A teenage city council member in Alabama who had voted to end a mask mandate is encouraging residents to get vaccinated after he contracted Covid-19.
“I am going to get the vaccine after I’m cleared of the virus,” Hunter Pepper, 19, said Friday. “Let’s stop the spread. Let’s do what we can to do our part. I encourage people to get vaccinated. This is a virus that is tearing down everybody.”
The Decatur city councilman said he received two positive Covid-19 tests Wednesday and has dealt with uncomfortable symptoms, including labored breathing, fever, headaches, vomiting and a raspy cough. He said his condition was improving and he was quarantining at home.
“The way it hit me, it felt like a train. … It’s a terrible feeling,” he said.
The Decatur council voted in April to lift the city's mask mandate with only one member voting to keep it, WAAY in Huntsville reported. WAFF, the NBC affiliate in Huntsville, reported Pepper called the mask mandate “overreach.”
When asked Friday about the vote, he said he has never been against masks or vaccinations.
“I am against putting on a fat label that says, 'You’re required to ....,'" he said. "Our country was built on freedom.”
Pepper was 18 earlier this year when he began the four-year term. He said he has received hundreds of death threats since he went public with the news.
He said he hopes his message will encourage inoculations.
The highly contagious delta variant of Covid-19 has increased infection rates throughout the country and has hit Alabama particularly hard. The state has hovered at or near the bottom of the country in vaccination rates.
The Alabama Department of Public Health on Friday listed community transmission as high for the entire state, which has seen 13,048 Covid-19 deaths since 2020, including 5,867 in 2021.