Live from Music Row Tuesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed Maury County Mayor Andy Ogles in the studio to revisit mask science and data and the prevention of COVID-19 with kids K-12 as mandates return.
(Joe Biden clip plays)
Leahy: So that’s the legal but not legitimate current occupant of, I don’t know, Camp David, a house in Delaware, occasionally shows up at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Joe Biden, legal but not legitimate president of the United States today.
And I say legal but not legitimate because he won narrowly in six states. All six of those states had unlawful election procedures – We’ve documented in great detail. You hear that, Andy, and you say this is the guy who is the president of the United States and he’s saying, mask your kids up.
I’ll do a Groundhog Day thing here. What’s the scientific evidence on mask efficacy for stopping the transmission of COVID 19? Hit the repeat button. Because, folks, here comes again, here’s the science. It doesn’t support what Joe Biden just said.
Ogles: I mean, one of the headlines on Drudge yesterday and Sunday was talking about the very fact that science no longer supports the promises that were made about masks. Obviously, early on, everybody was grasping at straws to do something. But it became clear.
And again, if you go back to when I was doing all the updates at the beginning of COVID, I say it’s about six months’ worth of – daily – a single-ply mask – paper mask, which you might consider a surgical mask, is up to 18 percent effective. Up to 18 percent.
Leahy: These are the masks that almost everybody wears.
Ogles: You can buy them at Walmart, whatever. And then a three-ply cloth mask, which I have, is up to – and up to is the operative phrase, right? It’s up to – if it’s clean, if it’s tight-fitting, if it’s form-fitting – up to 38 percent effective.
And so what I saw, my office is in the courthouse. It’s a very active building. And you have really the dregs of society to doctors and lawyers and everywhere in between, right.
Is that people would wear masks, and then suddenly they felt like they had this invisible shield around them, protecting them. And then when reality is, the mask that they were wearing was only protecting them 18 percent to 20 percent.
Leahy: (i.e.) not protecting them, because you got that 80 percent to 82 percent. I saw another study that said it was 90 percent ineffective. That’s no protection whatsoever.
Ogles: I’m not pro-mask. I’m not anti-mask. I’m not pro-vaccine, anti-vaccine. But even in that clip is talking about, do it for the children, vaccinate everybody that you know for the children. Why? Because children are not adversely affected by COVID unless they have some sort of serious illness.
Leahy: But Andy, we’ve got to do something because children are getting sick.
Ogles: And you know what? Children get sick and 99.9 percent of the kids that get COVID recover. And that’s not to say that some won’t end up in the hospital, that some won’t get dehydrated or whatever.
But that happens every year with other illnesses as well. And what’s troubling, though, is that COVID is being used, and we weaponized this emergency power.
And on Newsmax, Ben Carson, the headline says Vaccine Mandates Shape a Terrible Future for America. And so again, and he’s clear that he’s pro-vaccine, and that’s his opinion.
Obviously, he’s a doctor, a renowned surgeon. But he says this idea of mandating the vaccines shapes a terrible future for this country. And I agree. And that’s where the Freedom Matters tour, that’s what we’ve been talking about.
We’re not here to tell you to or not to get the vaccine. That’s your decision. Go talk to a doctor. But no CEO of a company, no politician should make you manage your health care. Period.
Leahy: Yeah, well, obviously, it makes perfect sense to me. Now, I want to talk a little bit, and here in Tennessee, we have a little bit of this as well. If you do polling nationally about the issue of should school boards mandate masks or not?
I’m just talking about public opinion. I’m not talking about science. The science seems unequivocal to demonstrate that there is virtually no efficacy in limiting the transmission of COVID-19 for the use of cloth masks.
It’s just not there. But the public opinion on it, and we see this pretty much everywhere, has come down to where people are almost evenly split about whether school boards should or shouldn’t mandate masks for kids K-12.
I think it’s maybe a little less than evenly split here in Tennessee. But there is a very significant plurality, shall we say, of parents who feel strongly that they want masks for their kids.
But the majority of people don’t want masks for the kids. I see you smiling. You’ve thought about this. What are your thoughts?
Ogles: A lot of this is when it comes to masks on children, especially young children. It’s driven by fear. It’s driven by the media, quite frankly. And this idea, if you look at the data, yes, there’s been children who succumb to COVID.
But then when you look at their medical history, these children are incredibly vulnerable for a number of reasons. For an illness, and the flu, or some other illness that could have done the same thing.
And I’m not comparing COVID to the flu. But that being said, is that the vast majority of children are going to get through COVID okay. Period. The data is there.
It’s overwhelming. And regardless of the state that you live in or the country that you live in. And so this idea that that’s going to somehow stop COVID when you look at areas of the state or schools that have heavy masking, and yet they’re having to close because of COVID.
So the mask did not prevent COVID. And even the vaccine, where we’re seeing that the protection that’s provided from the vaccine appears to be waning.
Leahy: Appears to be waning.
Ogles: How would you make that kind of statement? Or why would you make that kind of statement? Look at Israel, one of your most vaccinated countries in the world, and they’re in the middle of a spike.
This idea that breakthrough cases don’t happen is not true. And that’s part of the problem. There was a great article yesterday, and I’ll pull it up during the break from a doctor, and that’s what he was saying. And this doctor was pro-vaccine.
And so he wasn’t attacking the pharmaceutical company, he said, but the media and government haven’t been forthright with the American people. And just tell them the truth.
Tell them that hey, on some of this, we just don’t know, this is the best guess. And so because what happens is when this idea – the breakthrough cases are rare, but then an individual knows a half a dozen people who have COVID that have been vaccinated, you immediately distrust the person that told you that it’s rare because you know that it’s not.
Leahy: Let me just add, there are six states that require people to wear masks indoors everywhere. Two of them, Hawaii and Oregon, have seen huge spikes in COVID-19 recently. That would be what I would call evidence, Andy. (Laughter) Right? Wouldn’t it be evidence to you?
Ogles: Sure, right.
Leahy: Masks don’t work. We’ll be back with The Tennessee Star Report and Andy Ogles after this.
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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to the Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
