Public health workers across the nation have become subject to a growing threat in this pandemic—not from contracting the coronavirus, but from violent citizens who are angry that their lives have been turned upside down. Many of these health professionals have decided to quit their jobs to protect themselves and their families, or have been fired by political leaders under pressure by the public. The Associated Press and Kaiser Health News has found at least 27 states and local health leaders who have resigned or been fired.
One of those in the last category is Emily Brown, the former director of the Rio Grande County Public Health Department in rural Colorado. She argued for continuing public health restrictions and was subsequently the subject of a threatening Facebook post showing her photo along with other health officials, including references to "armed citizens" and "bodies swinging from trees." The county commissioners wanted to push reopening, and in a meeting in which she intended to ask for their support that immediately followed that Facebook post, they fired her. "They finally were tired of me not going along the line they wanted me to go along," she told AP. Just like with the Trump administration when the deliverers of bad news Rick Bright and Christi Grimm were purged, robbing the federal response of professionals whose expertise is key to fighting the pandemic.
"Personally and professionally, I cannot let the idea of providing unpopular information drive decision-making in the work we do," Grimm testified to House lawmakers during a remote hearing last month. But that's what's happening in the federal government and in many states, and it's coming from largely the same place: a president who has insisted from the beginning that this pandemic was not a real threat, and from his followers, who have no compunction about turning violent to promote his message.
Among those who've been forced out because of threats to their lives are Ohio's Dr. Amy Acton, the state health director who resigned Thursday after armed protesters showed up at her home, and Dr. Nichole Quick, who quit her job as health officer for Orange County, California this week. She was threatened during a county supervisors meeting about a mask-wearing ordinance in which "[o]ne person suggested that the order might make it necessary to invoke Second Amendment rights to bear arms, while another read aloud [Quick's] home address" and also gave out the name of Quick's boyfriend. That was the only threat, and she had been given personal protection by the sheriff. "’An official in another California county also has been given a security detail,’ said Kat DeBurgh, the executive director of the Health Officers Association of California," AP reports. The name of that official and their county has not been made public.
Theresa Anselmo, the executive director of the Colorado Association of Local Public Health Officials, says that she polled local health directors in her state last month and found that about 80% had received threats to themselves or their property in the pandemic. Another 80% said they have been threatened with a loss of funding or other measures by political leaders. In Colorado, six top local health officials have either quit, retired, or been fired. For trying to keep people safe. "It's just appalling that in this country that spends as much as we do on health care that we’re facing these really difficult ethical dilemmas: Do I stay in my job and risk threats, or do I leave because it’s not worth it?" Anselmo said. In California, officials from seven counties have left their jobs—some due to burnout, some because of threats.
The Delaware General Health District in Ohio has been forced to lock down twice since the beginning of the pandemic because of threats. The Tri-County Health Department, which serves the Adams, Arapahoe, and Douglas counties of Colorado has had three separate instances in April and May when rocks were thrown at one of the office's windows. It received an email "calling members of the department 'tyrants,' adding 'you're about to start a hot-shooting ... civil war.'" The workers in that office relocated for their own safety. The threats continue online, with someone going to the health department's Facebook page threatening to give out home addresses of the leadership team, adding: "You want to make this a war??? No problem."
We are moving into what could be the most dangerous stage of the pandemic, with political leaders starting at the very top with the orange menace all the way down to county commissions insisting on reopening their communities, sending the message that the threat isn't real. As Mark Sumner wrote earlier this week: "The United States is now is almost exactly where it was on March 31. That was a day that also saw just over 1,000 deaths. What happened from there is that the number of deaths continued up. Then up. Because on March 31, most states had either just issued a statewide lockdown, or had yet to issue such a plan." Because public health officials are being ignored, or pressured, or forced out, science and simple public safety is taking a back seat to political expediency.
