Hans Kristian Gaarder in the municipality of Gran in Norway, at age 60 from COVID-19. This occurred on April 6th, with testing confirming after he died it was from the virus. On March 26 and 27, he hosted two illegal house parties on his property. In a press release, the police said they didn’t know who had been at the parties, so they made a blanket statement for everyone who might have been there to get tested.
Prior to his death, Gaarder was noted for being a conspiracy theorist and had believed COVID-19 was a hoax. Not a great way to learn you were wrong about something.
A week ago, it was Olympia Dukakis. She’d been ill for a while and died at home under hospice care at age 89. There’s one last appearance for her as a judge in the movie Not To Forget that will be released this year.
Last year, Martin Birch, who was the producer for bands Iron Maiden and Whitesnake, died at age 71. Just yesterday, Tawny Kitaen passed away at age 59. She was in several music videos for Whitesnake. She had a few film and TV roles, including being part of the main cast of The New WKRP in Cincinatti.
Bernard Lachance last week at age 46. He was a singer from Quebec that seemed to have done pretty well in promoting himself by using his own money and getting recognition that way.
Recently, he ventured into conspiracy theories about HIV, AIDS and COVID-19. I’m not sure if that was before or after he stopped taking his HIV/AIDS treatments. It sounds like the cause of death was he decided he was going to do a purge “to disinfect his body of all the drugs he had taken” and it went so far his body couldn’t take it. His sister described him as “skeletal” the last time she saw him a few days before he died.
Details unknown at this time but one of the guys from the team I joined at my first job passed last Friday.
Edit: I was just reminded by a friend and former coworker that today is the anniversary of our mutual first day at that job, which is also the day we met the aforementioned co-worker.
Iron Man’s dad. Robert Downey Sr., a director and actor. Died in his sleep at age 85. RDJ was in eight of his dad’s films, and they were actors together in two others.