Tennessee Governor Bill Lee (R) announced in a five-minute address Sunday evening that the state will ban indoor public gatherings of more than 10 people in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I’m signing an order that will limit indoor public gatherings to 10 people,” Lee said in a televised message to Tennesseans.
“We now have around 10,000 Tennesseans getting sick every day,” he said, adding that Tennessee was “ground zero” for the COVID-19 pandemic, and that cases have surged in the state since Thanksgiving.
He also asked Tennessee residents to abstain from large gatherings at Christmas.
“So tonight, I’m asking you to make some hard decisions,” Lee said. “I’m asking you to not engage in indoor gatherings for the holidays that include anyone outside your household.”
He also announced that the state will limit attendance at indoor sporting events, and implored business owners to let employees work from home for the next month.
Tennessee is one of the few remaining states in America that has not implemented a statewide mask mandate or mandatory stay-at-home orders. Until Sunday, it had not limited indoor gatherings.
But during his evening remarks, Lee lauded local governments that had implemented mask mandates, and encouraged residents to wear them.
“Masks work, and I want every Tennessean to wear one,” he said.
Watch the full address:
Lee has apparently been wavering in his position about mask mandates for months.
The governor was overhead regretfully saying that he had not implemented a mask mandate in a video recorded by local television station WJHL.
“I said to someone the other day, gosh, if we had the hindsight of 2020 and we’d done a mask requirement at the beginning of March, we probably wouldn’t have had to close everything down,” he said in the video filmed in July at a COVID-19 testing center in Johnson City.
Meanwhile, Tennessee residents and advocacy groups spent their weekend fighting for individual liberty.
The nonprofit group Tennessee Stands held a rally Saturday urging the Knox County Commission to strip the Knox County Board of Health of its mandate powers, and return the Board of Health strictly to an advisory role, as reported by The Tennessee Star.
Maury County Mayor Andy Ogles spoke at the Tennessee Stands rally Saturday.
The Star spoke to Ogles after Lee’s Sunday evening address.
“I am relieved the governor did not do a statewide mask mandate,” he said. “We can’t sacrifice liberty and infringe on the Constitution, even though there’s a virus, and even though people are scared.”
“Yes, the virus is serious,” he said. “But at the end of the day this is about personal responsibility.”
Ogles also encouraged Tennesseans to socially distance.
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Pete D’Abrosca is a contributor at The Tennessee Star and the Star News Network. Follow Pete on Twitter. Email tips to [email protected].
Here in the real world: We don’t know of anyone with COVID-19! There ere two at Church some time ago and several at one time at the Walmart, just off the Interstate and probably infected by Illegal Aliens en rout to other points in the US! The hospitals do not have any Covid-19 patients.
At one time there ere an actual total of 19 patients n one hospital.We go where and as we please, with no masks but forced to wear the things in some stores.
The mask are incapable of stopping the virus,the particles much much smaller than the weave r pores of the masks. It is impossible to wear glasses with the masks as your breath forces past the edge of the masks and steam them up. Air enters freely around the edge also. I had double Pneumonia sometime ago and wearing one my oxygen level drops into the mid to low eighties, trying to breath through or around the masks,causing near collapse
Tennessee Stands:https://youtu.be/IODVji7wA_E
Tennesseestands.org
A trifecta of moron,s Lee, Goober Jim and Corade Commie Cooper! People are fed up with this BS Health fraud. Live free or die!
Tennessee would be far better off if the legislators would do their job and limit the emergency power they have given to this governor.
Re my last, not sure how it was changed but the link should be:
QUOTE [from a “public” discussion at https://voat.co/v/whatever/4089493
Did anyone else notice what Bill’s apparatus has convinced him he should attempt to ban? “indoor public gatherings of more than 10 people”.
Public gatherings? As in a meeting of public officials in a public building? Thank your Diety of Choice! That means that anytime more than one member of state government meets another in a public building, for any reason, they will each be guilty of committing a criminal act. Brush up on your powers of Citizen Arrest, everyone. Perhaps we can end the pandemic by locking up all the officials . . .
Of course, when private individuals meet – anywhere – for private purposes, this ban would not apply. Especially in places of public accommodation.
QUOTE [from a “public” discussion at https://voat.co/v/whatever/4089493%5D
Places of Public Accommodation.
Title II, Section 201(a) of the Civil Rights Act states:
(a) All persons shall be entitled to the full and equal enjoyment of the goods, services, facilities, and privileges, advantages, and accommodations of any place of public accommodation, as defined in this section, without discrimination or segregation on the ground of race, color, religion, or national origin.
SEC. 201. (a) All persons shall be entitled to the full and equal enjoyment of the goods, services, facilities, and privileges, advantages, and accommodations of any place of public
accommodation, as defined in this section, without discrimination or segregation on the ground of race, color, religion, or national origin.
(b) Each of the following establishments which serves the public is a place of public
accommodation within the meaning of this title if its operations affect commerce, or if
discrimination or segregation by it is supported by State action:
(1) any inn, hotel, motel, or other establishment which provides lodging to transient guests, other than an establishment located within a building which contains not more than five rooms for rent or hire and which is actually occupied by the proprietor of such establishment as his residence;
(2) any restaurant, cafeteria, lunchroom, lunch counter, soda fountain, or other facility
principally engaged in selling food for consumption on the premises, including, but not limited to, any such facility located on the premises of any retail establishment; or any gasoline station;
(3) any motion picture house, theater, concert hall, sports arena, stadium or other place of
exhibition or entertainment; and
(4) any establishment (A)(i) which is physically located within the premises of any establishment otherwise covered by this subsection, or (ii) within the premises of which is physically located any such covered establishment, and (B) which holds itself out as serving patrons of such covered establishment.
So yeah, they can refuse you service, but not legally.
And notice the phrase “full and equal enjoyment.” That isn’t Click List or curbside pickup. That is entering the building and browsing at your leisure like everyone else.
And by the way, for those curious, a doctor’s office is also a place of public accommodation. ENDQUOTE
Some will undoubtedly argue that the discrimination is allowed since it is not being implemented based on race, religion, nationality, etc., etc. That brings up the State Action clause and the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. Though that probably will not matter to the dictators and their followers since they are already willfully violating the Constitution. Which is a crime, by the way.
Wussie RINO Lee needs to take less inspiration from Cuomo and Newsom and more from Kristi Noem, who at least recognizes that people can use personal responsibility to make their own choices. If people want to mask up or stay at home, letting their lives be dominated by government-induced fear, that is their choice. If people want to go to church, go shopping, or gather with friends and family over Christmas, that is their choice also. I’m OK either way and Lee should be too.
Time to primary out this sh!thead