Doc warns that 'medical freedom' resolution will make county a 'laughing-stock in the state'

Health board chairman Kelly Lane intent on pushing measure against advice of medical community

The chairman of the Cowlitz Board of Health can’t take a hint from the medical community.

Kelly Lane is continuing his effort to adopt a new county “medical freedom” resolution opposing any future masking, closure or vaccination mandates. One prominent medical professional from the community calls the proposal “misleading and at worst outrageous, false, and egregious” and would “make Cowlitz County a laughing-stock in the state.”

Lane, one of four appointed members of  the seven-member board of health, nevertheless is forging ahead with a proposal that is somewhat watered down from one he proposed a month ago.

The resolution asserts that the right to medical freedom prohibits state COVID 19 mandates and shutdowns and calls on the county to resist any future measures. It is up for consideration at Tuesday’s Cowlitz Board of Health meeting, which starts at 10 a.m. in the Cowlitz County Administration Building.

In emails I obtained through the state Open Records Act, Lane dismisses  the concerns of medical and PeaceHealth administrators, who have pleaded with him to drastically amend the resolution.

“This has ruffled many feathers and makes me think the Freedom Resolution is probably the RIGHT THING to do!  I think it can be shortened up and refined, but the response from the article and the 'LEFT' (including PeaceHealth) coming out to attack me, the (Cowlitz County) Commissioners and calling the Resolution 'outlandish'  …  gives me a sense that we are hovering over the target. Some people do NOT agree that others should have Freedom,” he wrote in a memo to the seven-member county health board.

Some of this is in response to a brief letter that PeaceHealth executives Corey Balkan and Sean Gregory wrote to the health board in September asking for the resolution to revised so it avoids misconceptions and conforms with Washington law.

It also seems to refer to a polite, but critical point-by-point rebuttal to the resolution written by Longview doctor Tom Hickey,  who serves on the PeaceHealth/St. John Community Health Advisory Board and the Community Health Partners  Advisory Board. Hickey told me last week his objections still stand for Lane’s newly revised proposal.

The article Lane refers to is from this Substack  newsletter, in which I called the resolution an outlandish, misleading and inaccurate effort that could undermine public health. 

I certainly support medical freedom,  but I also support common sense, accuracy and nonpartisan public health policy. I believe the right to medical freedom is essential and should be abridged rarely. But it’s not absolute, especially when an infectious scourge like COVID was killing millions, overloading hospitals and especially threatening the vulnerable. No one has the right to recklessly make a fellow human being mortally sick.

The courts agree. Legal challenges to Gov, Jay Inslee’s emergency COVID orders failed. And the covid mandates worked, too, as proven by statistics showing that  COVID deaths and infections in Washington were substantially less severe than in “Red” states that eschewed restrictions and masking orders.

Lane did not answer questions I emailed to him late last week. Among them: “What qualifies you to buck the advice of medical experts?”  (Lane is not a lawyer or medical professional).

Another:  “Who wrote the resolution?  In the interest of transparency,  I think the public deserves an explanation about the origins of this resolution. Did (Cowlitz County Commissioner) Arne Mortensen?” (Emails suggest the two at least planned to (legally) confer over the proposal, though only one brief email from Mortensen was in the cache of records I received from  the county.

The health board, which includes all three county commissioners, has not asked for the resolution, and there has not yet been public testimony over it.

The resolution before the health board this Tuesday is shorter and eliminates some of the more outlandish assertions that medical professionals had found objectionable in the one Lane brought to the board in September, which was tabled.  

The new version, for  example, deletes a paragraph contending that masks are ineffective against respiratory viruses. Lane also struck a passage asserting that authorities destroyed  their credibility by suppressing information about COVID treatments. Unlike the original, the new draft no longer asserts that COVID did not increase the number of deaths in the nation or Cowlitz County.

However,  it still contends that “there is no conclusive medical evidence that such mandates produced a demonstrable decrease in disease.” The statement is flat wrong.

“There is ample medical and scientific evidence that mandates did produce a demonstrable decrease in disease,” Dian Cooper, the retired director the Cowlitz Family Health Center, wrote to the board last week.

She said the new version of the resolution, though less problematic than the original,  “still contains several paragraphs and sections that are at best misleading and at worst outrageous, false, and egregious,” Cooper said, pointing to statements about gubernatorial powers, medical ethics and the legal authority of the board of health.

The resolution is not grounded in existing factual, scientific and medical evidence; it is  unenforceable; it shows a lack of concern for vulnerable citizens: it, will make the county less safe;  “it will make Cowlitz County a laughing-stock in the state,” Cooper wrote to the board.

I have no idea whether the board of health will approve Lane’s proposal. Certainly Lane and Mortensen, a libertarian Republican, will vote for it. And I suspect Commissioner Rick Dahl will, too, because he generally follows Mortensen’s lead.

Board member Mary Jane Melink opposes the resolution, as does Commissioner Dennis Weber, who described it in an email to Melink as  “craziness.”  That will leave the decision up to two remaining non-elected health board members: Lindy Campbell, a retired school nurse, and Alyssa Fine, a diabetes and health educator for the Cowlitz Tribe.

No one liked COVID mandates, and they have had serious economic and educational side effects. But they took effect when the disease was raging out of control. Teachers, medical professionals, older people and many others were at risk. Morgues were filled to capacity. Many people lived in dread.  We had few tools beyond masks and isolation to resist its spread. How many more thousands of people would have died had these mandates not been employed?

Thank goodness we no longer appear to need them, at least for now. But we certainly don’t need politically driven statements that could inhibit their use should they be needed again.