By Doug Podell In the past, Nugent had repeated a narrative pushed by conservative media and disputed by health experts that suggests the official death count from the coronavirus is inflated. He had also mocked people who wear face masks, despite that both the CDC and When Nugent first revealed his COVID-19 diagnosis, he described having a "stuffed up head," body aches and that he "literally could hardly crawl out of bed the last few days." "I thought I was dying," he said. He also called the virus the "Chinese shit," and reiterated his previous stance that he wouldn't be getting the vaccine because he claimed — falsely — that "nobody knows what's in it."