Alabama Republican Congressman Rep. Barry Moore, who just three weeks ago protested House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s requirement that masks be worn on the House floor, announced on Friday night that he had tested positive for coronavirus.
“I’m sad to share that Heather and I have tested positive for COVID-19,” Moore wrote on Twitter. He said he will continue to work virtually as much as he can while recovering in quarantine.”
Moore said he had experienced a fever, sore throat, and exhaustion, and was recovering at home.
In a July 29 video, Moore said that the mandate was put in place by Speaker Pelosi to exert control over her members since “the Senate is wide open, but on the House side COVID is running rampant, according to Nancy Pelosi.”
“We can’t figure out, as you travel to the Senate, where the COVID virus stops,” he said in the video.
Since then a number of senators have tested positive for COVID including three in one day. And several House members, Moore now included announced a positive COVID test.
Even after his diagnosis and despite a surge of COVID cases in his home state that left their ICUs without beds, Moore still opposes mask mandates and will not mask up when he returns to the House.
“I just don’t believe in mandates from the federal government,” he told The Daily Beast. “If I died of COVID yesterday, I wouldn’t want to force my beliefs and opinions on anyone.”
Asked if he will wear a mask on the House floor, Moore said: “I’ll have the antibodies and I’ll already have had [COVID]. I’m not sure that me wearing a mask, whether you think I should or not, really is going to help anybody.”
He refused to say whether or not he had been vaccinated. But, he told the Daily Beast that the vaccines were “untested,” and that we “don’t know a lot about them yet.” Alabama has the lowest vaccination rate in the country of about 36 percent.
In all this, Moore’s one regret is that he won’t be able to attend Donald Trump’s rally in Cullman, Alabama on Saturday night.
