Candace Owens has been accused of disrespecting people who have died from Covid after she “apologised to all of the people who are upset that I am unvaccinated and somehow survived Covid”.
The commentary was followed by Ms Owens arguing that Covid was “a disease with an approximate 99.87 per cent survival rate for individuals under the age of 65”.
“I am shocked that I survived those odds,” tweeted Ms Owens. “Maybe I should buy a lottery ticket.”
She immediately came under attack for her remarks, which appeared to dismiss those 830,000 Americans who had died from Covid, and their families.
Dozens also pointed to death tolls from Covid both in the US and abroad, and that the United States also has among the lowest levels of fully vaccinated persons among developed countries.
“It is a blessing that you are part of those that have survived the disease so far. My thoughts are with the 5,557,482 people who didn’t make it,” tweeted South African news anchor Peter Ndoro.
“It is a lot of pain and heartache for millions of families. It may be just 0.13 per cent for you, but for the families it’s one person too many.”
Another wrote: “Hmm. Very interesting, but you know who you don’t hear a lot from… the people who died of Covid. Because they can’t tweet so good now that they are dead.”
Ms Owens said recently she was “Never going to get it. I don’t care if I’m on my deathbed and they say it can save you, I’m not going to get it”.
She reasoned that she was too young and healthy to need a vaccine, in apparent ignorance of the 20,000 deaths from Covid among those aged below 40 in the US.
Figures from the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) also show that unvaccinated Americans are roughly 11 times more likely to die from Covid than their vaccinated counterparts, despite some reduction in protection over time.
The CDC stressed in 2020 that a 0.2 per cent mortality rate for Covid was an estimate, and as USA Today reported at the time, many scientists suggested that figure should be higher.
