California county to public: Stop hostility toward health workers over state mask mandate
El Dorado County officials on Thursday asked residents to stop directing “verbal and physical hostility” toward county employees over COVID-19 restrictions, particularly the mask mandate, which are state decisions the local health office cannot overrule.
In a news release Thursday, the county’s Board of Supervisors said it was urging the public “to redirect COVID-19 complaints to state decision makers.”
El Dorado County has not had its own local COVID-19 health order in place since last spring but — as is the case across all California counties — El Dorado residents, businesses and government all remain subject to orders from the state health department.
“There has been significant confusion among the public about the role of County Public Health and its breadth of decision-making abilities in this pandemic, which has led to misdirected criticism at best and verbal and physical hostility at worst toward County employees who are simply acting at the direction of the State to help ensure the health and safety of our residents,” board chair John Hidahl wrote in a prepared statement.
The statement comes after a group of more than 100 anti-mask protesters showed up at the county health office in Placerville.
A group of a few dozen demonstrators crammed into the building’s lobby Monday morning — most of them children, along with several adult organizers — holding signs and chanting “no more masks” for several minutes, video posted to social media shows.
The next day, at least three participants spoke during the public comment period of a regularly scheduled Board of Supervisors meeting imploring county officials to make masks optional rather than mandatory at schools — which would violate the state health order.
Hidahl did not reference Monday’s protest or any other incident specifically, but county spokeswoman Carla Hass expanded in an emailed response to The Sacramento Bee.
“Protesters have brought their protest into the Public Health lobby, unmasked, disrupting business operations with elderly and other clients,” Hass wrote. “They have stood on chairs while chanting and yelling, banged on windows, blocked the entrance, and instilled general concern and fear for safety amongst staff and clients.”
Hidahl’s statement emphasized that residents’ criticism appears to be a response to the state’s mask requirement, which state Health and Human Services Director Dr. Mark Ghaly announced Monday would continue for the fully vaccinated until mid-June in California.
“It’s important for the general public and specifically those demanding El Dorado County Public Health make masks optional in schools and other settings to understand we simply do not have the discretion to make those decisions,” Hidahl continued, urging residents to instead address any “complaints, concerns and requests for such changes” to the California Department of Public Health or the governor’s office.
The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on May 13 released guidelines saying it is safe for fully vaccinated people to forgo masks in most settings. But on Monday, Ghaly and Gov. Gavin Newsom announced that California would not change its mandate to match the CDC’s recommendations until June 15 — the same date it plans to drop the color-coded tier system and fully reopen its economy — in order to give officials more time to prepare.
As El Dorado County’s news release notes, California’s 58 counties have only been permitted by the state to impose guidelines that are more restrictive than the state’s orders, not less.
“With a short-lived exception of a travel ban to the Tahoe Basin, we have never taken a more stringent approach” than California during the pandemic, Hidahl noted.
Lindsay Moffett, who told supervisors that she’s a member of a private Facebook group called Unmask Our Kids El Dorado County, that helped organize Monday’s effort, spoke of the protest’s intent during a public comment period in Tuesday’s meeting.
“In our attempt to deliver our letter to (county health officer) Nancy Williams, we walked into the public health office and were not greeted by anybody,” Moffett said, calling into the meeting via Zoom. “They called the (Placerville) Police Department.”
Live video posted to Facebook by an account called El Dorado County Freedom Fighters shows that the protest group entered the Placerville health office’s lobby after several speakers, both adults and children, spoke via microphone and speaker system outside the front entrance to the building. The group immediately started chanting, though no one was behind the front desk.
After a brief conversation with two police officers — one of whom told one organizer that the large crowd was obstructing public access to the health office, while the other claimed it was so packed she was worried they might break the glass partition at the front desk — the group returned outside and continued their protest for about another 30 minutes, video shows.
“Nancy Williams cannot continue to hide behind her desk and her office,” Moffett told the county supervisors Tuesday. “We have continually been pointed to her as the gatekeeper of our schools’ opening safety plans.”
While county health officers are responsible in part for helping create and approve school districts’ and campuses’ COVID-19 safety plans, the plans cannot violate orders from the state health department, which must also approve each district’s plan.
Local health officers, a position largely invisible in the public eye prior to the ongoing 15-month coronavirus pandemic, have found themselves in 2020 and 2021 on the receiving end of frustration in response to restrictions.
In the most extreme cases, frustration has boiled over into threats of physical violence.
In April, Yuba County sought a restraining order to protect bicounty health officer Dr. Phuong Luu and enlisted armed security guards to escort her after county officials learned that a local podcaster had, during episodes of his program, said Luu should be “shot” or have her vehicle damaged.
This story was originally published May 20, 2021 at 2:09 PM.
