Editorial: Why did DeSantis muzzle top Orange County health official?

Last week, Dr. Raul Pino, Orange County’s top public health official, was placed on administrative leave by Gov. Ron DeSantis’ office.

In the middle of a pandemic. Just a few weeks after Orange County hit its all-time high for COVID-19 infections, with hospitalization rates climbing. This is when DeSantis decided to bench a trusted and passionate voice for public health in Florida’s fifth-largest and fastest-growing county.

Throughout his tenure, Pino has been a staunch advocate for Central Florida’s struggling low-income residents as well as its fast-growing minority population. He’s been adamant about making health information accessible to native Spanish-speaking residents, and built critical partnerships with local leaders that allowed him to expand the Health Department’s reach.

You’d think the governor’s office would want to keep someone like that on the job.

You’d be wrong.

Pino was sidelined after sending out an email chiding health department workers for a frankly terrible vaccination rate. The doctor’s dismay makes perfect sense: Vaccination may not be as effective against newer COVID-19 variants as public health officials hoped, but it does reduce rates of hospitalization and death. And it remains the best hope for slowing the spread of a virus that has already claimed the lives of 64,000 Floridians. In addition to not practicing what the department had taken such pains to preach, Pino said he was worried that unvaccinated employees might become “vectors” between the patients many front-line workers treat, and their own families.

Again, this makes complete sense. It’s exactly the kind of thing that Pino is paid to worry about — especially the day after the health department was forced to cancel prenatal clinic appointments because too many workers were out sick.

So why the suspension? A Department of Health official offered reporters from the Orlando Sentinel and other media outlets a brief statement: “The decision to get vaccinated is a personal medical choice that should be made free from coercion and mandates from employers.”

That’s not what the U.S. Supreme Court thinks. In a Jan. 13 ruling, the court upheld vaccine requirements for health care workers. “Ensuring that providers take steps to avoid transmitting a dangerous virus to their patients is consistent with the fundamental principle of the medical profession: first, do no harm,” the court said, quoting a 2021 ruling that it would be the “very opposite of efficient and effective administration for a facility that is supposed to make people well to make them sick with COVID–19.”

Florida’s official stance — as decreed by DeSantis and approved by the Legislature — is that state health department officials can’t enforce that mandate. But Pino wasn’t enforcing anything. His email didn’t order anyone to get vaccinated, and it was free of any threat or coercion. He simply said it was irresponsible — knowing what public health officials know — not to be vaccinated, and he’s right. He said it was pathetic that fewer than half of health department employees were vaccinated, and it is.

In other words, Pino was just saying what any science-respecting health official should say, when presented with the data that he’d requested — information that is public record, and that has been widely reported for other health professions. It’s nothing different from what he has said in more than 150 press conferences with Orange County Government exhorting the community to get vaccinated. It’s a ridiculous reason to punish him.

So of course the governor’s office had to hint that there was something more. A few days after suspending Pino, state Health Department officials released a vague and unsubstantiated statement referencing the privacy of Orange County health department employee health records, and referring the case to the department’s Inspector General.

Let’s call this what it looks like: A back-dated attempt to smear Pino, and delay resolution in this case, potentially for months. It’s hard to believe the state doesn’t know how to conduct a quick search of Pino’s email to determine whether he requested or received any individual vaccine records for employees. It’s even harder to believe that — had they found such evidence — Health Department officials wouldn’t have triumphantly brandished it days ago while national and local media were having a field day mocking DeSantis for Pino’s inexplicable suspension.

So here we are: The Department of Health’s Orange County operation is without a leader. County officials say they’ve had no communication from the state about an interim replacement.

And as the scariest, most prolonged health crisis to hit Orange County in the past 100 years rages on, a trusted, rational voice has been silenced.

It makes no sense — unless you accept the fact that Florida’s leaders care more about saving face than saving lives. We don’t want to believe that, but DeSantis and his team leave us little choice.

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