Cobb school board member’s e-mail discourages COVID vaccines

David Banks, Cobb school board member
David Banks taking the oath of office at the start of his fourth term in January. Photo: Cobb County School District

Cobb Board of Education member David Banks has sent an e-mail to constituents that strongly discourages them from getting the COVID-19 vaccine and accuses the government of “intentionally killing its citizens.”

Banks, who is in his fourth term representing Post 5 (Pope and Lassiter clusters), sent the e-email Sunday afternoon via his official school board e-mail address, that cited figures about adverse effects of the vaccine from a recent report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control.

The body of the message is as follows:

“It just gets worse and worse. The CDC has now published the Adverse effects of Covid Shots through September 24, 2021. (see item 8 of the attached.) The number of deaths resulting directly from Covid shots in the US alone are at a minimum of 122,592 based on the CDC September 24 report. Serious permanent injury from the shots has happened to more than 100,000 people. That is unacceptable. The government is intentionally killing its citizens. The Governments at all levels in America continue to take actions to force people to take the shots. There is no medical reason supporting those actions. Covid shots were proven NOT TO WORK almost two years ago in the governments own mandated trials performed by Pfizer, Moderna, and J&J. See item 2 of the attachment. My advice. Do not take the shots if you have not already done so. Contact your state and federal legislators and share the attachment with them.”

The attachment referred to, entitled “Things to Know About Covid19,” can be found by clicking here.

The source is from Macht Im Wissen Inc. of Georgia, and its CEO is Emery Leonard.

The phrase is German for “Knowledge is Power” and Leonard is an Atlanta resident and retired benefits professional.

At the bottom of the attachment, Leonard explained that he started an e-mail list to send “confirmed facts about current issues. My intention is to provide only true facts, show how they may interplay, or even affect you personally. Any factual information I may cite will not come from the media, as the media is not a reliable and trustworthy source.”

The attachment is broken down into several subjects, including the effectiveness of masks (“masks don’t work”), the COVID-19 vaccines, presidential COVID-19 advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci and alternative treatments. 

Leonard claims the the COVID-19 virus was created in a lab in China “and does not exist in nature,” and advocates for the use of substances such as Ivermectin and Hyrdoxycloroquine, which have been controversial subjects..

He also alleges that “there is no valid test for Covid19” and “there is NO valid test for any variation of the Covid virus.”

East Cobb News has left Banks a message seeking comment.

A constituent who forwarded his e-mail and attachment to East Cobb News said that she found it “very disturbing that this information is being circulated from an elected official and makes me despair over the decisions being made for the safety of my three children in Cobb County schools.”

Banks is the board’s current vice chairman and is part of a four-member Republican majority. Most of those members have not worn masks during in-person board meetings during the COVID-19 pandemic (along with Superintendent Chris Ragsdale).

Banks has said previously he doesn’t wear a mask because he thinks they don’t work.

Last August, he included an item in his “Grapevine” e-mail newsletter to constituents making reference to COVID-19 as the “China Virus,” upsetting some constituents.

He didn’t reply to an East Cobb News story for comment, and later responded that he got few negative replies to that e-mail and that “these people are racists and you carried their water.”

The Cobb County School District is one of the few in metro Atlanta with a masks-optional policy for the 2021-22 school year, after requiring masks last school year.

Before school board meetings in August and September, there have been pro-mask mandate rallies met by counter-demonstrators arguing that mask use should not be a parental and student choice.

On Friday, Cobb schools were sued by the parents of four medically fragile students who said the district’s COVID-19 policies, including masks-optional, make it impossible for their children to have an in-person education.

On Tuesday, the non-profit news organization Pro Publica published a lengthy piece interviewing parents of Cobb school district students concerned about high COVID-19 case numbers at the start of the school year.

They included East Cobb parents and a family with students at East Side Elementary School affected by the decision for fifth graders to learn remotely for more than two weeks.

The story was written by Nicole Carr, an Atlanta journalist who has pulled her own children from Cobb schools because of the masks-optional policy.

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14 thoughts on “Cobb school board member’s e-mail discourages COVID vaccines”

  1. Covid is statistically less life threatening to children under the age of 18 than pneumonia or the flu and we have never had these ridiculous mandates for either. If you are afraid of it and think the jab will protect them in some way, go for it. If you think masks protect them from aerosols in some way, go for it. If you want to continue pushing paranoia on others, piss off. The rest of us sane folks are not interested in the fear mongering hive-mind mentality and are ready to get on with living life and raising our children as rational human beings. Let’s go Brandon.

    • It’s not fear mongering. It’s not hive-mind mentality and you are definitely not sane. It’s called truth in science. You are the one who is spreading fear mongering. Many of the 700,000+ Covid deaths were infected by unvaccinated people and, people not wearing mask and, children who have been misinformed by idiot parents like you. People like you with your selfish misguided opinions are the reason we have lost so many people to this pandemic.

