A former longtime Alabama senator had a chilling final message before he died of COVID-19 last week: “We messed up.” Larry Dixon, 78, contracted the bug during an outdoors hangout “with a couple of guys” two weeks ago — and his worsening condition left him on a ventilator, his close friend and pulmonologist Dr. David Thrasher told NBC News. Dixon’s wife Gaynell Dixon told Thrasher that her husband issued one final plea before his death.