for “a medical person to help me get out of here.”
Some of Wolski’s supporters soon began seeking ivermectin treatment in her name, prompted by an appeal from Wood on social media. Resurrection officials said last week they had received hundreds of calls and emails about Wolski.
Ivermectin has become a popular alternative treatment for COVID-19 despite warnings from the government and numerous medical authorities that it has not been shown to be effective and, in its most potent veterinary form, can even be lethal.
Some COVID patients and their families have sued hospitals when doctors have refused to offer ivermectin. In May, a DuPage County judge ordered Elmhurst Hospital to allow a coma patient, Nurije Type, to receive the drug after none of his doctors agreed to administer it.
An outside doctor gave Type the medications, and according to the social media account run by her daughter, she got better and eventually returned home.
After Wolski’s death, social media platforms were flooded with thousands of messages of mourning and anger, and by noon her name became a national trending topic on Twitter. In a Telegram post viewed more than 230,000 times, Wood expressed her sadness and issued a vague call for “non-violent civil disobedience.”
The only indication of that at the hospital Monday morning was a sign posted along West Talcott Avenue that read: “R.I.P Veronica Wolski / Say Her Name!” The sign had been removed by midafternoon.
On the bridge, someone left flowers and a blue rubber bracelet with the inscription QAnon that read: “(The) storm is upon us.”
Wicker Park resident Jason Warth arrived with an American flag that he mounted in honor of Wolski on the bridge’s security fence. Although he knew her only from social media, he said that she respected her determined spirit hers.
“She was kind of a unique patriot who had the time, energy, and opportunity to do what she did,” he said. As for whether it’s a sad story, I guess it depends on perspective. For me, it is the patriotic story of a woman who loved her country. … It’s a sad ending but not a sad story. ”
The makeshift memorial grew throughout the day and by night included balloons and more than a dozen bouquets.
A Clarendon Hills woman who declined to give her name came to the bridge with flowers. She said that she met Wolski about a year ago.
Age
Veronica Wolski has died at the age of 64-years-old.
Cause of Death ( COVID-19 )
Veronica Wolski, the QAnon adherent whose recent hospitalization made her a celebrity cause for the controversial drug ivermectin, died in the intensive care unit at Amita Health Resurrection Medical Center early Monday morning, a hospital spokeswoman said. She was 64 years old.
The cause of Wolski’s death was pneumonia due to COVID-19 infection with hypothyroidism as a contributing factor, a spokeswoman for the Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office said Monday morning.
For more than a week, his followers besieged Resurrection with demands that Wolski is administered ivermectin. The drug is generally used to treat diseases caused by parasitic worms, but some have hailed it as a cure for COVID-19 despite the lack of definitive scientific evidence or government authorization.
The Chicago hospital said last week that its doctors and clinicians, following guidance from the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, do not use ivermectin for COVID-19 cases. The hospital had declined to comment on Wolski’s diagnosis, citing federal privacy laws.
Over the weekend, some of Wolski’s supporters tried to get the hospital to release her. A video posted Sunday night on Telegram channel by right-wing lawyer Lin Wood shows him demanding over the phone that the hospital turns over Wolski to a person who has her medical power of attorney.
“There is an ambulance waiting for her outside, there is a doctor waiting to treat her,” she said. “If she doesn’t release her, she will be guilty of murder. Do you understand what murder is?
Another video posted on Wood’s channel shows a Chicago police officer outside the hospital talking to a person who demands, unsuccessfully, that he be allowed in for a wellness check. A hospital spokeswoman said police “(helped) maintain order outside the hospital with a small group of people.”
