According to one-timeRuPaul's Drag Race judge and Project Runway contestant Santino Rice, all you need to stay healthy in this life is to watch what you eat and good vibes.
Since early on in the pandemic, Rice has made his distrust of the information surrounding it apparent. In fact, in April 2020 Rice's Twitter account sent off a series of bizarre tweets. He told Out that they were the result of a hack, but that they were based on his own drafts. But, over the past few months he's been sending out more that have gotten him in trouble with the social media platform.
As early as May, Rice was calling the virus at the center of the pandemic man-made, "designed by European and American scientists and then delivered to China knowing very well that it would eventually spread outside the lab." He continued in that vein saying it was made to be fatal and that "only supporting your natural, God-given immune system is the answer to staying healthy."
To be clear, vaccines are meant to support your "natural, God-given immune system" by helping to prepare it to fight viruses, but we digress.
"The virus was designed to kill and its 'v@ccine' is equally deadly," he wrote. And those are just the tweets that Twitter didn't find issue with.
A June 8 tweet from Rice got a misinformation label slapped on it. "Ivermecetin already existed and works for curing [the virus]" he wrote. "Big Pharma hide this information to push their untested vaccines on a population of scared and innocent people. The truth will see the light." He continued, alter calling the fight to save lives "spiritual war."
The tweets continued through this weekend.
"YOU CAN NOT CANCEL THE TRUTH!" rice tweeted Friday. His next tweet was removed by Twitter for violating the platform's rules — it presumably contained rampant misinformation. But he was soon back, insinuating that "doctors and scientists" were supplying vaccines and medicines like PrEP purely for financial gain.
Apparently, at one point, Rice posted something that even he regretted.
"NEVER GET [THE VACCINE!]" he wrote on Friday in a now-deleted tweet. "YOU CAN FIND A NURSE OR PHARMACIST TO SQUIRT IT ON THE FLOOR!" Presumably, the suggestion here is to sign up to get it so you can have proof of vaccination without actually being vaccinated.
"GENERATIONS OF HUMANS BEFORE YOU DID NOT NEED IT AND YOU DO NOT NEED IT!" he continued, not really accounting for the fact that the virus wasn't found in humans prior, and is still to this day mutating into variants that haven't been seen before. "SUPPORT YOUR IMMUNE SYSTEM NATURALLY!"
Since deleting that tweet, he's since come for even George Takei. In response to a TMZ report about Takei's statement that those who didn't get the vaccine should not get priority for care in hospitals if they contract the virus, Rice likened it to another crisis.
"I've seen this movie before!" he tweeted. "It's like the way that hospitals treated men with HIV/AIDS who willfully allowed other men to penetrate and ejaculate in their rectums. What goes around comes back around ..."
"My body, my choice, George!" he wrote.
It is worth noting that he is of th eminority opinion in the community. A recent survey shows that 92% of LGBTQ+ adults have received at least one vaccination shot.
