‘Out of options.’ Texan who led anti-mask efforts is hospitalized with COVID, wife says
Update: Caleb Wallace died Saturday after weeks on a ventilator at a San Angelo hospital, the San Angelo Standard Times reported. His wife, Jessica Wallace, posted the news to the family’s GoFundMe page.
“Caleb has peacefully passed on. He will forever live in our hearts and minds,” she wrote.
Original story:
A Texan who led anti-mask efforts and publicly opposed mandatory COVID-19 precautions is hospitalized with the coronavirus, and his pregnant wife says his chances of survival aren’t good.
Caleb Wallace is also a dad of three girls with another on the way, his wife Jessica said in a GoFundMe. Their baby is due Sept. 27, about two months after Caleb was hospitalized.
In what his wife described as a “heartbreaking update,” she shared Wednesday that her husband isn’t doing well.
“He’s not doing good,” she said in the public Facebook post. “It’s not looking in our favor, his lungs are stiff due to the fibrosis. They called and said they’ve run out of options for him and asked if I would consent to a do not resuscitate. And it would be up to us when to stop treatments.”
The post came three days after Jessica Wallace updated their GoFundMe followers. She said that while Wallace is “heavily sedated,” her family continues to FaceTime him nightly, praying their voices encourage him to continue his fight.
“These past few days have been a roller coaster, from getting the chest tube pulled out to having to insert the chest tube back in and getting a second chest tube inserted as well,” she wrote. “High fevers, infection coming in, bleeding into his chest and having to stop blood thinners and a feeling of gloom again.”
“My heart just can’t,” she said Wednesday. “I can’t imagine my life without him.”
Wallace has been unconscious and heavily sedated at Shannon Hospital in San Angelo, Texas, since Aug. 8, the San Angelo Standard-Times reported. That’s about a week after he was hospitalized with the virus. His lungs are weak as he continues his treatment on a ventilator.
His symptoms started July 26, and they progressively grew worse, the Standard-Times reported.
“Every time he would start to cough, it would turn into a coughing attack, and then that would cause him to completely go out of breath,” Jessica Wallace said, according to the newspaper.
He first refused to get tested or see a doctor because he didn’t want to be part of COVID-19 statistics, the publication reported, so he self-treated with Ivermectin, Vitamin C, zinc aspirin and an inhaler.
Soon, he had no choice but to seek medical treatment and was hospitalized.
Now, his family knows it must “pray for the best and prepare for the worst,” his wife said on GoFundMe. She said the fundraising page was created to help pay for their mortgage and other living expenses, but now says it will also help pay for his medical bills.
Prior to contracting the virus, Wallace was a known anti-mask proponent and founder of the “The San Angelo Freedom Defenders,” the Huffington Post reported.
“Caleb Wallace, an organizer of the San Angelo Freedom Defenders, is leading a group to educate and empower citizens to make informed choices concerning local, statewide, and national policy,” San Angelo Live! said in an October 2020 video interview with him.
In the video, Wallace said his group was “fed up” with mandatory coronavirus precautions in what was described as “COVID-19 tyranny.” His group organized a rally to fight for “the basic rights of breathing free air, moving about freely, going into businesses without being harassed about a mask.”
More recently, Wallace wrote a letter to the San Angelo Independent School District published in San Angelo Live! in April.
“We are demanding that San Angelo ISD rescind ALL COVID-related policies immediately! Nothing less would be acceptable,” he said.
While Wallace wouldn’t wear a mask, the Standard-Times reported that his wife would wear one.
“I’m from the border town of Del Rio, and my views are less conservative,” she said, according to the San Angelo newspaper. “I’m not a liberal. I stand somewhere in the middle. ... Caleb would tell me, ‘You know masks aren’t going to save you,’ but he understood I wanted to wear them. It gives me comfort to know that maybe, just maybe, I’m either protecting someone or avoiding it myself.”
As of Thursday, the Texas Department of State Health Services estimates 272,465 active COVID-19 cases within the state as the virus continues to surge. Nearly 55,000 have died from COVID-19 in Texas.
This story was originally published August 27, 2021 at 11:26 AM with the headline "‘Out of options.’ Texan who led anti-mask efforts is hospitalized with COVID, wife says."