Choosing to do nothing, Gov. Little leads Idaho to brink of crisis standards of care

It’s every man and woman for yourself in Idaho.

Stock the pantry, stock up on toilet paper, keep yourself healthy and don’t have a heart attack or get into a car crash for the next few months, because Idaho is headed for crisis standards of care. It’s almost an inevitability at this point.

Despite multiple warnings and pleas from Idaho’s health care professionals and educators, Idaho Gov. Brad Little announced Thursday that he would not be taking any additional measures to stem the rising tide of coronavirus in Idaho.

Instead, he said his goal continues to be voluntary compliance, and he thinks that by doing nothing on the state level — such as a statewide mask mandate — Idaho will somehow achieve voluntary compliance.

If it’s not clear by now that voluntary compliance isn’t working in Idaho, it never will be.

What has become clear over the past few months is that every time a health district board, city council or school board across the state tries to make a decision for the sake of public health, they get yelled at, bullied and intimidated by an angry mob into not making a decision.

It should be clear to Gov. Little that this strategy is not working.

If it’s not clear that voluntary compliance isn’t working in Idaho, one need look no further once again to the comments posted on the governor’s Facebook page or the Idaho Freedom Foundation’s page during his press conference. Deniers flooded the channels even while a local ICU nurse tearfully told the story of how she and others tried to save the life of a dying mother of a 1-year-old — to no avail. Even as she painfully said that the mother’s life could not be saved, these pro-virus, anti-mask advocates continued to excoriate public health measures and propagate their misinformation and disinformation in the name of making sure the coronavirus spreads further in the community and COVID-19 kills even more people.

Slap in the face

For Gov. Little to say our morgues are full and counties are asking for refrigerated trucks to hold the bodies of dead Idahoans, then turn around and ask people to “choose” to do the right thing, is a slap in the face to every person who has lost a loved one to this highly contagious disease.

It’s a slap in the face to the thousands of Idahoans who have been doing the right thing for the Gem State, even for the sake of COVID-19 deniers, by hunkering down in their homes while others run around doing whatever they want with no punishment, no recourse.

It’s a slap in the face to the medical professionals who are literally putting their own lives — and the lives of their loved ones — on the line every day.

These faux patriots who deny COVID-19, don’t take restrictions seriously, refuse to wear a mask — all under the false guise of freedom and liberty — will never voluntarily comply. We all know they will not. Gov. Little knows they will not.

But Little seems to be buying time for the vaccine to get here as the dead and very sick stack up and become relegated to simply another data point on a bleak stat sheet, forgotten and left to fend for themselves.

It is worth noting that Idaho’s COVID-19 death rate has increased dramatically. It took 15 weeks and four days to reach the first 100 deaths from COVID-19 in Idaho. It took just six days to go from 1,000 deaths to 1,100 deaths. Idaho now stands at 1,124 deaths from COVID-19.

Crisis standards of care

Under crisis standards of care, that will only continue. It means that if the hospitals are filled up and you need surgery to remove a malignant cancerous tumor, you might be put off for weeks, while the tumor grows and potentially spreads.

This affects all of us, across the state, not just people in Boise, not just people with COVID-19. That’s why it requires a top-down, “we’re all in this together” approach from the state’s top leadership.

A statewide mask mandate, which this board has been calling for since June, would be the easiest place to start. One can only imagine how much better off we’d be today if we had taken a harder stance six months ago.

“It would be hard for anyone to say Idaho hasn’t done all it can,” Idaho Gov. Brad Little said Thursday.

We disagree. It’s actually quite easy to look at our trajectory and see Idaho hasn’t done all it can.

On Thursday, Gov. Little showed, once again, that Idaho has, in fact, done just the opposite.

This story was originally published December 10, 2020 at 3:33 PM.