Do the mandatory face mask orders really protect us from #COVID19? Empirically, that's not the case in one Kentucky county

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Search and rescue volunteer, Nate Lair, drives a boat through downtown Beattyville after heavy rains led to the Kentucky River flooding the town and breaking records last set in 1957. March 1, 2021
Alton Strupp / Louisville Courier-Journal

Remember this picture? This is my nephew, Nate Lair, a volunteer fireman in Lee County, who was doing rescue work in Beattyville following the flooding earlier this month. Mr Lair is a trained Emergency Medical Technician as well as a fireman — and no, I don’t use the politically correct term “fire fighter” just because some women work as firemen — so he’s not exactly ignorant when it comes to medicine.

I was teasing him yesterday about killing everyone he rescued, because he wasn’t wearing a mask, something not only shown in the photo, but something I know he just does not do. He’s a fiercely independent sort.

Then he told me that, despite nobody wearing masks during the rescues, Lee County was one of two counties in the Bluegrass State that were in the “green” for COVID positive tests!

Well, he was off a bit, but not by much. The most recent statistics, as indicated by the map at the left from the state website (which you can click to enlarge) has Lee County in the yellow, “Community Spread,” between 1 to 10 average daily cases per 100,000 population, at 3.7.

But Lee County has a population of only 6,881 people! That means just 6.881% of 100,000 people. Doing the math, multiplying the 3.7 per 100,000 rate by 0.06881, I come up with 0.254597, or one confirmed COVID case over the last four days.

Which raises the obvious question: if masks are somehow saving us all from doom from COVID-19, but in less-than-healthy conditions during and after one of the hardest hit areas in the state by the flooding, in which people were more concerned with saving themselves, their jobs, and cleaning up their property, than they were with wearing face masks, why isn’t Lee County in the “red“? Why aren’t the people in and around Beattyville, the “poorest white town in America” from 2008 to 2012 according to CNN, dropping like flies due to the novel coronavirus?

Could it possibly, just possibly, be that these face masks really don’t do much of anything when it comes to the reduction of COVID-19?

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5 thoughts on “Do the mandatory face mask orders really protect us from #COVID19? Empirically, that's not the case in one Kentucky county”

  1. Uh… what about, oh I dunno… Sweden?

    How are they all not dead?

    Funny how you never hear about Sweden anymore, isn’t it? You’ll people say how Florida is hot, so that’s why they’re not all dead, but Sweden isn’t Florida and they’re also not all dead.

    Gee… I wonder what the real reason for all of this was?

    Good thing we’re all not “independent sorts” anymore.

    Land of the Sheep, and the home of the Obedient.

  2. How many people in a county with only 6800 people had COVID before? Perhaps the people are spread out enough that they are unlikely to come in contact with others outdoors in the first place.

  3. Pingback: In The Mailbox: 03.23.21 : The Other McCain

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