Mandate is an act of compassion, selflessness

I take issue with Steven Bradshaw, Bonner County commissioner, after his recent diatribe against a public mask mandate by the Panhandle Health Department, in an attempt to slow the spread of COVID-19. What an embarrassment he is to our town and community government.

Mr. Bradshaw wants to decrease the Panhandle Health Department budget from a little over $250,000 to $1 to “make a statement." County commissioners are responsible for providing administrative services to Bonner County — a direct job description from the county website - not to make "statements," especially as a response to our public health department trying to save human life by slowing the spread of pandemic disease. 

Mr. Bradshaw appears to believe himself a medical expert (despite no medical training), stating what we are currently experiencing is not a pandemic. The definition of a pandemic is “a worldwide spread of a new disease." What are we experiencing with COVID-19 if not a pandemic, one which is stretching our healthcare resources, and most importantly, our healthcare workers, to their limits? 

He describes breath as "the very essence of life … there is no human right more fundamental than the right to breathe." Two of my children are frontline medical workers. Do they not also have “inalienable rights endorsed by our creator?" Do they not also have the right to breath as they care for our friends and neighbors who have fallen ill due to coronavirus? Mr. Bradshaw’s "right" to not wear a mask does not supersede my children’s right to breathe. Indeed, theirs may be the first face he sees if Mr. Bradshaw needs health care. Wearing a mask is a commitment to our community: to our family, friends, and neighbors, a commitment to protect their "fundamental right to breath" freely, not in a medically induced coma, being mechanically ventilated in an Intensive Care Unit. 

Who will help us coordinate a response to COVID-19 if the health department does not have funding? Is Mr. Bradshaw going to volunteer to triage patients when there are no more ventilators and still more sick people come to the doors of our hospitals? 

This mandate is not an attack on any freedoms, it is an act of compassion and selflessness. Something I guarantee Mr. Bradshaw's creator knows a thing or two about, even if Mr. Bradshaw does not. 

Let’s keep our health care providers and front line workers - not to mention our own friends and family - healthy. Wear a mask and do NOT defund Panhandle Health Department.

CYNTHIA DALSING, ARNP

Sandpoint