The mayor of West Lafayette says if you’re unvaccinated, you’re an a–hole, and he’s said it twice, in public meetings. Mayor John Dennis said it first in a city council meeting Monday, and reaffirmed it in a county health department briefing Wednesday.

“I have a note here that says we will not be closing down the city to protect the a–hole unvaccinated,” said the mayor, addressing the council. “I don’t know who put that it my notes. Probably me. Must have been a temperamental moment.”

Dennis was giving the council a general update about the city’s vaccination rate and COVID rate, saying that the hospitals were consistently over 90 percent full and fewer than half of the city’s residents had taken the shot.

“It’s the unvaccinated people that are letting us down,” he said. “They generally don’t want to wear a mask. They generally, obviously, don’t want to get vaccinated and generally speaking they’re in a position to do much more harm than good.”

Dennis said he was doing everything in his power to avoid any kind of shutdown that might hurt small businesses and the economy.

At the Wednesday health department briefing, he doubled down on his statement.

“There’s still people that think that this is some sort of governmental power trip to try and control the population base and oddly enough they still think that this is something that is fabricated and doesn’t have any impact on their life at all, and they could not be more wrong,” he said.

He continued, “I lost my temper at a council meeting here recently and I referenced them as unvaccinated a–holes, and unfortunately that sometimes is accurate. It’s true.”