Picture Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Each day Beast/Getty
Amid all of the many lies that George Santos has informed, one unusual episode has acquired much less consideration—his restoration from COVID-19 on the very begin of the pandemic, regardless of a set of great underlying circumstances.
On March 1, 2020, the very first confirmed case of COVID-19 appeared in New York state. On March 30, Santos, who was then working to symbolize New York’s third congressional district within the Home of Representatives, appeared on a neighborhood conservative podcast and informed the story of his survival after contracting the virus.
“Sadly on the ninth of March I turned symptomatic with what everyone knows now very properly, COVID-19 a.okay.a coronavirus, generally often known as the Chinese language flu,” he stated, with a wry giggle. “On the eleventh I ended up within the hospital. It was actually unhealthy, fever, physique aches.”
Santos was specifically hazard from COVID-19, he defined, due to different severe well being points.
“I've an immunodeficiency and I've acute continual bronchitis. I additionally battled a mind tumor a few years in the past, and I had radiation finished, which actually lowers your immunity typically,” he informed the podcast hosts. “Radiation isn’t a sport. I’m prone to most cancers. It’s in my DNA.”
Santos stated he was taken to Elmhurst Hospital in Queens by ambulance, positioned on a gurney on arrival, and spent round 5 hours in a “plastic bubble” with an “air filter” because the hospital had run out of isolation rooms. He stated he was given a chest X-ray, which got here again clear. Santos stated he was then swabbed for COVID-19, and on March 14 he acquired a optimistic consequence. He stated he spent days with a excessive fever, hallucinating and confused.
On March 24, Santos stated he went again to the hospital for a re-test and acquired a adverse consequence two days later.
“They’re calling me a survivor,” he stated. “I don’t know if I actually survived something. It’s simply flu.”
Santos went on to underplay the hazard of the virus, saying that he didn't grow to be dangerously sick or want severe medical interventions regardless of his underlying circumstances.
“I’m simply shocked on the proportion this has been blown as much as. As a result of right here I'm, an ideal candidate-to-be, , R.I.P, and it simply didn’t occur.”
However there have been inconsistencies in Santos’ COVID story, first reported by Washington Publish journalist Dan Diamond on his private weblog.
On March 14, 2020, the day that Santos initially stated he acquired his personal optimistic take a look at for coronavirus and was bedridden with fever, his marketing campaign tweeted a press launch on the unfolding COVID-19 disaster together with a prolonged quote from Santos, and praising then-President Donald Trump’s declaration of a nationwide emergency. The tweet made no point out of Santos’ personal sickness.
On March 18, 2020, 4 days after he initially claimed he had acquired a optimistic take a look at and was very sick with COVID, Santos appeared on Fox Enterprise, exhibiting no indicators of sickness. Nevertheless, throughout a COVID city corridor that Santos hosted in April 2020, he stated that he was nonetheless symptomatic via March 18.
Santos went on to invest that he may need contracted the virus at CPAC in February 2020, the place at the least one attendee was later confirmed to have had coronavirus.
Though Santos by no means once more talked about having a mind tumor or present process radiation, he did go on to retell his COVID survival story many instances throughout his first failed marketing campaign and his second profitable bid for the Home of Representatives.
However the particulars, together with the severity of his sickness and the timeline of the story, started to shift.
In a September 2020 interview with native outlet The Island Now, Santos stated Elmhurst Hospital offered him with no remedy apart from recommending Advil for his fever.
“I adopted these directions, and I had most likely the worst two weeks of my life as an grownup,” he informed the paper, saying his lungs had been performing at solely 70 p.c capability.
He additionally stated his underlying circumstances, which he didn't element, meant he couldn't obtain “conventional remedies.”
After President Trump’s personal analysis of COVID-19 in October 2020, Santos’ expertise with the virus turned a publicity boon. He appeared on quite a few information channels discussing the president’s sickness and his personal expertise.
The timeline of his sickness started to vary. Showing on Fox Information that very same month, Santos stated he was a “very early case right here in New York, on March 7.”
The date is earlier in March than in Santos’ different accounts—the place he stated he felt signs on March 9. If he was certainly optimistic for COVID on March 7, the identical day then-Governor Andrew Cuomo declared a state of emergency, he would have been among the many first 89 individuals within the state to be contaminated with the virus, and among the many first within the nation.
By the next yr, Santos’ story was altering once more.
On March 5, 2021, Santos posted a tweet saying it was the one-year anniversary of his optimistic take a look at. That is 4 days sooner than in his preliminary model of the story.
He used this anniversary to assert that COVID-19 was a “potential organic weapon that unintentionally or deliberately escaped a lab in China” and inspired followers to not “be enslaved by this virus.”
Nevertheless, in a collection of tweets 5 months later, Santos stated that he was “contaminated with Covid in February 2020,” was examined at Elmhurst Hospital on March 4, and examined optimistic for COVID on March 7.
“True story and you may google it,” he wrote on Twitter.
If Santos was certainly contaminated with COVID on March 4, this makes him a part of a good smaller group of early survivors. On that date, there have been solely 11 identified instances of COVID-19 in New York state, principally linked to a single neighborhood in Westchester County.
Santos’ personal political place on COVID-19 and the federal government’s response to it has additionally flip-flopped over the course of his two campaigns for Congress.
In November 2020, he was an outspoken critic of the creating COVID vaccine, suggesting it may need well being unintended effects. “I’m a HARD cross for the #COVID19Vaccine, Thanks,” he tweeted on Nov. 30, 2020.
Three months later, nonetheless, Santos had shifted his place to help President Trump’s Operation Warp Velocity—a authorities initiative designed to speed up the rollout of the vaccine.
Santos was extremely essential of how Democrats, on the federal and state stage, dealt with the general public well being disaster wrought by COVID-19. He often criticized each New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and his successor, Governor Kathy Hochul, slamming New York’s COVID masks mandates and shutdowns for destroying small companies.
Santos didn't reply to The Each day Beast’s request for clarification on the small print of his COVID-19 expertise, or his declare to have had a mind tumor.