that s abundabundance. we need to be a little more aggressive in this space and call out the misinformation that is being proffered by certain groups. it s something we do hear every day. the first state to take a bold step. specifically on misinformation. i apologize if that question wasn t clear. i ve got a team of people battling in the trenches to address the issue of misinformation and hesitancy. we partnered with 480 community
the masks have left in may. you re double the numbers than you were last year. your questioning me in regard to that? the question is when the first mask mandate was enacted, there were 134 cases and now 266. if 134 cases was enough to enact the mask mandate, twice as many is not enough? again, i think the issue relates to not whether the mask help against the transmission of covid. that is the issue. well, that s not my issue. i m not saying that masks don t work. what i m saying is that if you look at the data, the statistical data of the three count counties adjoining st. louis
on sunday, missouri reported the third highest number of covid cases just behind california and alabama. joining us now in jim bolan. he wants to stop the mask mandate in his city. mr. mayor, thank you very much for being with us. i want to give people status report of where your county is. hospitalizations are up. the number of people in icus are up. the number of people on ventilators are up. why not make people wear masks indoors for a little while until you get the numbers down? well, that s a great question. i have several reasons. first of all, i have faith, wildwood is one of the largest in st. louis county of 35,517 residents. i have faith in our residents to do what is right as to others and for themselves. secondly, my concern is that if the standard is now going to be
of america. that s not something that happens. this is the this is on a scale of 1 to 100, 100 being the most bizarre, this is absolutely pinning the school. neil: so i m sorry. i wasn t clear. certainly a lot on your mind. i understand. but any of the neighboring buildings, have they been evacuated just in case? can you update us? yes. one on either side have been evacuated. primarily because because we re not sure that the rest of the building is going to continue to stand. we don t know why the back of the building fell down and we don t have 100% assurance that the front of the building won t fall down at any point. so we re taking steps to make sure everybody is back, there s no people in the surrounding buildings and everybody is safe. martha: all right. wish you well, all of the folks in the area well.
not your place, you were there to enact what was being recommended? no, we absolutely debated and challenged that advice but when you are faced with a decision of this enormity then ultimately, of course, as health secretary, my primary goal on protecting lives, finding a way out of this and protecting the nhs, i made that argument, but ultimately, you know, we didn t know how long people would put up with that and now, it seems obvious that people would put up with lockdown, it was not at all obvious, we needed the protections in place especially for vulnerable people in the shielding programme, we take for granted that has been a huge success, but that wasn t clear at the time because lots of people rely on social contact literally, to live. and we needed to ensure we could for instance support businesses to get through this. these are huge decisions, to take those decisions against the