<https://www.sfgate.com/coronavirus/article/Popular-QAnon-promoter-dies-of-COVID-in-California-16760824.php>

Popular QAnon promoter dies of COVID in California
Katie Dowd

SFGATE
Jan. 9, 2022
Updated: Jan. 9, 2022 9:11 a.m.

A QAnon promoter with tens of thousands of followers on Facebook and
Telegram has died after contracting COVID-19.

Cirsten Weldon, who went by the name "CirstenW" online, died at a
hospital in Camarillo, Calif., the Daily Beast reported.

On her last video, posted on December 28, Weldon was coughing and
admitted she felt "exhausted" and "weak."

Weldon was virulently anti-vaccine, both online and in real life. In
one video posted to her social media channels, she can be seen
harassing people in line to be vaccinated against COVID-19. "The
vaccines kill. Don't get it," she shouts. "This is how gullible these
idiots are. They're all getting vaccines."

Weldon was so well-known as a QAnon influencer that she even
livestreamed with comedian Roseanne Barr, who has now devolved into a
full-time conspiracy theorist. An October livestream with Weldon has
over 70,000 views on Barr's YouTube channel. In it, Weldon rambles
about how Donald Trump is still the "real" president and claims
without evidence that "arrests are happening in California" of her
political enemies.

Weldon livestreamed constantly and posted relentlessly on Instagram,
Telegram and Facebook, inadvertently tracking her own symptoms. She
began showing signs of illness around Christmas. In a December 27
stream, she started off by saying, "Good morning, patriots, I didn't
think I was going to make it. I'm sorry. I'm exhausted, and I'm very,
very weak. I have no strength. I haven't eaten in four days."

On December 31, she posted a photo of herself wearing an oxygen mask
with the caption, "Almost died at hospital in CA from Bacterial
Pneumonia." "Bacterial pneumonia" is a phrase commonly used in
anti-vax circles to explain a COVID-related hospitalization without
admitting to contracting the virus.

Weldon also posted on Telegram, where she had nearly 100,000
followers, that she rejected treatment with remdesivir.