The Kitsap Public Health Board last Tuesday delayed consideration of a proposed resolution first brought up at its September meeting that would encourage local businesses to voluntarily implement COVID-19 requirements. The board has expressed opposition to making such a requirement mandatory.
Dr. Gib Morrow, Kitsap Public Health District's health officer, said it would nice to get some “final direction” from the board regarding the resolution, which was proposed by health board member and Bremerton Mayor Greg Wheeler.
Wheeler said the motion was still ready to go. “I believe it’s important for our community to have some certainty from their health board,” he said. He moved to pass the resolution, but his motion didn’t receive a second, and the board continued to discussing it.
One of the main points of opposition from the board to the resolution was uncertainty about whether it would conflict with federal guidelines coming down the pike from OSHA that would require workplaces with 100 or more employees to require that their employees be vaccinated.
On Nov. 6, after the board's meeting, a federal judge temporarily blocked implementation of the OSHA rule, stating that "there are grave statutory and constitutional issues with the Mandate," and casting at least some doubt on whether the rule will survive court challenges.
Board member and Kitsap County Commissioner Ed Wolfe said Wheeler’s motion states that the board “does not intend to require vaccinations for employees of government agencies.”
“We’re waiting for the White House to decide on mandatory vaccinations for county officials as part of the president’s vaccination policy,” he said, adding that his understanding is that state and local governments will be required to adopt rules within 30 days that are as strict or stricter than the OSHA rule. “So we’ll have to go through our own rule-making process here, if our legal interpretation is correct. So a lot of moving parts, another reason why I’m not ready to move forward with any resolution today.”
Board member and Poulsbo Mayor Becky Erickson agreed with Wolfe that the board should hold off pending the federal government’s workplace rules, suggesting that the board wait until its next scheduled meeting in December.
“We should have a better idea about what the federal government and the state are going to do regarding work rules,” she said.
Morrow suggested the board could at least endorse the parts of the resolution that encouraged vaccination. “I think there is a lot of uncertainty out there amongst the business community about us making them the vaccine police,” he said. “That has never, ever, ever been the intention on my part and I know it has not been yours.
"I do think that I would strongly encourage local businesses that want our business to consider doing vaccination requirements," he continued. "I know that businesses around the state have done that and really to the benefit of their employees, to the patrons and to their bottom line. I think if we can encourage local businesses to do that voluntarily that’s not a government intervention, it’s a self-determination which I think even the most libertarian amongst us would still support. … At least if I could get an unequivocal endorsement of the critical importance of vaccination, and a request to local businesses that they consider implementing their own vaccination requirements, I would be grateful.”
Board member and Port Orchard Mayor Rob Putaansuu said the resolution should be put on the board's agenda before being voted on. “This first item on what Dr. Morrow’s asking for, I could support that,” he said, noting that he sided with Wolfe and Erickson on holding off with the language on workplaces until OSHA’s rule was finalized. “I don’t think it’s appropriate right now. I think that needs to be put on our agenda and to a proper process and not on the fly here at the end of a meeting."
Wheeler argued that any state or federal mandates would supersede any resolutions passed by the health board. “We all know the state and federal mandates supersede local mandates, local decisions we make, and so this would only be a gesture from us, locally, to provide certainty to our community,” he said. “As soon as the state and … federal guidance comes in, that takes precedence. And I’ve been hearing from my constituents that they need certainty and I’ve been hearing from the … health administration that we need to close the proposal up, button it up, and be done and ready for … anything that’s coming next.”
Health District Administrator Keith Grellner said the resolution wasn’t on the agenda because it was not an action item, but merely part of a discussion started at the September meeting “when our case rate was three times what it is now.”
“Just to be clear, there is no motion on the table for a vaccine mandate,” he said. “The board was pretty clear with us and that’s why it’s not on the agenda. These are discussion items that we’ve been having.”
Grellner said the December meeting is packed and suggested that if the council wants to discuss Wheeler’s resolution further, it may be best to hold a separate meeting to do so.
Board member and Kitsap County Commissioner Robert Gelder argued that the board didn't need a separate meeting to take action on the resolution.
"I don't think that there is a need for a separate meeting," he said. "What I'm hearing is that there's basically consensus that any mandate is off the table. What we're looking at potentially endorsing would be just the support for vaccines as a tool in combatting the COVID pandemic."
It's the board's usual practice to print what the board would be endorsing to include in the meeting agenda for total transparency, he noted.
"I would say mandates are off the table and we have other work we need to move on to," he said.
Board member and Kitsap County Commissioner Charlotte Garrido said the discussion would be continued at a later time.
At last Tuesday's meeting, Morrow provided the board with an update on how COVID-19 is affecting the county.
He noted that he signed on as the county's health officer to a letter to the state board of health and to Gov. Jay Inslee requesting that school-based mandates not be enacted for children prior to full FDA approval of the COVID-19 vaccines.
COVID-19 case rates in Kitsap County are still high, but cases are decreasing, Morrow said. The rate in children ages 5-18 remains a bit elevated compared to the general population, but the gap has narrowed since late September, he added.
Hospitalizations and deaths are also dropping, but remain above the levels seen throughout the first calendar year of the pandemic, he said. Outbreaks are also tapering off a bit.
“We celebrate success in public health, and this is certainly a milestone,” he said, although he encouraged the 1 in 4 residents who haven't yet started their vaccinations to do so.
Morrow said based on local statistics, being unvaccinated increases your risk of hospitalization 10-fold for those under the age of 60. It increases the risk of dying 13-fold for those under 70, he said.
Morrow emphasized that misinformation and disinformation are twin challenges facing the country’s vaccination efforts. He said the CDC defines misinformation as “false information shared by people who don’t intend to mislead others,” and defines disinformation as “false information deliberately created and disseminated with malicious intent.”
“Both types … can affect vaccine confidence, vaccination rates, and undermine public health efforts that we know work, such as masking, distancing, ventilation, and other interventions that are all proven to be safe and effective,” he said.
COVID-19 has been a perfect storm for misinformation, Morrow said. “People are appropriately afraid, or at least concerned, about their own risk, which makes us more psychologically vulnerable and act to aggressively seek out all the information we can find,” he said. “This is occurring at a time when social media and the internet are providing an enormous availability of information of wide ranging levels of reliability. Unfortunately, much of this information is either inadvertently inaccurate, or intentionally deceptive.
“People tend to believe what they see first and what they see most, with a bias to put their trust in sources they know or are familiar with, rather than the government, or science, or some random public health official they just simply don’t know,” he continued.
Morrow pointed to claims about data from VAERS — the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System — as an example of how misinformation can contain a kernel of truth but ultimately feed people false information. VAERS, which is run by the CDC, collects data on any adverse events following vaccination from any source, whether it’s caused by the vaccine or is merely coincidental, he said. But the system is not designed to make a determination as to whether the vaccine caused the adverse event; for example, if someone was killed in a car accident on the way home from getting vaccinated, the death could be reported to VAERS, even though the vaccine didn’t cause the death, he said.
“These types of data can be very effectively used by people wanting to spread mis- or disinformation to mislead people who don’t have the time or the inclination to do the hard work to understand the inaccurate conclusions that can be generated,” Morrow said.
