Cirsten Weldon, anti-vax QAnon promoter who livestreamed with Roseanne Barr, dies of COVID

Cirsten Weldon, anti-vax QAnon promoter who livestreamed with Roseanne Barr, dies of COVID

A QAnon promoter with tens of thousands of followers on Facebook and Telegram has died after contracting COVID-19.

Cirsten Weldon, who went by the name “CirstenW” online, died at a hospital in Camarillo, Calif., the Daily Beast reported.

On her last video, posted on December 28, Weldon was coughing and admitted she felt “exhausted” and “weak.”

Weldon was virulently anti-vaccine, both online and in real life. In one video posted to her social media channels, she can be seen harassing people in line to be vaccinated against COVID-19. “The vaccines kill. Don’t get it,” she shouts. “This is how gullible these idiots are. They’re all getting vaccines.”

Weldon was so well-known as a QAnon influencer that she even livestreamed with comedian Roseanne Barr, who has now devolved into a full-time conspiracy theorist. An October livestream with Weldon has over 70,000 views on Barr’s YouTube channel. In it, Weldon rambles about how Donald Trump is still the “real” president and claims without evidence that “arrests are happening in California” of her political enemies.

Weldon livestreamed constantly and posted relentlessly on Instagram, Telegram and Facebook, inadvertently tracking her own symptoms. She began showing signs of illness around Christmas. In a December 27 stream, she started off by saying, “Good morning, patriots, I didn’t think I was going to make it. I’m sorry. I’m exhausted, and I’m very, very weak. I have no strength. I haven’t eaten in four days.”

On December 31, she posted a photo of herself wearing an oxygen mask with the caption, “Almost died at hospital in CA from Bacterial Pneumonia.” “Bacterial pneumonia” is a phrase commonly used in anti-vax circles to explain a COVID-related hospitalization without admitting to contracting the virus.

Weldon also posted on Telegram, where she had nearly 100,000 followers, that she rejected treatment with remdesivir.

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