COVID order in this California county is a new chance for GOP to spread fear and lies | Opinion

San Luis Obispo County’s Republican Party is at it again, trying to undermine County Health Officer Penny Borenstein for her handling of COVID-19.

The county’s health chief recently issued an order requiring healthcare workers to either be vaccinated against flu and COVID or to wear a mask while working.

GOP leaders went ballistic.

“WE THE PEOPLE were never consulted!” the party railed in an email sent to its members.

There’s a reason for that: “We the people” are not health experts. While everyone is entitled to disagree with a health directive, in the end it is the health officer’s duty to issue whatever directives she believes to be in the best interests of public health.

In this case, she — along with health officers in several other California counties — believes that adding a COVID mandate for healthcare workers is appropriate.

Borenstein should be ‘relieved of her duties,’ commenter says

Approximately a dozen speakers trooped to the microphone during public comment at Tuesday’s Board of Supervisors meeting to oppose Borenstein’s order requiring healthcare workers to either be vaccinated or to wear a mask.

Disinformation was rampant.

One speaker called the COVID vaccine a “bioweapon” and another accused pharmaceutical companies of engineering the latest vaccine mandate because it wants to unload anti-COVID drugs. There were also predictions that more stringent mandates — such as a lockdown — would follow.

One after another, they blamed Borenstein.

A speaker who identified herself as a registered nurse called for Borenstein to be “relieved of her duties.”

Others asked the Board of Supervisors to consider rescinding the mandate, but that idea failed on a 3-2 vote, with the liberal majority — Supervisors Bruce Gibson, Dawn Ortiz-Legg and Jimmy Paulding — voting against bringing the issue back for reconsideration.

Flu shots mandatory for years

For several years now, San Luis Obispo County Public Health has required healthcare workers to get a flu shot or — if they declined to do so — to wear a mask. The order applied to hospitals, community clinics, doctors offices, ambulatory care centers and long-term care facilities.

There was never any major pushback over that among the local medical community, nor should there be. It would be akin to an insurance agent selling plans to clients while refusing to buy coverage for themselves.

Now that COVID has been added to the order, the GOP has a dog whistle once again guaranteed to rile up members of its base who view this precaution an assault on freedom.

While the state of California no longer requires healthcare workers to be vaccinated against COVID, counties are allowed to set more stringent regulations. Some counties are requiring all healthcare workers to mask up, regardless of whether they’ve been vaxxed.

Borenstein spoke to the board briefly on Tuesday to defend the vaccine.

“It is a safe and effective vaccine, despite what some will tell you,” she said. “It has been approved fully by the FDA and studied very extensively. And it just seemed like, given the implications of COVID in our community, that the healthcare order would be a natural extension (of the flu order).”

Why does SLO County need the mandate?

Could Borenstein have made a better case for why the mandate is needed in San Luis Obispo County at this time, when wastewater monitoring shows low community-level infection rates and new hospitalizations are low as well?

Absolutely, especially since some healthcare workers are raising what sound like valid concerns.

“Being at the bedside for 12 hours (while wearing a mask), you cannot breathe well. You get headaches, you feel like you have brain fog. How can we take care of our patients for 12 hours and use good judgment when we can’t think straight?” asked a speaker who identified herself as an ICU nurse.

We would have liked to have heard Borenstein make a more compelling case for why the benefits of a mandate outweigh the drawbacks, though it’s unlikely that would have changed many minds.

What’s the State of New California got to do with this?

In a feeble attempt to bolster its case against Borenstein, the SLO County GOP emailed a survey to its members that focused solely on COVID mandates for healthcare workers.

The SLO County Republican Party didn’t write the survey, however.

It used one from a group called The State of New California — a conservative organization that’s trying to break away from “old” California. Supporters have described the quest to form the 51st state as a battle between good and evil.

Sound wacky? You bet — and watching local Republicans ride the coattails of New California on this issue does nothing to legitimize their cause.

But that didn’t stop them.

Linda Quinlan, who introduced herself as the New California state chair for San Luis Obispo County, briefed the Board of Supervisors on the results, in all seriousness, as though she were presenting bona fide scientific polling and not a quack survey.

Suprising to no one, out of 665 responses, 95% opposed the mandate and 93% believed their constitutional rights were being violated — even though the mandate only covers healthcare workers.

The loaded survey also asked whether the mandate “might further contribute to the shortage of workers SLO County is already experiencing in the healthcare industry” — a point raised by some speakers at the board meeting.

Certainly, the shortage of healthcare workers is a concern throughout California.

But if the local Republican Party were really looking out for healthcare employees, it would lobby for other types of benefits for them, such as the bill the governor just signed raising the minimum wage for healthcare workers to $25 an hour.

Instead, the far-right is once again exploiting COVID-19 for political purposes, replaying one of their greatest hits from recent years — all to bludgeon a county leadership they do not support.

We’re tired of this broken record.

It’s just the same old, repetitive noise. Ignore it.