Dan Forest, current Leutenant Governor and Republican candidate for Governor of North Carolina, made news a few weeks ago for coming out strongly against current Governor Roy Cooper's statewide mask mandate. When given time in tonight's first debate between the two gubernatorial candidates to clarify and expand on his view, Forest used his time to attack the science of wearing masks.
https://youtu.be/XhQeoebKTvQ?t=5062Masks aren't the solution to everything and, in fact, Doctor Fauci said masks don't work, the Surgeon General of the United States said masks don't work, the CDC said masks don't work. There are scientists and doctors all over the world right now that have come together under the Great Barrington Declaration, 35,000 of them today, from leading universities and leading hospitals all over the world, noble prize winners, who are coming out and saying the lockdown mandates and the masks, are actually doing more harm than good.
CDC, just this week, released their study about mask wearing and positive Covid cases. 85% of the positive cases in America are from people who say they wore the mask everyday, all the time or at least almost all the time, 85% of the positive cases.
Forest also took time when talking to the issue of education to say that Covid was 17 times less deadly than the flu when it came to children and as a reason to return to full in-person classes.
After watching gubernatorial and senatorial debates from around the country, including in deep red states like Utah and Nebraska, I have to say I was shocked by Forest's answer here. I have not heard such a misleading and anti-mask response from any other Republican candidate I have watched debate, especially none in such a clearly purple state as North Carolina.
