The GOP's War on Public Health Officials

[Nevilledog]

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Paul Glastris
@glastris
Great reporting by Brian Alexander. "Ohio, like some other Republican-controlled states, is dismantling by attrition infrastructure that was once a keystone to its social and economic life: a system of public health."/1 https://washingtonmonthly.com/2021/09/07/the-gops-war-on-public-health-officials/… @monthly
Ohio Protest
The GOP’s War on Public Health Officials
In rural Ohio, local health commissioners face not only a raging pandemic, but also threats and intimidation from conservatives and an exodus of staff.
washingtonmonthly.com
5:58 AM · Sep 8, 2021

Jim Watkins believes that his county is about to be hammered by the COVID-19 Delta variant—and that there’s not much he can do about it. “In four weeks, we’ll be Florida,” the Williams County health commissioner told me. (Last week, Ohio was posting about 6,000 new COVID-19 cases per day, surpassing last winter’s peak.) He can’t sleep. Unexplained pains have wracked his fingers and hands—the result of stress, he thinks.

Meanwhile, the top health official of another Ohio county has taken to sipping bourbon during the day to cope with the stress. Tuscarawas County Health Commissioner Katie Seward wrote an appeal to her county’s residents after she received threats for quarantining exposed students and advocating masks and vaccines. Angry residents posted photos of her infant daughter to social media. She wondered whether her career was endangering her loved ones. Geauga County’s health commissioner was fired a few days ago after suggesting (sarcastically, he said) that insurers should not pay for COVID-19 treatment for vaccine refusers. Across the United States, public health workers are in bad shape. Over 61 percent say they have received job-related threats, and more than half report at least one mental health symptom.

Ohio, like some other Republican-controlled states, is dismantling by attrition infrastructure that was once a keystone to its social and economic life: a system of public health. A new law, SB 22, passed over the veto of Republican Governor Mike DeWine, handcuffs the governor and local health departments from fighting health emergencies by giving the legislature (now controlled by a GOP supermajority, the result of gerrymandering) the power to rescind emergency health orders.

The new law and hateful rhetoric from Republican state legislators who backed it has inspired attacks—including gunshots—intimidation, and threats against health officials like Watkins. As a consequence, staff members in public health departments are leaving.

*snip*

[TheRealNorth]

1. Public Health has been starved of funding since the Great Recession...

Particularly Public Health Nursing. This is part of the reason Public Health case managers were so quickly overwhelmed with Covid.

https://www.naccho.org/uploads/downloadable-resources/Programs/Public-Health-Infrastructure/NACCHO_2019_Profile_final.pdf

[crickets]

2. K&R for visibility.