Group holds rally in Idaho Falls to protest new mask or vaccine mandates

IDAHO FALLS – Nearly three dozen protestors gathered at the Broadway Bridge in Idaho Falls on Friday night to rally against any new mask or vaccine mandates in the state of Idaho.

Notable among the crowd were first term Idaho House Republican Karey Hanks, several families who choose to homeschool their children, a man representing the Idaho Proud Boys, and one of the organizers of the event, Halli Stone.

“The goal is to raise awareness among the public, and especially to get the attention of elected officials and let them know that we will not put up with vaccine mandates and more mask mandates,” Stone said. “The time for mask mandates is past. The science does not support the wearing of masks.”

According to the Center for Disease Control, however, science does support the fact that wearing masks increases public safety. In May of 2021, the CDC released yet another finding that masks in schools lessen the chance of the infection and spread of COVID-19. That study confirmed that children and teachers who wore masks between November and December of 2020 were 37% less likely to contract the virus.

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Regardless of the CDC’s findings, or the numerous studies completed by Duke University, the World Health Organization, and other internationally renowned scientific institutions and universities, Stone maintains that masks should “remain a personal choice.”

Stone, who is the secretary of the organization A5, which stands for American Association for Advancing Awareness and Action, explained that the A5 sponsored the protest, and that the issue, more than anything, is freedom.

“You don’t feel safe,” Stone said, “take care of you and leave the rest of us alone.”

Additionally, Stone commented that when the new school year begins, the administration and school boards should not require children to wear masks.

“For the most part, children are not being affected by this,” Stone said, “and it is very survivable.”

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Unfortunately, although it is true the original COVID-19 seemed to impact children less than adults, the new and hyper contagious Delta variant does not spare the young. In fact, the American Academy of Pediatrics, a non-partisan association founded in 1930 and currently supported by 67,000 physicians who specialize in pediatrics, confirmed that the number of youth infected by COVID-19 increased by nearly seven times from June to August of 2021.

Still, according to some at the protest, the freedom to choose not to wear a mask or get a vaccine should not be sacrificed regardless of the rationale.

A man at the protest who self-identified as “Patrick Henry” and wore a second amendment hat commented on the issues.

“They can recommend all they want, but if it becomes a mandate I’ll still disobey it,” Henry said. “I’m a libertarian, so I’m totally against basically government.”

When asked how he would respond to the families of COVID-19 victims who advocated for masks or vaccines, he stated, “What about it? People die all the time.” Henry continued, “I don’t have any responsibility. It’s my personal responsibility to take care of myself and my family. I’m not responsible for you.”

Not everyone at the rally took the same tone as Henry, however.

“I’m not against masks, it’s just that we think people should have freedom of choice,” said Jacob, another Idaho Falls resident and rally attendant. “We don’t think that the corporations should be with the government in supporting masks.”

Although Jacob acknowledged that schools and corporations may have different roles in relation to the government, he pushed back on the idea that expert opinions should be respected. “I think there’s a big fallacy in America of follow the experts,” Jacob said. “Who determines who verifies the experts? Who are the fact checkers? Relying on experts for knowledge without verifying that knowledge is a logical fallacy.”

When asked how to verify something beyond one’s own expertise, Jacob said, “You have to get that information yourself. Each individual makes his own choice of what he thinks the truth is, and that’s what freedom is.”

Nearby, Matt Dalton, another protestor, agreed. He said he gets his information not from the CDC, but from Facebook. “I think there’s other ways to their science than just to say everyone has to get a shot,” he stated.

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The protestors came to rally against both masks and vaccines, but several focused more on the issue of mandatory vaccination.

“My concern is that Americans have the right to choose whether or not to have the vaccine,” said protestor Lindsey Maughan. “It makes it so that people are being forced to choose between the professions that they love and the way they choose to contribute to society and getting an experimental vaccine. The normal we’re creating is a normal in which the federal government gets to decide what people do with their bodies.”

The principle of choice was voiced by several protestors. At least two people held signs that read, “my body, my choice,” a mantra commonly associated with the right of women to choose whether or not to have children.
“It’s very hypocritical for people to say yeah, it’s my body my choice, I can have an abortion, but then they’re going to tell me whether I have to have a vaccine or not,” said Stone. “That is the biggest hypocritical position I think I have ever seen.”

Stone went on to say that she herself is pro-life. “I am not pro-choice except when it comes to vaccines,” she said.

Many of the protestors cited the mental health of teenagers and children as reasons they were concerned about masks or vaccines. Several Bonneville High School students who stopped to watch the rally, however, held a different perspective.

“Good for them to exercise their right to protest, but I think it kind of defeats the purpose,” said one 17-year-old Bonneville High School student. “I work in a fast food restaurant, and we had to go back to masks. We had about two months where we were mask free, but because of the rising in Covid cases we had to go back to wearing masks, and I feel like gatherings like this are really not ideal for helping people who are in those situations where they don’t want to wear masks. It’s not really helping them at all.”

Another high school student agreed, saying that she chooses to trust the scientists tasked with keeping Americans safe.

“They’ve spent millions of dollars on this, and these people probably got all their information off of Facebook from people who don’t really know what they’re talking about. I believe in science, and I think that the government probably isn’t right all the time, but the CDC I 100% believe in,” the second student stated. “What are they trying to do to me? Keep me safe. So why not follow that?”

The third student, who graduated from Bonneville High School in the class of 2021, commented as well.

“Something that I’ve noticed within my own family is that they aren’t directing it toward the children,” the recent grad said. “They’re just putting their beliefs and what they want and not necessarily taking into account what’s going to be best for the kids.”

The A5 sponsored protest continued until 6:30 pm, at which time the participants walked across the bridge to attend a presentation by Eric Moutsos.

Moutsos, a former Salt Lake City police officer, lost his job in 2014 when he refused to complete an assignment at the Salt Lake Pride parade, according to an interview he gave in Deseret News. Currently, he runs the organization Utah Business Revival and last made headlines when he burned an effigy of a giant vaccine syringe in Moroni, who is a figure affiliated with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.