Our Livingston County commissioners are at it again, working overtime to make us less safe.
The panel is considering setting up an advisory committee to oversee the health department’s response to the next pandemic that will balance “public health needs with individual constitutional liberties.”
We have just emerged from the worst days of a pandemic that killed 1.1 million Americans and continues to claim lives every day. The Covid-19 virus continues to evolve as it replicates, forcing vaccine manufacturers to race to develop the next generation of vaccines to keep us safe.
Surely, there will be another pandemic. How will it spread, what will the symptoms be, how fast will it kill, and what age groups will be most susceptible? All that is unknown. Yet some of our county commissioners believe they know how to fight the next new killer disease.
With political rhetoric.
This new committee is the latest brainchild of Wes Nakagiri. Nakagiri has already threatened the job of Health Department Director Matt Bolang, only to find out Michigan law doesn’t allow county commissioners to remove health department directors willy-nilly.
So he is trying another tack – establishing a panel of minders to watch Bolang’s every move. The panel would have five or seven members – Livingston County residents only – appointed by the commissioners who have “education/experience” in “conventional medicine, alternative medicine, herbal medicine, nutritional medicine, internal medicine, general practice, OBGYM, geriatrics, pediatrics, nursing, infectious disease, cancer, palliative care, public health field, and health care law.” The health department could recommend one non-voting member.
We know what this means. Nakagiri will find five quack doctors who believe a horse de-wormer is the best treatment for Covid-19, that masks don’t work, and that vaccines – not the virus – have killed tens of thousands of people. It’s the same nonsense that the far-right repeats at virtually every county commission meeting since the pandemic began.
If it passes – and thankfully two county commissioners have already come out against it – Livingston County will not just be ill-prepared for the next pandemic. It will have surrendered before it even gets here.
