A teenaged city councilman in Alabama “has tested positive for COVID-19 just months after voting to end a local mask mandate,” The Hill reported on Saturday, September 18, 2021 (read story here).
“Hunter Pepper, 19, told local NBC affiliate WAFF that he received two positive COVID-19 tests Wednesday and spent more than six hours at a local hospital, where he said he was diagnosed with ‘COVID pneumonia,'” The Hill said.
“I didn’t think they were as bad as they are, and they are, they’re terrible, I mean, they’re terrible and it is rough,” he said.
When Pepper voted against the mask mandate, he called it “government overreach,” and argued that “wearing a mask should be my choice” (see story here). The weakness of that argument is that masks primarily keep others safe from you, not the other way around, and making you wear one protects other people you have no right to put at risk. So he was wrong about that.
But he’s “received hundreds of hate messages” and says, “I’ve had folks tell me that they hope there’s no ventilator available for me,” and that’s wrong, too.
Give him credit for learning something from his experience: “[H]is personal opinion on COVID-19 precautions has shifted and [he] is now encouraging everyone to get a vaccine and take safety precautions. ‘Whenever you go into a public space you do need to wear a mask. I’m not saying that it should be mandated and I’m not saying that vaccinations should be mandated, but I feel that everybody should play their part.'”
But maybe not enough. It sounds like he’s still against mandates, even for masks. So I would ask him, “What would you do with people who don’t play their part?” The problem is you don’t know who’s vaccinated and who isn’t, or who might be carrying and transmitting the virus, and that’s why I want everyone in the grocery store to wear a mask when I’m there, even if somebody has to make them do it. Protecting me from other people’s bad judgment shouldn’t, in my view, be optional.
Related story: Back in March 2021, “Pepper said he was ‘extremely sorry’ for a 2018 Facebook post where he implied that protesters marching against the death of Black man at the Galleria Mall in Hoover should be run over.” (Read that story here.)
Photo below: Councilman Pepper being hauled off to the hospital on a gurney upon developed acute Covid-19 symptoms.
The masks provide no protection from any virus, or even bacteria. So sick of this stupidity.
It says it right on the freaking boxes.
These masks are designed so that a surgeon, during surgery, don’t accidentally allow spittle to enter the wound while they are talking. That’s it.
At the end of this nonsense, which I expect to be about FOUR more years, it will result in a complete loss of credibility in our “news” media, and government.
Oh we’re in a pandemic!!! 1 out of 500 people have died in 2 years, that are VAGUELY connected to the virus. 1.25% of the population dies every year if the average life expectancy is 80, which it’s not. There’s 330 million Americans.
Do the math. Do the elementary school math you were taught when you were 13. That’s how basic this math is.
And your qualifications to dismiss masks are what? Do you have relevant training and experience? Or is that just your off-the-cuff opinion versus the collective expertise of our nation’s leading epidemiologists and public health experts? The life expectancy of a 10-year-old who dies from Covid-19 is 10, not 80. Nearly a quarter million kids got sick from Covid-19 last week. Sounds like you don’t care. Do you?