A former Newsmax anchor who died of the coronavirus after months of urging his followers not to be vaccinated is a Jewish man from Queens, JTA reported.
In a death that made national headlines, Dick Farrel, z’l, 65, passed away in Florida on August 4, but not before realizing the error of his ways. After he contracted COVID and became ill, his friends say he urged them to get vaccinated.
Prior to becoming ill, Farrel maintained a Facebook account, which has since been set to private, that scoffed at coronavirus regulations and vaccines and referred to COVID as a “scam-demic.” He excoriated the US government for pushing people to get vaccinated and spread misinformation about vaccines.
Dick Farrel’s name as a child was Farrel Austin Levin. He grew up in Queens and attended Queens College before moving to New York and establishing a career in radio. More recently, Farrel was a radio host on multiple stations in Florida and was also a fill-in host at the conservative outlet Newsmax.
Farrel z’l, who did not leave any children, will be buried on Friday at Beth Israel Boynton Beach Chapel.
His death comes amid a surge of coronavirus cases in the US and worldwide, spurred by the Delta variant. Florida, a Republican state with a low vaccination rate and little coronavirus restrictions, has been especially hard hit.
A similar story occurred last month in the UK when outspoken British anti-vaxxer Leslie Lawrenson, 58, died of the coronavirus only days after saying that “it’s nothing to be afraid of” and that the vaccines are too “experimental” to be safe.
Lawrenson’s daughter said that he was “brainwashed by the stuff that he was seeing on YouTube and social media,” and he believed more people would die from the vaccine than from the virus.
(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)
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16 Responses
About a person who is מאבד עצמו לדעת the braysa says: אין מתעסקין עמו בכל דבר, and historically this meant we aren’t noheg minhagei aveilus for him. Perhaps in this case we’d say it was גרמא, or perhaps it wasn’t really לדעת since perhaps he was also brainwashed by what he saw on youtube and the internet. Sad story, and even his last-minute tshuva couldn’t save him from the virus. It’s very sad, and I hope that Newsmax can tell their viewers about it.
Typical high quality YWN article. His name was Levitt, not Levin, according to other articles I’ve read. He moved to New York after attending Queens College? Queens is part of New York. He’s being buried in a funeral chapel? I suspect he’s being buried in a cemetery.
“Florida, a Republican state with a low vaccination rate ” Not true!
Keep your cheap politics out of this unless you have the facts! There are 50 states in the US Florida is number 23 in vaccination rate. Above average!
And what about many many others that died of the vaccine?!??!
The Vaccine does not stop you from contacting COVID 19 nor does it stop you from dying from it. If it was truly a vaccine you would not have to wear mask or distance yourself from others. There would be no lock downs if the vaccine worked.
Go back to when you were a child and had the measles vaccine….. did you have to wear a mask throughout your life when you came in contact with someone who had the measles… or chickenpox, shingles which is the same virus as chickenpox, or mumps… How many times have you had to wear mask around people or children with these diseases. NEVER… because once you are vaccinated properly with a vaccine that works you develop antibodies that protect you for the rest of your life or until your immune system starts to break down from old age. JUST THINK PEOPLE … USE YOUR DANG BRAINS.
This virus has a 1% death rate. It’s important to build up natural immunity with exercise and eating healthy. Ultimately life and death are in the hands of Hashem.
There were many deaths of those who were “vaccinated” as well. According to VEARS, 6,207 people died in the US after taking the coronavirus “vaccine”. However, this is undereported because there are many reported cases of healthy individuals who died soon after taking the vaccine and their deaths were not counted as “vaccine” caused deaths even though they were otherwise healthy. The CDC said in June,( so the numbers are higher at this point) that approximately 4,100 people have been hospitalized or died with covid breakthrough infections despite being “vaccinated” (source CNBC). Do you think the media will play up any of these deaths?
Rubbish, he didnt die of covid how much you want to bet he had 1 or all of the following hypertension heart or kidney problems but hey we like to brainwash you so we’ll just say covid.
Are these anti-vaxxer comments real?! Can you name me one person in the Frum community that died of the vaccine? Even if you can, I could name you 1,000’s who died from the virus. It’s of utmost importance to be on the right side of conspiracy theories. חיים ומות ביד הלשון
Too bad he was also a victim of disinformation regarding the HCQ+Zinc therapies.
Had he taken it (“Just in case it maybe possibly works”) he’d be alive today.
p.s.
I always feel compelled to add the following:
NOBODY is able to find any study or report on HCQ+Zinc that failed which also included the (humble but necessary) Zinc, and was administered during the 1st five days of symptoms.
Conversely,
NOBODY is able to find a study/report that DID do it right, and failed. (The success rate varied from 84% to 99+ %.)
Why can’t ywn write an article without inserting their opinion and biases. Let people come to conclusions themselves.
Covid is a flu like virus that may cause many different reactions in different people. It may even kill some. What they refer to as the “vaccine” is just as dangerous to some people, but we have no definitive information yet since it is so new. It is not a “vaccine” as defined by the CDC it is Gene Therapy but in order to shield the “vaccine” manufacturers and distributors from liability they call it a “vaccine”.
Would someone please identify the source of the statement that many people have died from the COVID vaccine? Compared to (i) how many people don’t die from the vaccine, and (ii) how many people die from not being vaccinated?
To Wise-Guy – so far NOBODY is studied people who ate Life cereal with orange juice while standing upside down and wearing orange socks. No one checked to see if they got Corona. I’m sure if such a study was done people would see that this really works and such people NEVER got sick from covid!!! Success rate 100%!!!
Huju, these numbers are not clear. The CDC counts people who have had only one shot as not having had the shot at all. Also, it counts people who have already had two shots, but two weeks have not passed since the second shot, as not having been “vaccinated”.
I don’t think we can ever know the real numbers of those who had even both shots and the two weeks have elapsed after the second shot and they still contracted covid-19 and died because this is a highly politicized topic with a clear agenda of getting everyone to get 2 shots plus booster shots.
Ramchas, I wonder what percentage of frum people got the coronavirus shots plus the booster shot as most of us already got covid-19 naturally.
I conclude from these comments that too many Jews are dumber than I thought.