The movement against vaccinations, mask mandates and other pandemic measures is on its way to the ballot box in 2022.

A rally in Downtown’s Civic Center Plaza Wednesday night, Sept. 29, drew a crowd of around 70 people to hear two hours of speakers discuss numerous debunked conspiracy theories about doctors being paid by the COVID cases they diagnose, the benefits of hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin, and the perils of socialism in health mandates.

State Dept. of Health simplifies booster eligibility

Among the speakers were a Nashville challenger to Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee in the August 2022 Republican primary, a Collierville contender for Congress and a perennial challenger to Memphis Congressman Steve Cohen.

The “Freedom Rally” was organized by some involved in a street corner “Stop the Steal” protest in East Memphis on Jan. 6, the same day, and with many of the same slogans, as used in the Capitol insurrection in Washington, D.C.

Congressional contender Charlotte Bergmann, who has been the Republican challenger to Cohen five times, said health care workers who refuse to get vaccinated are being threatened and pressured.

Asking for a show of hands of health care professionals at the rally, less than a dozen raised their hands in response to Bergmann.

Bipartisan division, frustration simmer beneath county’s blue surface

“They will replace you with students and many more people will die,” she said. “Say no to the jab. Say no to socialism. Say no to the new Jim Crow or segregation. Say no to voter fraud.”

Samantha Brandenburg, a registered nurse at Methodist Healthcare Germantown, according to her LinkedIn profile, argued that deaths caused by COVID have been exaggerated because of comorbidities or contributing factors like high blood pressure or heart conditions.

Infectious disease experts have repeatedly countered that, citing evidence that COVID is the cause of death because without the virus those other conditions would not have been fatal on their own.

Health care workers among those reluctant to get vaccinated

Brandenburg also repeated disproven theories that doctors are motivated to diagnose COVID infection and treat it accordingly because of Medicare bonuses that she said makes physicians “increasingly motivated” to diagnose COVID infection.

She also said mask mandates violate “medical autonomy” and have “started to shape our children negatively.”

Brandenburg likened wearing masks to wearing “a petri dish on your face.”

And she said those who have been vaccinated are “more dangerous because of the fact that they remain asymptomatic.”

“They don’t even know that they are sick. … They spread the virus,” she said. “Us unvaccinated people – we know when we are sick. Our body tells us. Theirs does not.”

Health Dept. director ‘cautiously optimistic’ about COVID trends

Asymptomatic conditions are not limited to those who have been vaccinated. Both unvaccinated and vaccinated individuals who have tested positive for COVID have reported having no symptoms before testing positive.

The rally was the first Memphis appearance for Nashville business owner Curtis Carney, who is challenging Lee in the August GOP primary and criticized Lee for the few mandates he has imposed statewide.

“Unlike Bill Lee, I’m not a puppet and I’m not a politician,” Carney said to cheers. “This is about getting people to stand up in the communities and run for office and let’s get these RINOs (Republicans In Name Only) out of here. Who wants to go on a safari hunt?”

Gov. Bill Lee faces six possible challengers in 2022

Carney, who lives in Cottontown, Tennessee, owns a party bus company and was among early business owners in the capital city who protested Nashville’s restrictions and business closings when the pandemic was at its height.

Carney made an appeal Wednesday for those in the crowd to call him if they know anyone who is “trapped in a hospital” and being treated with remdesivir, an antiviral medicine that was among the drugs used to treat President Donald Trump when he had COVID.

“We’ll go get them out of the hospital, I promise,” he said.

“We know the COVID numbers are going up. But did anybody notice anybody laying in the street?” Carney asked. “Whose pandemic is this? Bill Lee had an opportunity to stand up and fight for us and he didn’t. He chose to do what was safe.”

Lee has been criticized by others for not implementing a statewide mask mandate and for allowing parents to opt their children out of mask mandates imposed by public school systems.

The opt-out provision in his executive order No. 84 is being challenged by several school systems including Shelby County Schools, with the state currently appealing a series of federal district court decisions in favor of the schools with mask mandates.

Suburban parents continue to protest mask mandate

Bob Hendry, who has been part of a group of Collierville parents and residents protesting mask mandates in Collierville Schools, said he is running for Congress but didn’t specify which district or party, or if he will be running as an independent.

Hendry lives in Collierville, which would put him in the 8th Congressional District currently represented by Republican David Kustoff of Germantown.

Hendry attended the Jan. 6 rally in Washington, D.C. before a large group of people at that event stormed the Capitol, temporarily disrupting the certification of Electoral College votes. Hendry has said he did not enter the Capitol and remained at the rally site instead.

Local pro-Trump group protests peacefully in East Memphis

At Wednesday’s Downtown rally, he referred to “money-driven mandates” and “biological compounds” in the vaccines that he claimed are “largely ineffective.”

Medical experts say while there have been “breakthrough” cases of COVID infections for those who are fully vaccinated, those have resulted in milder outcomes from the virus compared to more severe cases suffered by those who have not been vaccinated.

Most COVID fatalities have been among the unvaccinated.

Hendry called elected leaders in favor of mandates “cowards” who have imposed mandates that prohibit doctors from “respecting human autonomy.”

He called resistance to the mandates “a spiritual battle.”

“We already know what they do not know,” Hendry said. “They cannot win.”