All the dents we can get

“I understand people have expressed concerns about their civil liberties. I get that, I understand that. On the other hand, this is a public health emergency. The last one of these major pandemics like this was over 100 years ago. We’re not planning on this lasting forever, I don’t expect the public to tolerate it forever.”

On November 17, Carbon County was one of nine counties in Wyoming that instituted a mask mandate following approval by State Health Officer Alexia Harrist. Dr. Wayne Couch, public health officer for Carbon County, discussed the health order with the Board of Carbon County Commissioners (BOCCC) on the same day.

What appeared to be discussion about a statewide mask mandate at first, however, quickly revealed that the mandate was one specifically for Carbon County.

Couch, who was reappointed to his position in June, joined the BOCCC via phone along with Amanda Brown, nurse manager for Carbon County Public Health. The order, which was signed by Harrist on November 17, had been submitted to both Harrist and the State Attorney General’s Office on November 12.

During the November 10 meeting of the BOCCC, Brown had been asked if a mask mandate was forthcoming by Commissioner Travis Moore (see “Only going to get worse” on page 1 of the November 18 Saratoga Sun). Brown informed both Moore and the other commissioners that while, at the time, it wasn’t believed such a mandate was necessary “we continuously talk about it.”

Couch began the discussion by commenting on the continued increase in active cases of the coronavirus (COVID-19) in the county, the state and the region. These increases, he stated, were taxing not only the two major hospitals in Wyoming but in neighboring states such as Montana, Idaho, Utah and Colorado.

“Some of the early modeling that we saw did not pan out, as was projected, but now it seems to be following, kind of, a new model which has been sort of projected,” said Couch. “It’s actually a little bit faster than we had thought. We had thought, six or eight weeks ago, the big spike was going to come in December and it started early. We haven’t even seen the flu epidemic numbers that usually start late December come into play, yet. Those will be coming, we suspect. Generally speaking, almost every year you have cases of flu that start to tax healthcare systems as well.”

According to Couch, data that was guiding health officers in the issuance of health orders early on in the pandemic came from looking at how the coronavirus spread throughout other countries. That data, Couch stated, informed their conclusions in regards to both the amount of time spent with someone who had COVID-19 and the distance between an active case and someone who had not contracted the virus yet.

“We know, from other situations and other viruses that get into the respiratory tract and are spread in a similar fashion even though the viruses may be different, we know that wearing a mask reduces those particles getting into the air,” Couch said. “Now we have hard data on the transmission of this virus in our country. There’s a well respected study out of the University of Kansas that has really documented how compliance with masks has substantially reduced the transmission of this virus.”

Couch added that there was “no credible research” to show that wearing a mask was harmful, that wearing a mask was a detriment or that wearing a mask did not prevent or reduce the spread of the coronavirus. The county health officer also stated that wearing masks was one of the few things that the public could do—in addition to social distancing, washing hands and minimizing large gatherings—to reduce the spread of COVID-19. He also noted that, while there were counties that saw a rise in active cases with a mask mandate, it did not mean that masks were entirely ineffective.

“That argument falls flat. That’s not true. The mask still works. That’s an overly simplistic analysis of it. The problem is that COVID is still being transmitted regardless. Wearing a mask is not going to stop the transmission of the virus, it’s not going to cure the virus,” Couch said. “It’s simply going to put a dent in it and, right now, we need all the dents we can get.”

As Couch neared the end of his presentation to the BOCCC, informing them that an order had been sent to the Attorney General and requesting their support, it became clear that what was being discussed was a mask mandate for the county and not a statewide health order.

Following the announcement from Couch that he believed that the order would go into effect “immediately”, Commissioner John Espy stated he would have preferred to see some time between publication and implementation of the order.

“Changing the order as it’s approved is not going to be an option. This is an emergency. We’ve been talking about this before so, hopefully, people will be a little bit prepared for it,” Couch replied.

Couch then stated that he had been in contact with Carbon County Sheriff Archie Roybal and Rawlins Police Chief Troy Palmer about the order and that he did not expect either of them to “criminally enforce” the mask mandate. Brown added that Carbon County Public Health was considering utilizing the Code Red Alert system to inform people of the mask mandate.

This approach was later criticized by Commissioner Sue Jones, who said “To send out an alert to people is a little cold and harsh. It’s not a little cold and harsh, it is cold and harsh.”

Later in the meeting, both Jones and Espy expressed their frustration with how the mask mandate was announced with Jones calling it one of the surprising moments that she had had in her political career.

“We’re going to have a million questions from private businesses, from everyone. We have zero authority. We work in a partnership with our state public health people. In that partnership, we don’t have a controlling interest,” said Jones. “Where do we send these people with questions? Are they going to get a response? Can we officially ask our public health people and our county health officer to provide this information? This is bad, how this is going down. I was personally hoping to do better and we didn’t do very good today in my opinion.”

Espy agreed with Jones, adding that he did not see why the BOCCC could not have seen a draft of the mask mandate beforehand.

“We’re the leaders in the communities and yet we know nothing,” said Espy. “In today’s electronic age, we can move and we can do things better, faster and, I think, with more transparency. That’s what frustrated me in this.”

Jones added that she believed changes needed to be made to Title 35, which gives both the state and county health officers the authority to issue public health orders. While she stated the statute didn’t need to be thrown out, there did need to be more focus on local control.

“We need it, in my opinion, to the point where if a municipality has a problem that municipality can take action. Other municipalities don’t have to, or the whole county doesn’t have to,” Jones said. “Right now, in Carbon County, one size does not fit all and we just put everybody into ‘one size fits all’.” 

The mask mandate is available on the Carbon County website and went into effect on November 18. 

The next meeting of the Board of Carbon County Commissioners will be at 9 a.m. on December 1 at the Carbon County Courthouse in Rawlins