COVID misinformation is a threat to public health. Sacramento County is right to combat it

In recent months, the public comments at Sacramento County’s Board of Supervisors meetings have gone completely off the rails, usurped by conspiracy theorists and misinformation that undermines the county’s efforts to rid our community of COVID-19.

Supervisor Sue Frost, chair of the board, has not only allowed this, but she has participated in it. She has refused to wear masks at meetings, flouting a public health order requirement from her own department. Her seat in the board chambers is now surrounded by plexiglass, an embarrassing symbol of her standing as a leader.

Frost has shown herself to be an anti-science extremist and attended anti-vaccine rallies in Placer County linked to the Proud Boys and self-styled militia groups. In public hearings, she has repeatedly espoused the false claim that the vaccines are “experimental” — even after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration granted the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine full approval.

Her colleagues on the board have actually had to correct the record to ensure the public knew that what the chair of the largest governing body in the region was saying was utterly false.

This toxic and dangerous babble must be directly confronted. To do that, the rest of the board must take the extraordinary but necessary step on Tuesday and fully back Supervisor Phil Serna’s resolution declaring COVID misinformation a dangerous threat to public health.

It is a disheartening sign of the times that this is even needed. Earlier this month, San Diego County became the first jurisdiction in the nation to adopt this type of declaration. It was met with a chaotic, profane eight hours of public testimony that included furious confrontations and even a five-minute recess for deputies to escort one woman off the premises.

In the aftermath, San Diego County Supervisor Nathan Fletcher, who introduced the resolution, faced verbal abuse and threats from the public during the heated meeting. At one point, law enforcement officers had to stand between San Diego County Supervisors and the public.

We sincerely hope Sacramento avoids a similar path and treats Serna and the rest of the board with civility. But we’re not optimistic given how COVID deniers have swarmed public hearings in recent weeks.

The delta variant has led to a surge in COVID infections and deaths in Sacramento County over the past two months, mirroring some of the pandemic’s worst days last winter. Local hospitals have been at or near capacity for weeks, with a peak of 449 patients in ICU beds on Sept. 1.

Thankfully, more people have gotten vaccinated and case rates are slowly starting to improve. Still, only 53% of eligible Sacramento County residents are fully vaccinated. With schools back open and children under the age of 12 still not eligible for the vaccine, it’s a disappointing but clear reminder of why Serna’s declaration is needed.

Some in our community remain skeptical of the vaccines, especially after disjointed health orders throughout the pandemic and multiple surges that led to greater hardship and death. But that was also expected when facing a novel virus that upended life in almost every country. A growing body of credible research has vastly improved our understanding of the virus and how to stop its spread.

But there’s a stark difference between having reservations and spreading irrational fears and falsehoods.

Wearing masks and getting vaccinated are unequivocally our best protections against COVID-19. If everyone embraced them, we could move past this nightmarish chapter. Yet disinformation and all its perils stand in our way.

By approving this declaration, Sacramento County’s elected leaders would ensure that misinformation is addressed head on, and definitively say that official public health guidance is backed by evidence-based science and fact. Unfortunately, thanks to all the tinfoil hats in the board chambers, that needed to be said.

This is not censorship or an attack on free speech. Our shared enemy for the past 19 months has been the coronavirus. The spread of misinformation and the hijacking of public hearings to spew conspiracy theories simply allows it to keep winning. The Sacramento-area community should proudly champion this resolution, and support Serna and the other supervisors as they combat the misinformed.

A previous version of this editorial stated that children under the age of 15 are not eligible for the COVID vaccine. It has been updated to clarify that those under the age of 12 are not eligible to get vaccinated under CDC guidelines. FDA approval of the vaccine is for individuals 16 and older.

This story was originally published September 13, 2021 at 2:52 PM.