Orange Beach Mayor Kennon: ‘If I die, I die from COVID — I won’t die with a mask on and I won’t die hiding from it’

As the tourist season revs up for 2021, Orange Beach Mayor Tony Kennon hopes for an improvement over a season hurt by the COVID-19 pandemic a year earlier.

However, his approach to government mandates has turned defiant as the pandemic has seemingly become more politicized.

During an appearance on Mobile radio FM Talk 106.5’s “The Jeff Poor Show,” Kennon discussed how his community handled the worst aspect of the pandemic and vowed not to hide from the virus despite the possible fatal consequences of contracting it.

“It’s sort of like nailing Jell-o to the wall, you know?” he said. “And let me preface what I’m fixing to say — some of the greatest lies in the history of man started with a degree of truth or have some degree of truth with them. And COVID is, the truth is, it is a bad virus, it’s real, and it is deadly to a certain segment of our population. But in my humble opinion, it has been politicized. It has been weaponized. Nothing is real anymore. You can’t trust any of the numbers you see, in my opinion. But when I look at it locally, and I’m in touch with our hospital and have been for the last year — we’ve had some times when we’ve had some pretty high admission rates. But our admission rate for COVID has never been any different than our admission rate for a heavy flu season. We’ve never been close to not having ventilators or ICU capacity.  It just hasn’t happened. We’ve had hundreds of thousands of people here, and the worst-case scenario, that silly word ‘superspreader’ never happened.”

“That’s not to take away from all the people that have suffered,” Kennon continued. “One of my best friends in the world is the healthy guy, and it hit him and took his life. He was just that person. We just don’t know who those people are. But I’ve always said we can’t shut the world down. If I die, I die from COVID — I won’t die with a mask on, and I won’t die hiding from it. I will die continuing to push for the freedoms in this country and my freedom as an American to make a decision about what’s best for me. And that is sort of the way we approach it down here.”

@Jeff_Poor is a graduate of Auburn University and the University of South Alabama, the editor of Breitbart TV, a columnist for Mobile’s Lagniappe Weekly, and host of Mobile’s “The Jeff Poor Show” from 9 a.m.-12 p.m. on FM Talk 106.5.