Bonner County Daily Bee

I take difficulty with Steven Bradshaw, Bonner County commissioner, just after his recent diatribe against a general public mask mandate by the Panhandle Health Department, in an endeavor to slow the unfold of COVID-19. What an humiliation he is to our city and local community federal government.

Mr. Bradshaw desires to lessen the Panhandle Health Department spending budget from a minimal above $250,000 to $1 to “make a statement.” County commissioners are responsible for providing administrative services to Bonner County — a direct work description from the county website – not to make “statements,” in particular as a response to our public health department striving to help save human lifetime by slowing the spread of pandemic illness. 

Mr. Bradshaw appears to believe himself a medical expert (irrespective of no medical education), stating what we are at present suffering from is not a pandemic. The definition of a pandemic is “a around the world distribute of a new sickness.” What are we dealing with with COVID-19 if not a pandemic, a single which is stretching our healthcare resources, and most importantly, our healthcare personnel, to their limitations? 

He describes breath as “the really essence of life … there is no human right much more fundamental than the appropriate to breathe.” Two of my young children are frontline medical staff. Do they not also have “inalienable legal rights endorsed by our creator?” Do they not also have the right to breath as they care for our mates and neighbors who have fallen ill owing to coronavirus? Mr. Bradshaw’s “correct” to not don a mask does not supersede my children’s suitable to breathe. In truth, theirs may well be the first deal with he sees if Mr. Bradshaw needs health care. Putting on a mask is a motivation to our local community: to our family members, good friends, and neighbors, a dedication to secure their “essential ideal to breath” freely, not in a medically induced coma, currently being mechanically ventilated in an Intense Care Unit. 

Who will support us coordinate a reaction to COVID-19 if the health department does not have funding? Is Mr. Bradshaw going to volunteer to triage people when there are no far more ventilators and still far more ill people arrive to the doors of our hospitals? 

This mandate is not an assault on any freedoms, it is an act of compassion and selflessness. Anything I assure Mr. Bradshaw’s creator is aware a detail or two about, even if Mr. Bradshaw does not. 

Let’s preserve our health care companies and front line personnel – not to mention our individual close friends and family members – healthy. Don a mask and do NOT defund Panhandle Health Department.

CYNTHIA DALSING, ARNP

Sandpoint