Snubbing public health

To quote Cool Hand Luke, "What we have here is a failure to communicate."

During last night’s college football championship game in Indianapolis, an entertaining match-up of two semi-professional teams from the deep south, I noticed during the television cameras’ frequent pans across the cheering crowd that the vast majority of attendees weren’t wearing masks.

Neither proof of vaccination nor a negative test was required to enter Lucas Oil Stadium, an enclosed facility. Stadium officials recommended people wear masks indoors, but refused to consider a mandate.

A week before the event, Dr. Virginia Caine, executive director of the Marion County Public Health Department, told reporters she’d been in touch with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Agency officials told her, according to local press reports, that “there are no concerns about it being a super-spreader event, based on experience from previous big local sports events like the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament and Indianapolis 500.”

Two years into the pandemic, the CDC’s milquetoast response is indicative of the stature of public health in the U.S. Amid the still uncontrolled spread of COVID-19, which has driven hospitalizations to a peak not seen since a year ago, the nation’s premier voice for public health allowed an event viewed by over 27 million people to become a national display of civil disobedience to the single most important step people can take to stop the current outbreak of the highly transmissible Omicron variant.

State of the states

Much has been written about the CDC inability to communicate clearly about what needs to be done. President Biden didn’t help in late December when he told governors “There is no federal solution. This gets solved at the state level.”

Perhaps the president hadn’t been briefed on morale at state and local public health departments across the U.S. These beleaguered public servants have been operating under constant threats of violence for months. The National Association of County and City Health Officials estimates more than 500 public health officials have been either pushed out or voluntarily left their jobs in the past two years.

The strain on public health comes after a decade of systematic disinvestment in the sector, which saw a reduction of more than 50,000 positions nationwide.

There have been countless articles written about the lessons learned during the pandemic. However, no lesson can be learned for long if it isn’t institionalized, which is impossible when there is constant turnover and turmoil within the responsible organizations.

Schools — A safe space?

Another case in point is the brouhaha over reopening schools in Chicago, where the teachers union balked at entering schools without proper protections for students and teachers. The Chicago Teachers Union agreed to reopen Wednesday.

However, a principals’ group surveyed its members and found “roughly half” claimed “they have staffing, cleanliness and ventilation issues so severe that those administrators deem their schools unsafe.” And while Gov. J.B. Pritzker has offered to help the city’s schools set up vaccination clinics and provide masks and tests, the city didn’t take up the offer, according to press reports.

Yesterday, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said the White House is talking to both the governor and Mayor Lori Lightfoot. “We want to see schools open,” she said. The CTU fired back that “we welcome the president reaching out to the mayor, and urging her to partner with our city’s educators to develop a plan that will keep our students and school communities as safe as possible.”

What has been most notable since the new year began is how little the public discussion zeroed in on what such a plan would entail. The official voices of public health — the CDC and the state and local health departments — have been silent on the details. Perhaps they were forced to the sidelines. Either way, parents and rank-and-file teachers remain in the dark without clear guidance.