Idaho public health board invites anti-mask conspiracy theorists to talk COVID-19
Idaho’s Southwest District Health board invited speakers to brief them Tuesday morning on the COVID-19 situation — including a naturopath and a local doctor who shared false and unverified information about masks, vaccines and COVID-19 treatments.
Following their remarks, doctors from around the Treasure Valley urged the board and the public to heed warnings about the coronavirus.
Idaho is “a victim of a very sophisticated psy-ops, psychological warfare,” said Dr. Vicki Wooll, who shared conspiracy theories during her presentation. “It’s getting us through social media. We are not the enemy. The enemy is coming from without.”
Wooll and a Meridian naturopath, Michael Karlfeldt, spoke to the board Tuesday morning for nearly an hour. They claimed that masks do not halt the spread of coronavirus and actually can harm the wearer — which is untrue — and questioned whether hospitals are being honest about Idaho’s COVID-19 surge, misunderstanding what “beds” are in terms of hospital capacity.
A spokesperson for the health district said that board members invited the speakers but did not say which board members specifically invited each one.
Wooll owns Eagle Creek Family Medicine. The practice’s website includes a coronavirus page that links to “health freedom” and anti-vaccination groups and videos. Wooll also spoke at an anti-mask rally before a Twin Falls City Council meeting that considered a mask mandate. The council later indefinitely tabled the measure without a vote.
Among other things, Wooll claimed that 5G wireless internet may be tied to COVID-19 — a false theory that was spread on social media.
Wooll also referenced a three-drug cocktail that was falsely claimed by a physician as being approved by the Food and Drug Administration. That physician, Vladimir Zelenko, later told the New York Times that he was “a clinician, not a researcher. ... I don’t understand fully the language of clinical research.”
Karlfeldt, who is not licensed by the Idaho Naturopathic Medical Board, repeated disproven claims about masks. Among other things, he said there is no benefit to wearing masks in public and that masks are harmful, “increasing the concentration” of coronavirus particles.
One problem, he said, is that people who handle their masks get their hands contaminated. That can be true, which is why public health campaigns have stressed the need for people to wash or sanitize their hands before and after touching their mask, and to launder reusable cloth masks and discard single-use masks.
Karlfeldt has made a variety of other claims unproven by science, such as:
- that using “precise wavelengths of light needed to destroy bacteria and boost the immune system” can treat serious illnesses.
- that chronic Lyme disease is a disorder worsened by cellphones and wireless devices such as baby monitors.
- that his clinic’s “ozone sauna” can help to “inactivate viruses, bacteria, yeast, fungi, parasites and protozoa” in a person’s body. “Ozone bags can be filled and given via the intestines for colon or liver issues, inserted in the bladder while dealing with a UTI, or bagged around a wound to kill infection and promote healing,” the Karlfeldt Center’s website says.
Two local St. Luke’s Health System physicians followed Wooll and Karlfeldt. They shared information about the virus that has been given to the public for several months. They explained to the board how vaccine trials work and what they’re seeing in the hospital.
“I hear the passion in the voices of everybody speaking today,” said Dr. Sky Blue, a St. Luke’s infectious disease specialist. “And I’m here, I hope, for the same reason they are, because I care about my family, our neighbors and our state.”
But Idaho is at a tipping point in the pandemic, he said.
Communities that have mask mandates have an increase in use of masks, and that reduces infection rates, he said.
“Experimental and epidemiological data support community masking to reduce the spread of SARS-CoV-2,” according to a scientific brief from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention earlier this month. “The prevention benefit of masking is derived from the combination of source control and personal protection for the mask wearer.”
Dr. Michaela Schulte, a hospital physician who also specializes in infectious disease, told the board what she sees when she goes to work.
“We’re getting very close to a breaking point ... where we will no longer be able to provide the level of care we’re used to, for really anyone presenting to the hospital, regardless of the diagnosis,” she said.
She explained that the widespread COVID-19 surge is hitting everywhere along the health care delivery system, causing bottlenecks.
Patients who test positive but don’t need to be admitted, and patients who are ready to be discharged, are waiting in the hospital because other facilities such as long-term care or psychiatric centers cannot take them.
She added that the novel virus is showing worrisome after-effects. Patients who had mild cases of COVID-19 are developing life-threatening blood clots, she said, echoing the concerns of health care providers around the world.
“For those who grapple with whether or not they can trust the information we provide,” she said, “I’m asking you to recognize us as the professionals that we are, to listen to our experiences and perspectives, and to treat us with the same respect we (show) to those who seek our care.”
As the public health board’s meeting went on, local health care organizations held one of their regularly scheduled media availabilities.
They once again warned the public that COVID-19 is at a crisis point and is overwhelming hospitals.
But first, one local health care leader started the meeting by scolding Southwest District Health’s board for inviting Wooll and Karlfeldt.
“We’re sharing our time and our energy to get the word out. We’ve even been sharing videos of our staff, of sick and dying patients,” said Dr. James Souza of St. Luke’s Health System. “And when we have so many people sickened in our community right now, and we have people dying from this pandemic inside our buildings, right now, the notion that a public health district would give a platform to two known conspiracy theorists to share their non-patriotic narrative is unbelievable.”
He said, “I’d like to know when we’re going to stop giving oxygen to those who are trying to say this is either a hoax or no big deal.”
Ada and Canyon counties have a rate of active coronavirus cases that is eight to nine times as high as what is considered “severe COVID prevalence in the community,” said Dr. Steven Nemerson of Saint Alphonsus Health System.
“Our ER visits are way up,” Nemerson said.
Nemerson expects to see triple the number of hospitalized COVID-19 patients over the next two months. By Christmas, he said, Saint Alphonsus predicts the number of hospitalizations to double.
This story was originally published November 17, 2020 at 3:28 PM.
