So the Solano County Board of Supervisors, in a decision split along gender lines, voted 3-2 on Sept. 14 to say no to vaccine and protective mask mandates for all county employees and contractors.
To their credit, however, the five-member board agreed to allow cities to determine their own vaccine or mask policies, as have the cities of Vacaville, Vallejo and Benicia.
Just before they voted, the county leaders were reminded that the cities of Vallejo and Benicia have passed ordinances requiring almost all people to wear a mask indoors in public buildings. In Benicia, it includes grocery stores, commercial office buildings, and restaurants.
The vote — Mitch Mashburn, John Vasquez and Jim Spering clicked the ‘no’ buttons, while Erin Hannigan and Monica Brown clicked the ‘yes’ buttons — came as something of a surprise to all those who expected the majority of county leaders to affirm the need to help control, if not end, the COVID-19 pandemic in our GPS location on Earth and have county employees join the nearly 64 percent of the U.S. population that has received at least one dose of the vaccine and, at the same time, join most reasonable folks who believe the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines that state masks help to tamp down transmission. Have some of them forgotten that Vacaville made national news in the spring of last year as the first U.S. locale to record community spread?
After the vote, which came as an agenda item toward the end of the Election Day meeting in the County Government Center in Fairfield, I couldn’t help but wonder about the three male supervisors’ reasoning for their decisions.
However, during the discussion preceding the vote, Hannigan, who represents parts of Vallejo, stressed the importance of getting vaccinated “in order to support people who cannot be vaccinated” and be at-risk to contract the highly communicable respiratory disease and possibly face hospitalization and death.
Her comments came as the Johns Hopkins University recently reported daily U.S. COVID fatalities have reached nearly 2,000 for the first time since March, with health experts saying the virus is searching out primarily one specific group: 71 million unvaccinated Americans.
She also noted a Vallejo Times-Herald newspaper report about the unenviable rate of vaccinations among law enforcement departments countywide, which in some cases is little more than 15 percent, thus putting people at risk because officers are in daily contact with the public. “It’s not political,” said Hannigan. “It’s about health. I know some people who have died of COVID. It’s preventable.”
At one point, as I was settling down into my seat in the supervisor’s chamber and preparing to take notes, it appeared she made a reference to Cal/OSHA and possibly alluded to Title 8, Section 5199 of the state code of regulations, which is a lengthy outline of standards institutions must immediately implement to protect certain staff from aerosol transmissible diseases.
If anyone’s wondering what the state law’s definition of “aerosol transmissible pathogen” is, it is “any novel or unknown pathogen,” which SARS-CoV2, the virus that causes COVID-19, is.
The District 3 supervisor, Spering said masks provide “a false sense of security” and suggest that if you “get a mask and you won’t need to get vaccinated.”
“The real focus ought to be telling people to be vaccinated,” added Spering, who represents Fairfield and Suisun City and nearby parts of west Solano.
Be that as it may, he conceded that there is a “segment” of the population that “is just not going to get vaccinated.”
Yes, that’s true and pride cometh before the fall — or, in the case of our ongoing pandemic era, disease and possibly hospitalization and death.
Mashburn, who represents parts of Vacaville and the eastern part of Solano that includes Rio Vista, said, “I wear a mask. I wear it by choice. I want to make sure it’s a choice,” and law enforcement officers, added the former Solano County Jail commander, “are citizens” and “have a right” not to wear a mask or be vaccinated if they choose.
He said medical decisions are personal and the county should not “be mandating a vaccine.”
To me, his argument called to mind the anti-abortion slogan, “It’s not a choice — it’s a child.”
By that same reasoning, therefore, could not a person argue that getting a vaccine and wearing a mask in public spaces is not a choice — it’s an innocent child or adult who has a right not to be infected by anyone who believes the issue is a personal one and in the political realm of freedom to choose.
We are essentially at war with COVID. We need to mobilize as a county, state and nation and get those holding out for whatever reason or reasons — yes, some of them medical and faith-based justifications — to consider sacrificing selfish needs for the moment in order to boost this war effort.
Since when has it become OK for a person to die of a preventable illness?
Perhaps as voters, we should take “personal responsibility” and find more socially, politically and medically conscious people to represent our districts.
Let us resolve to turn the corner on sadness, grief, a sense of helplessness and despair.
Richard Bammer is a Reporter staff writer.
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