Ryan Cole is the wrong person at the wrong time for the Central District Health board

Ryan Cole is the wrong person at the wrong time.

Ada County’s Republican commissioners, Ryan Davidson and Rod Beck, on Tuesday appointed Cole to the Central District Health board, over the “adamant” opposition of Democratic commissioner Kendra Kenyon.

It’s now up to the county commissioners in Valley, Boise and Elmore counties to approve that selection. We urge those commissioners, for the sake of the health of their constituents, to reject Cole.

This is a time we need more people to get vaccinated. Idaho’s vaccination rate is dangerously low, at around 47%, one of the lowest in the country.

The vaccine is safe and effective, it’s certainly already saved untold lives, and it’s our ticket to ending the pandemic. We need someone on the board who can encourage vaccinations, not discourage them.

But Cole has sown distrust in the vaccine, calling it “fake,” a “clot shot” and “needle rape.”

This is a time we need more people masking up, with the delta variant and now the lambda variant spreading across the country and around the world.

But Cole has gone against the medical establishment and expressed doubts about the efficacy of masks. Instead, he’s promoted vitamin D supplements, hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin as treatments for COVID-19. They aren’t.

This is a time when cases, hospitalizations, ICU admissions and deaths from COVID-19 are on the rise in Idaho.

The Idaho Department of Health and Welfare on Tuesday reported 904 new cases of COVID-19 and seven new coronavirus-related deaths statewide. Idaho’s seven-day moving average stands at 646.9 cases per day.

This is a time when hospitals are beginning to fill up again, and the state has launched its crisis standards of care committee. An Idaho Department of Health and Welfare official said Tuesday that some hospitals are two weeks away from implementing the state’s “crisis standards” of health care rationing. That will affect everyone from heart patients and cancer patients to those seeking elective surgeries.

ICU hospitalizations are approaching levels last seen in December, when we thought Idaho cases had peaked.

This is a time when schools are going back into session, many without masks. School districts across the country, in Texas and Florida, that have returned to school without masks have already shown outbreaks of COVID-19 and have had to quarantine and go back to hybrid or remote learning. We need someone on the board to recommend masks in schools to keep our students in school, in person, which is everyone’s goal. We need someone on the board to recommend that schools follow the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s guidelines for wearing masks.

This is a time we need someone on the Central District Health board who can help alleviate the disaster that’s headed our way, not someone who will make it worse.

Ada County commissioners had two excellent, well-qualified alternatives, in Dr. Sky Blue, considered by many to be Idaho’s foremost epidemiologist, and in Dr. Stan Moss, a Republican who during his testimony acknowledged the importance of liberty and health freedom but voiced his strong support for the vaccines and his commitment to doing all in his power as a board member to educate and proselytize for the vaccine. He pointed out that 96% of physicians have received the vaccine, while only 60% of the general public had to that point, attributing it to an information gap, based on conspiracies and misinformation.

From people like Ryan Cole.

Unfortunately, Beck and Davidson were persuaded by the far right fringe of their party to go not with someone reasonable, but with someone radical, whose disinformation and misinformation will put public health at risk.

This is the wrong time to appoint the wrong person to the health board.

Ryan Cole is the wrong person at the wrong time.