‘Public enemy number one’: COVID puts low-profile local health officials on hot seat

Jen McKenney, health officer for Wilson County in southeastern Kansas, remembers a time at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic when she and other local health officials were “everybody’s best friend.”

Health officers emerged as calming forces in their communities, imparting knowledge and commanding respect.

But three months later, residents have grown impatient with social distancing and other restrictions that remain crucial to preserving public health. Too often, McKenney said, that manifests in personal attacks against health officials.

A Wilson County commissioner insisted that McKenney was violating his rights by telling him to wear a mask. A school board member publicly berated her for recommending that meetings remain virtual.

“Now, all the sudden, I’m public enemy number one,” she said.

Until recently, county health officers were important but little-known public servants who rarely took center stage. COVID-19 has shattered that anonymity, thrusting the unelected medical professionals into the middle of a bitterly divisive social and political moment.

In short, it’s not what most of them signed up for.

Lori Tremmel Freeman, CEO of the National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO), said the unprecedented level of vitriol is taking its toll.

Since March, 29 state and local health officials have retired, resigned or been fired, according to NACCHO data

“The longer that this response goes on, the harder it is to maintain these roles and to take the abuse, quite honestly,” Freeman said.

When Johnson County Commissioner Mike Brown complained on Facebook about Health Officer Joseph LeMaster’s decision to extend the county stay-at-home order for a week in May, someone posted LeMaster’s home address to prove that his house was actually in Wyandotte County.

Across the country, threats of violence and blistering personal attacks have become commonplace.

Railing against Pennsylvania Secretary of Health Rachel Levine, who is transgender, Scott Township Commissioner Paul Abel recently resigned after saying he was “tired of listening to a guy dressed up as a woman.”

Other health chiefs say that it’s not all brickbats and no bouquets.

Shawnee County Health Officer Gianfranco Pezzino said that, by and large, he’s been amazed by the outpouring of support from his community ⁠— even when he’s had to make difficult decisions like calling off a mid-March wrestling tournament that would have attracted people from all over the state.

But Pezzino said he understands people’s growing frustration with safety measures.

“We are wired to be social animals,” Pezzino said. “To ask people to just stay home, don’t touch anybody, don’t leave your house — it goes totally against our nature.

“You hear it more and louder from people who are dissatisfied or angry and disapprove than from people who feel that what we are doing is justified and should be done.”

Sometimes it’s not citizens, but other elected and appointed officials, who pose the biggest challenges.

Jackie Patterson, director and health officer of Osage County, Kansas, said she was given no warning that Kansas was moving from phase 1 to what Gov. Laura Kelly called “phase 1.5” of her reopening plan when she announced it on May 14.

“The local health department directors as well as the officers, we have felt like our authority and our voice haven’t really been listened to,” Patterson said. “It’s been overshadowed and undermined by politics.

“That’s really unfortunate, because this is what we’re trained to take care of — this exact situation — and we haven’t been given the driver’s seat in the way I think we needed to be.”

Freeman said elected officials and health officers, who usually stand side-by-side against threats to their community, are finding themselves at odds.

“This level of disconnect that’s appearing between, in some cases, elected officials and public health officials, is quite distressing,” Freeman said. “At a time when we’re lacking so much leadership at every other level, that leadership at the local level really needs to remain intact and strong.”

Kansas City, Missouri Director of Health Rex Archer said the politicization of public health starts at the highest levels of government.

“When the leadership at the top in the White House gives people mixed messages and is encouraging people to not do what is necessary, and gives all sorts of crazy, inappropriate advice that if that person were a medical doctor, they’d lose their medical license under, that’s part of the problem,” Archer said.

He said officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are being “muzzled and scrutinized.”

“I jokingly say, my friends in the CDC have to go out and use a payphone or a burner phone to call me,” Archer said.

“When their guidance can’t come out officially, it has to be leaked. There’s a problem.”

Archer said he’s too busy working 70-hour weeks to pay attention to threats or intimidation. He’s more worried about not having the financial resources he needs to properly control the spread of the virus.

Archer said his budget is short about $14 per person per year compared to other big-city health departments. That adds up to almost $6.9 million a year.

Missouri ranks 50th in the country in state funds dedicated to public health, according to the Missouri Foundation for Health.