Protect public health — vote ‘no’ on recall

I have a very particular perspective on both the current pandemic and the upcoming recall election. I spent 37 years as a nurse at Enloe Medical Center. My work was not with infectious disease but, as a patient educator, I developed considerable skill at understanding and interpreting medical information — both from the technical and the popular literature.

The current “Delta Variant” surge of the pandemic is amazingly variable — both across states and within states. Both in states across America and counties within California, places with high vaccination rates and high compliance with public health measures are doing pretty well. Places with low vaccination rates and poor compliance are seeing soaring infection rates and hospitals overwhelmed. I know nurses who are leaving the profession because they have reached the point of exhaustion. They just cannot take any more. And many of them are steaming with anger because so much of the suffering they see every day is totally preventable if only people would take advantage of the free and easily available vaccine.

In Florida and Texas, hospitals are drowning in patients while the governors of both states fight against basic common sense public health measures.

If the recall election should succeed, essentially ALL of the Republican candidates running to replace our governor have promised to roll back public health measures and make us more like Florida and

Texas. What sane person could possibly want that? Just Vote NO!

— David Welch, Chico