‘Things have gotten ugly.’ Health officials quit over threats in coronavirus pandemic
Dr. Nichole Quick walked into a public meeting escorted by the Orange County Sheriff and was greeted by a banner of herself, depicted as a Nazi, the Associated Press reported.
She was serving as the county’s health officer and recently instituted an order that required people wear masks in public to curb the spread of the coronavirus, according to SFGate.
At the public meeting of the Orange County Board of Supervisors, Leigh Dundas, an anti-vaccination attorney, gave out intimately personal details about Quick, such as her boyfriend’s name and her home address, Cal Matters reported.
“She needs to be fired,” Dundas told the board.
Protests were held outside Quick’s home and the sheriff announced he would not enforce the order, SFGate reported. Dundas also threatened to invite residents to work out on Quick’s front yard in masks until they passed out, according to Cal Matters.
After working 80-hour weeks and receiving threats on social media, Quick resigned, AP reported.
The coronarivus fallout at public health departments has stretched across the nation. At least 27 state and local health officials in 13 states have resigned, retired or been fired during the pandemic, according to AP.
“It’s a very stressful position,” Frank Kim, Orange County’s executive officer, said, according to AP. “There have been multiple staff that have received threats and each one of those is reviewed by law enforcement. We take them very seriously.”
Quick’s resignation was the seventh among senior health official in California during the coronavirus crisis, AP reported. Public health officials in Nevada County, San Benito County, Yolo County, Butte County, Orange County and San Bernardino County have also resigned amid the pandemic, SFGate reported.
“We certainly have had angry comments at meetings before, especially around vaccines, but this level of threat, of having to have a sheriff’s escort, we haven’t seen it before,” Kat DeBurgh, executive director of the Health Officers Association of California, told AP. “We’ve never seen this level of public comment becoming threatening, a personal attack, a questioning of a health officer’s motivation,” DeBurgh said, according to Cal Matters.
A health official in northern California, who asked to remain anonymous, described death threats they received through email and social media to Cal Matters.
“Things have gotten ugly,” the official said. “The health officers are kind of in this position where everything that everyone is angry about is the health officer’s fault. It makes you feel that there is nowhere safe.”
Health officials in other states are having similar experiences, AP reported.
Emily Brown, the former director of the Rio Grande County Public Health Department in Colorado, was fired by the county commissioners after a photo of Brown and other health officials — with comments about their weight and references to “armed citizens” and “bodies swinging from trees” — was posted on Facebook, according to AP.
Brown had been struggling to keep the county’s COVID-19 case number down as commissioners pushed for looser public health restrictions in late May — against her advice, AP reported.
“They finally were tired of me not going along the line they wanted me to go along,” Brown told AP.
Ohio’s state health director resigned on June 11 after armed protesters stood outside her home, AP reported. Officials in North Carolina, Michigan, California, Colorado and many other states are leaving in an “alarming” exodus as they face more pressure to relax restrictions and reopen their jurisdictions, Lori Tremmel Freeman, CEO of the National Association of County and City Health Officials, told AP.
“They just don’t leave like that,” Freeman said.
