The coronavirus pandemic has already killed more than 300,000 people in the United State, with an unknown—but frighteningly large—number yet to come. It’s also hollowed out the public health departments trying to keep people safe now, leaving us more vulnerable to the next public health threat. An investigation by the Associated Press and KHN details the damage.
Local public health officials were already desperately overworked and underpaid—“per capita spending for state public health departments had dropped by 16%, and for local health departments by 18%, since 2010. At least 38,000 state and local public health jobs have disappeared since the 2008 recession.” It was also likely to get worse, with nearly half of public health workers in one survey saying they planned to retire or leave the field within five years.
That trend is accelerating, and it’s not just the pandemic as a natural disaster. It’s specifically because of Donald Trump’s politicization of basic public health measures, which has turned the underpaid workers trying to protect the public into targets. During the nine months of the pandemic, at least 181 state or local public health leaders have left their jobs—whether they resigned, retired, or were fired. That includes 20 top state officials. It doesn’t include lower-level staffers who are essential to executing things like COVID-19 testing and contact tracing.
In some cases, public health leaders have resigned after their efforts have been undercut by state or local governments. “You value the pressure from people with special economic interests more than science and good public health practice,” Shawnee County, Kansas, health officer Dr. Gianfranco Pezzino wrote to county commissioners after they loosened restrictions. “In full conscience I cannot continue to serve as the health officer for a board that puts being able to patronize bars and sports venues in front of the health, lives and well-being of a majority of its constituents.”
Public health officials—many of whom, in Republican areas, are themselves Republicans—have also faced the violent protesters who’ve been egged on by Trump, with loud displays intended to intimidate them outside their offices and homes.
In at least one case, the resistance to safety has hit even closer to home. The AP/KHN investigators interviewed Linn County, Kansas, public health administrator Tisha Coleman, who has begged people in her community to wear masks and take other precautions. Not only has she been attacked—even called a Democrat, a serious insult in her community—but her husband refuses to require customers to wear masks in his hardware store. It gets worse, though: Coleman’s husband refuses to take that step despite her mother’s recent death from COVID-19.
This is Donald Trump’s United States of America in a nutshell.
