Head Scratch Fever: Ted Nugent Makes Bizarre COVID-19 Claim

ACROSS AMERICA — Ted Nugent, the country/rock singer who never forgets the Second Amendment, has us feverishly scratching our heads yet again over his latest expression of the First.

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COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, includes the number “19” because its first case was discovered in 2019 — not because it’s the 19th coronavirus (it’s not), as the Motor City Madman implied in a recent Facebook Live video that’s filled with factual inaccuracies about the coronavirus pandemic.

Still homebound, with concerts still mostly a no-go due to the pandemic, Terrible Ted focused his rant mostly on virus-related shutdowns.

Nugent has company in his misery. His fans also rant about lockdowns, empty stages and stadiums, and other inconveniences.

But his reasoning?

Yikes.

“COVID-1 — and there was a COVID 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17 and 18 — COVID one through 18 didn’t shut anything down but woah, COVID-19,” Nugent said during the video.

Snopes.com, the fact-checking website that confirmed Nugent did indeed make the absurd claim, said “he did not appear to be joking.”

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Nugent actually isn’t the first public figure to make the error. Former Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway said “it’s COVID-19, not COVID-1” on “Fox and Friends” last year when the pandemic was only a month old.

“The Nuge,” as his fans know him, is an outspoken Trump backer and political pot-stirrer who will say just about anything.

He’s called former President Barack Obama a “subhuman mongrel,” said his home state, Michigan, “doesn’t qualify as America anymore” because of its gun laws, and that “all men are not created equal” in reference to the end of apartheid in South Africa.

The rocker and political activist has been unapologetic about his pro-gun stance in the years since his self-titled 1975 debut album made him a household name, though Nugent banned guns from one of his own concerts in 2018.

The no-gun Virginia concert was held after Nugent, a longtime NRA member, called Parkland school shooting survivors seeking tougher gun laws “poor, mushy-brained children.”