Covid-19: Two more deaths reported in Mendocino County Monday
On Monday, the Mendocino County Public Health Office reported that two more county residents had died from Covid-19, describing both as not having been vaccinated against the virus.
According to a Sept. 13 press release, the 68th county resident to die from Covid-19 was described only as a 53-year-old Willits man, and the 69th person was described as a 69-year-old Ukiah man. County officials described both as not having been vaccinated.
However, Public Health Officer Dr. Andy Coren acknowledged during his last public update Friday that someone who has received only the first dose of a twoshot course of vaccines would still be classified as “not vaccinated,” as he said only those deemed “fully vaccinated” are listed as vaccinated, therefore those only partially vaccinated would be described as “not vaccinated.”
Also on Monday, Dr. Drew Colfax, who works with very ill Covid-19 patients every day as an emergency room physician at Adventist Health Ukiah Valley, told Alicia Bales of KZYX that he was very frustrated by Dr. Coren’s recent decision not to move forward with a vaccine mandate for employees and customers of restaurants and bars.
“I am flabbergasted; it really speaks to a lack of understanding about his responsibility as the Public Health Officer for the county,” Colfax said during the weekly Coronavirus Update aired Monday afternoons on KZYX. “It bespeaks a political decision, an expedient decision, but it is craven; it is going to result in extended mortality and morbidity in this county, (and) it’s going to affect us all in a way that is completely unacceptable.”
“We need a vaccine requirement, which doesn’t mean that we’re going to hold you down and force you to get vaccinated. It means that in order to participate in certain activities that put the rest of us at risk, you need to be vaccinated,” he continued. “So if you don’t want to be vaccinated, you can stay home. You can stay out of indoor establishments. But if you want to work in a public service venue, then you need to be vaccinated.”
Coren previously announced that he was drafting an order requiring that employees of businesses serving food require employees to either be vaccinated or undergo frequent testing, and that customers wanting to eat indoors be vaccinated, but he reversed course after meeting with several business owners who objected to the mandate.
On Friday, Coren announced that he would instead require food establishments to post signs detailing the vaccination status of its employees, a plan he said would provide “transparency, consumer protection, and allow people their personal freedoms.
However, Colfax argued that, “Public Health is not an individual choice; Public Health is a policy that needs to be designed to protect public health.” As an example, Colfax pointed to the orders issued by the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office Sunday that required residents near the Hopkins Fire in Calpella to evacuate.
“You don’t hear a lot of people saying, ‘It’s my right to drive down this road because I want to,” Colfax said of people ignoring roadblocks imposed during fires to keep them safe. “And if that person did, he would be widely viewed as an imbecile, endangering the lives of others. It’s the same with the vaccine and public health, (but) that doesn’t seem to penetrate into this Public Health Department, despite the fact that we’re paying not one, but two doctors to do nothing other than craft a coherent policy to keep us safe.”
Colfax said he did like the idea of having signs on businesses declaring vaccination status, much like the “Michelin star rating, but that’s not a coherent public health policy, that’s Facebook policy.”
“And we’re still sitting on patients in the ER who are waiting 36, 48 hours to get to a center where they need to be transferred, (because) there are still very, very tight beds all over Northern California, driven almost entirely, currently, by the unvaccinated population,” Colfax said.