Kelly Ernby, an Orange County deputy district attorney who had campaigned against the vaccine mandate for the COVID-19 has died of Covid complications, her family and friends said,

At the time of her death, her husband Axel Ernby said she was not vaccinated.

The 46-year-old recently ran for the California state assembly, and just a month before her death, voiced her opposition to the vaccine mandate at a rally outside city hall in Irvine.

The rally itself had been organized by chapters of conservative mouthpiece Turning Point USA.

“She was NOT vaccinated. That’s the problem,” her husband, Axel, said on social media after her passing.

Ernby had been advocating "freedom" through her opposition to the vaccine mandate. "There’s nothing that matters more than our freedoms right now," she said.

She also expressed her contempt for the vaccine mandate and the vaccines themselves on her personal Facebook, at one point saying, "the vaccine is not the cure to Covid, and mandates won’t work."

Ernby has been a vocal anti-vaxxer long before the COVID-19 pandemic, denouncing vaccine mandates in 2019 at an online town hall. She said she opposed a then-new state law tightening vaccine rules for California school children.

"My fundamental belief is that government should be very small, and I don’t believe in mandates," she had said.

Before her death from Covid at 46, GOP politician Kelly Ernby did her best to ensure that children remain vulnerable to measles & helped Covid remain a deadly disease. https://t.co/SXTunMIOxn

— Amy Maxmen, PhD (@amymaxmen) January 4, 2022

Ernby asserted her belief that the government should not be involved in mandating what vaccines people were taking, saying she thought that was a "decision between doctors and their patients."

She also brought to the table the issue of "freedom" once again, asking, "If the government is going to mandate vaccines, what else are they going to mandate?"

The California prosecutor was elected as an Orange county GOP central committee member in 2020, but due to the virus, she only got to serve half of her term.

Ernby's death received a lot of attention online, with users using her as an example of the repercussions of not getting vaccinated, others blaming her for her own death, and many criticizing her for her policies and acts that jeopardized many people.