Idaho’s Southwest District health board only recommends masks, draws boos from all sides
After canceling two meetings over safety concerns because of protesters, the Southwest District Board of Health met Thursday at a courthouse and issued recommendations, but did not mandate that facial coverings be worn.
The board was met with criticism from an audience that booed them after their vote and tried to interrupt the meeting. And people who wanted stronger action taken were not happy as well.
Canyon County alone had 3,473 confirmed cases of coronavirus as of Wednesday evening, according to Southwest District Health. There are 4,126 cases throughout the entire district’s six-county region.
While the board of health did vote on agenda items related to preventing the spread of the virus, none of the items are mandatory and there is no way for them to enforced. The items are largely the same recommendations that the state and medical professionals have been encouraging for the past four months.
Only one commissioner, Viki Purdy of Adams County, voted against the motion to recommend that residents wear masks when social distancing of at least 6 feet with a nonhousehold member is not an option and the risk level is at a “yellow” or higher. “Yellow” means low risk of exposure.
The motion also included recommending limiting the density of people at events to a minimum of 1 person per 64 square feet when the risk level is at a “yellow” or higher. Board members also voted to recommend temporarily suspending visitation to senior living centers and correctional facilities when new cases of COVID-19 are detected within the facility or if the health district says the risk level is at “red.”
The decision was made only two hours after Idaho Gov. Brad Little announced that the state must stay in Stage 4 of the reopening plan because of the increasing caseload and other factors. Little again urged people to wear a mask to save lives, but he has refused to mandate the wearing of masks statewide.
The board met at the Canyon County courthouse in Caldwell rather than the Southwest District Health office. The courthouse is attached to the Canyon County Sheriff’s Office and any attendee of the meeting was required to go through a metal detector. Weapons are not allowed in the courthouse, with the exception of weapons carried by law enforcement officers.
The Thursday meeting had more than 450 people watching online and about 80 people attended in person. Those in attendance repeatedly booed the commissioners who talked about wearing masks. They booed when Canyon County Commissioner Tom Dale talked about the importance of contact tracing and hot spots. At one point the chairman threatened to have a man removed from the meeting for disrupting it.
The move to the courthouse came after the board’s scheduled and canceled meeting on July 16, when protesters demanded to be allowed in the building, despite the board holding a virtual meeting for the public.
Ammon Bundy, of Emmett, was seen on a Facebook livestream arguing with an employee standing in a doorway to the health district building. The video later shows Bundy shoving the man to try to gain entry after SWDH board member Brian Elliot is allowed to walk inside.
On Wednesday, Caldwell PD Lt. Joey Hoadley said police did respond July 16, but “the victim who reported to have been shoved and had his shirt torn during the altercation did not want to pursue criminal charges at that time. A report was generated but there are currently no criminal charges pending in this case.”
The Southwest District Health area includes Adams, Canyon, Gem, Owyhee, Payette and Washington counties. The Board of Health is made up of a county commissioner from each county and an advising physician. None of the commissioners are required to have medical training or any real knowledge of epidemiology.
As coronavirus continues to rip through Canyon County and the surrounding area, at least one board member, Purdy, has openly expressed doubt about the virus. Purdy said she was concerned about how long-term care facilities had been wearing masks for months and that’s where many deaths have happened.
“If we put any more recommendations on these long-term health facilities that the mental health consequences would be far worse than anything else that could happen,” she said. “Those are my concerns. That we’re making things worse instead of better.”
Elliot reminded Purdy that this was not a mandate and many of the private facilities have put their own requirements in place.
Dale said he believes people should have options, but the virus needs to be acknowledged. He made the motion to put the recommendations in place.
“We encourage people, I encourage people to take this seriously and know where you’re going to go, if it’s a hot spot, to protect yourself and protect others as well,” Dale said about masks.
Medical providers respond
Dr. Laura McGeorge, St. Luke’s Health System medical director, said Thursday that the board’s decision on recommendations was “just incredibly disappointing.”
According to a statement sent to SWDH by St. Luke’s, the health system on Monday experienced an all-time high of 100 COVID-19 hospitalizations. On Tuesday morning, the intensive care units in Nampa and Meridian were both full, except for one ICU bed in Meridian that is kept open for patients who need resuscitation.
On Thursday afternoon, McGeorge said the Nampa ICU had only one bed open. This is an ongoing challenge the hospitals will face as the caseload keeps growing.
“We are seeing huge volume increases in both Nampa and Meridian,” McGeorge said Thursday. “Last week I had a really, really hard week because we lost one of our area providers (Samantha Hickey) to COVID in Canyon County. And I think all of us are going through a tough time with this.
“When we don’t have the community cooperating, or parts of the community cooperating, and trying to beat down this pandemic, it’s really heartbreaking,” she said.
McGeorge said health care providers need the community’s help to stop the spread of the virus, and simply wearing a mask can help prevent transmission.
She noted that Canyon County has 50 percent more cases per 100,000 people than Florida has, and triple the rate of the county that’s home to Houston, Texas.
“I anticipate it to continue to be a problem,” McGeorge said about the lack of a mask mandate. “It’s sad that it’s so political.”
McGeorge stressed that coronavirus does not just affect the elderly, and the 45-year-old nurse practitioner who died was just one example of that.
“It is a strange disease,” she said. “It is not like every year we see influenza, we see some deaths from influenza. But we are seeing clotting abnormalities that we’ve never seen before, we’re seeing strokes and heart attacks, pulmonary embolisms. And then the usual things that you expect to see with very, very severe respiratory viruses.”
Community member concerns
At the start of the meeting, Southwest District Director Nikki Zogg provided the board with a summary of the comments the district had received from the public. Prior to the meeting, residents were able to submit comments online.
Zogg said the district had received about 1,300 public comments and of them, 58% of people were not supportive of wearing masks. Those against the masks said they had concerns about their effectiveness, concerns about mask safety and worries about the constitutionality of mandating them, Zogg said.
Those in favor of masks made comments about hospital capacity, workplace safety, the opening of schools, evidence-based mitigation strategies and health care worker illness, Zogg said.
Hospital executives have repeatedly warned the board that they have real concerns about hospital capacity, available bed space and health care workers becoming ill. Already once this month, St. Luke’s Hospital in Nampa reported that its intensive care unit was full.
Some of the Board of Health’s members’ opinions are starkly different than other leaders in the area. The Caldwell School District, for example, announced this week that school opening would be delayed because of safety concerns, and when they did open, masks would be mandatory.
The Canyon County Board of Commissioners issued a statement on Thursday in support of the Board of Health’s decision, urging people to take the virus seriously.
“We support SWDH’s decision to not create an unenforceable, general public mandate that might compromise law enforcement relations with the public,” the statement said. “Our economy, our schools, our way of life depend on limiting the transmission of the virus, and we are individually committed to doing our part. Working together, we will get through this.”
This story was originally published July 23, 2020 at 12:24 PM with the headline "Idaho’s Southwest District health board only recommends masks, draws boos from all sides."
