Ted Nugent, who once dismissed COVID-19, sickened by virus

Rocker Ted Nugent is revealing he was in agony after testing positive for coronavirus - months after he said the virus was "not a real pandemic."

"I thought I was dying," Nugent says in a Facebook live video posted Monday. "I literally could hardly crawl out of bed the last few days," adding: "So I was officially tested positive for COVID-19 today."

In the video shot at his Michigan ranch, the "Cat Scratch Fever" singer repeatedly uses racist slurs to refer to COVID-19 and reiterates his previous stance that he wouldn't be getting the vaccine because he claims wrongly that "nobody knows what's in it."

Nugent, a supporter of ex-President Donald Trump, previously called the pandemic a scam and has railed against public health restrictions. He has repeated a narrative pushed by conservative media and disputed by health experts that suggests the official death count from the coronavirus is inflated.

A poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research in late March found that 36% of Republicans said they will probably or definitely not get vaccinated, compared with 12% of Democrats. The seven-day national average of cases remains over 60,000 new infections per day.