      • Let me drop some sciencey sanity on you Ned… there have been less than 600 children under the age of 18 in the US to die of Covid since the beginning of the pandemic (this is directly from the CDC website). That’s out of a population of roughly 74,000,000 children in the US. Statistically speaking, that’s about a 0.000008 chance of dying from Rona. I’ll let you dig up your own comps, but needless to say, there’s a lot more to be worried about. As for masks, unless you are wearing an n95 or a gas mask there is no solid data out there to support actual effectiveness, especially with kids. None. Go find it. The virus is aerosolized, which means the particles are small enough to pass right through most masks, which also means the little blue masks you see littering the street everywhere were garbage even before they were discarded. They are now and always were theater. The good news is unless you are over 60ish or have a pre-existing condition of some kind, and are living a healthy lifestyle you are really pretty unlikely to die of Covid anyway. Again – go look at the CDC website, look at death demographics by age. I’m not peddling fear, rather the opposite. The main thing people need right now is a healthy dose of reality and the “science” that you evoke so confidently doesn’t really support your hysteria and it certainly doesn’t support pushing it on others. It’s ok to be scared man. If you weren’t ever scared for your kids you’d be a pretty terrible parent. But there also comes a time to think for yourself, look at actual data, and be rational. As for people like me being ‘the reason we’ve lost so many’, again wrong. You can place that blame squarely on the same people that you are now looking to as your saviors from the mess they helped create. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice…oh you know the thing. Let’s go Brandon.

  2. Banks is a demented kook who has absolutely no business being in any kind of position of authority, much less with responsibility for education. No one should be surprised by this–since he’s been on the CCBOE he has actively worked against the interest of Cobb County’s children

  3. There are some concerns regarding the Covid vaccines, regardless of David Bank’s opinions. As of 9/24/21, there have been almost 16,000 deaths reported to the VAERS system. It is well known that data reported to VAERS is very under-reported, so the count is probably much higher. It is definitely something that needs to be discussed and addressed before they start forcing these vaccines on our children.

    Data released Friday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) showed that between Dec. 14, 2020 and Sept. 24, 2021, a total of 752,803 adverse events following COVID vaccines were reported to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS). The data included a total of 15,937 reports of deaths — an increase of 551 over the previous week.

    There were 105,758 reports of serious injuries, including deaths, during the same time period — up 6,348 compared with the previous week.

    • “Anon” at 3:20 PM on 10/5 posted a link to the CDC’s information concerning adverse events following vaccination. Read for yourself and decide if “Concerned” has accurately summarized what the data shows.

      [ SPOILER ALERT: no. ]

      • You can download the vaers info yourself. “Concerned”’s statistics are accurate. Even if the reporting statistics are not understated-the adverse effects and deaths are alarming!! Statistically, my child has a greater risk of death from the shot than from covid.

        Furthermore-there has never been a drug allowed to be approved with these numbers, or that wasn’t pulled from the market. If these drug manufacturers had any liability-they would have pulled the vaccines from the market months ago. But they don’t!

        First-do no harm!
        Informed consent.

        • You have no idea unfortunately what you are interpreting. VAERS is a self reporting website. Anyone can say anything on there. It is filled with false reports from anti vaxxers. Just bc it’s on VAERS doesn’t make it true. Also, just bc someone died after getting the vaccine doesn’t mean the vaccine caused it. If you get the vaccine and then die in a car accident, it is reported on VAERS. Does that make the vaccine the cause?? Nope. Correlation does not equal causation. One could have a heart attack a few weeks after the vaccine. Does that mean the vaccine caused it? You have no idea if this person is obese, a smoker, has high blood pressure or cholesterol or a family history of heart disease and would have had a heart attack regardless. If you understood the data, you would know that statistically speaking, you are at FAR more risk from Covid than from the vaccine. In general, both are low risk but the vaccine is even lower risk than the virus. Doctors and scientists understand this but all the people doing their own research don’t and you are bound to misinterpret data and facts. But by all means, ignore physicians and scientists. Discrediting experts seems to be the trend these days. If you prefer to take medical advice from politicians, knock yourself out

    • Not sure I understand what you’re saying in your first sentence. David Banks opined: “Cobb Board of Education member David Banks has sent an e-mail to constituents that strongly discourages them from getting the COVID-19 vaccine and accuses the government of “intentionally killing its citizens.””, the gist of which you seem to agree with in the rest of your post.

      There is an article that I read an hour or so ago that shows a graph of cases and vaccinated in England; the curve for deaths was going down until the curve for vaccinated went sharply up. That tends to support David Banks’s position.

  4. It’s too bad that David Banks had to inject his personal opinions into this, as he comes across at best as an anti-vaxxer way out of his swim lane, and at worst as a flat out nutter.

    We do need an open and level headed discussion around the risk/reward for these vaccines for kids, which is a very different discussion and not as simple as vax/ anti-vax.

    The reports of myocarditis in young males are particularly troubling, as well as unknown long term side effects. I would think that sooner or later this issue is going to be in front of the school board in terms of whether the district should require students to get their shots, and with this current board I can only imagine what a horror show that will look like. Just another huge stressor for parents. Glad my kids are out of there by 2022.

  5. Just to save everyone time: The PDF he attached lists no direct sources, and instead says that “Original and reliable sources may consist of”. It then proceeds to list “Independently Verified Wikipedia postings”, “Official Autobiographies”, and “Subject matter textbooks, scientific findings”. If you want to read the actual first-hand data that the CDC publishes, that can be found here: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/safety/adverse-events.html

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