Commissioners elevate Bernhard to county health board

In a surprise move, Lincoln County commissioners last week appointed to the health board a Eureka town councilor who deems masks ineffective, the pandemic overwrought and COVID-19 vaccines unsafe.

Commissioners were looking for a resident from north Lincoln County to take a seat opened up by former member George Jamison’s departure. On Jan. 13, the health board nominated Jeffery Peterson of Eureka for the position in a narrow vote. Peterson was one of six to apply for the job.

But after lobbying from north county residents, commissioners rejected the health board’s recommendation in favor of Scott Bernhard, a U.S. Army veteran, firefighter and town councilor.

Bernhard’s supporters packed the commissioners’ monthly meeting in Eureka on Jan. 20 to advocate on his behalf. Attendees included members of a resident group opposed to pandemic restrictions that has called on commissioners to dismantle the health board, oust the county health officer and ignore Helena’s pandemic requirements.

Resident Diane Watson, who called the pandemic a “biological experiment,” described Bernhard to commissioners as a lifelong resident who understood and would represent the interests of his neighbors — and not just the medical community.

“We want to see somebody who does bring a different point of view,” Watson said. “I just want somebody who is going to be a voice for us. I am not interested in being steamrolled and being told this is what you have to think.”

Karla Westbrook, another Eureka area resident, described the health board’s nominee as an establishment choice. Prior to getting nominated, Peterson, who has a background in academia and communications, was working on the health department’s public outreach effort as a contractor.

“No matter how good his qualifications, he is another establishment, south county shoo-in,” she said. “I do think and believe that [Bernhard] is our best choice and he is one of us.”

County commissioners rarely override board recommendations. In this case, County Commissioner Mark Peck (D-1) stressed a reoccurring theme in recent weeks, that the health board needed non-medical professionals as well as health workers.

Pandemics aside, the board focuses on issues including sanitation and air quality, subjects where medical expertise isn’t necessary, Peck said. Jamison, the outgoing board member, was an engineer by training.

“I think we need diversity on that board,” he said. “I don’t want a bunch of doctors deciding sanitation any more than I want a bunch of sanitarians deciding medicine.”

But geographical concerns and the health board’s perceived approach to the pandemic rest at the heart of the changes to the panel’s membership. The push to give north Lincoln County more representation emerged only after pandemic measure opponents’ efforts at getting the panel disbanded or reformed with like-minded individuals failed. Many of the residents who urged commissioners to add seats for the Eureka area previously sought to have the board purged and pandemic restrictions ignored locally.

Despite the public ire directed at the health board, the panel has never backed any of Health Officer Dr. Brad Black’s local orders and had no say in how the state responded to the pandemic. Still, members are accused of trampling the Constitution and acting tyrannically.

Jamison departed the board explicitly to free up one of three at-large seats appointed by commissioners for a north county resident. That puts three Eureka area residents on the board, including that city’s designated representative, Debra Armstrong, and County Commissioner Josh Letcher (D-3), who took Peck’s spot on the board last month as part of the reshuffle.

While Letcher has trod carefully when it comes to the county’s pandemic response, Armstrong has criticized Black’s approach to the crisis, including his attempts to craft new local health orders and promote vaccinations.

With Bernhard’s ascension, Armstrong likely has an ally on the board. In an interview after commissioners voted unanimously to appoint him to the health board, Bernhard said he would not support any measures that infringe on personal liberties, like requiring face masks in public spaces.

As for masks, he believes health officials made the right call early on in the pandemic by discouraging them.

“There is not a mask on this planet that will filter a virus,” Bernhard said. “It doesn’t matter who makes it, it doesn’t matter where it’s from … it’s not an effective means of filtration on viruses.”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommend mask use, and cloth masks in particular, because they help prevent the spread of droplets laden with the virus between people. Masks are most effective when both parties are wearing them, according to the CDC.

But Bernhard dismissed the CDC — as well as information reported in traditional media outlets — in favor of doing his own research.

“You can’t even count on the CDC any more. In 2017, the CDC suggested that masks were not an effective means of filtering out particles and smoke from a wildfire. Those smoke particles are a heck of a lot larger than a virus,” Bernhard said, citing a widely circulated and debunked argument.

The CDC agrees that surgical and cloth masks will not protect against harmful particles in smoke, but the coverings are meant instead to block the spread of virus-laden droplets. Those respiratory droplets are much larger than smoke particles.

More realistic measures to fight off the coronavirus, according to Bernhard, include boosting your immune system. While he does not deny that COVID-19 claims lives, Bernhard questioned its lethality.

“I’m not saying that the virus doesn’t exist, I’m not even saying that it doesn’t kill people, because, yes, it does, but there are things we can do to boost our immune system against it,” he said.

Bernhard offered a common observation: If the coronavirus were so deadly, why aren’t frontline health workers donning full body suits as when dealing with Ebola?

Ebola is deadlier than the coronavirus, boasting a fatality rate of up to 90 percent, but usually around 50 percent. It also spreads through bodily fluids — blood, urine, feces, saliva and so on — meaning that workers that come into close contact with patients face more routes of possible transmission. Ebola patients often bleed from their orifices and suffer from vomiting and diarrhea.

Coronavirus must instead pass through the mouth, nose or eyes to mucous membranes. Because it does not require human contact to jump from person to person, health officials consider the coronavirus much more contagious in the general population.

Bernhard said five of his close relatives, both young and old, contracted the coronavirus. Not one needed medical intervention, Bernhard said. The only time they saw a health worker was when they got tested for the virus.

But the coronavirus has strained medical systems nationally, leading to a shortfall in the quality of care. Patients 49-years-old and younger, the demographic thought to be most robust against the coronavirus, still accounted for 22.1 percent of hospitalizations in the week ending Jan. 16, according to the CDC.

Many public health experts, including Black, see mass vaccination as the way out of the coronavirus crisis. Two vaccines, one produced by Pfizer and the other by Moderna, have received FDA approval. Black, the county health officer, recently called on health board members to serve as vaccine ambassadors to the community. Armstrong immediately pushed back, citing safety concerns about the vaccines.

Bernhard, too, will not be recommending vaccination.

He pointed to the decades of research spent unsuccessfully developing an HIV vaccine. Given that, how could you trust a vaccine developed within the relatively short time the coronavirus has been a threat, he asked.

“I’ve put a lot of thinking into it. There is no way I am going to recommend to anybody that they get vaccinated,” Bernhard said. “The tests were rushed, the tests were not completed and they are inaccurate.”

The vaccines for the coronavirus are among the quickest created in history. But funding and past efforts to study related viruses, which can lead to severe respiratory syndrome and Middle East respiratory syndrome, have aided the speed of development, according to the scientific journal Nature.

Operation Warp Speed, launched by former President Donald Trump, funneled billions into the effort. Guaranteed money let vaccine developers run multiple trials simultaneously.

That’s not the case with efforts to find a vaccine for HIV. According to Discover Magazine, HIV is particularly difficult because it hides from the immune system, giving itself a jump on infection before the body responds. Antibodies are produced years later, but by then, HIV has worn down the immune system.

This deception — HIV presents as a normal looking protein — has complicated vaccine development efforts.

The other difficulty is access to money. While funding is available for small and short-term studies, many HIV researchers are stuck endlessly requesting grants, Wilton Williams, an assistant professor at Duke University School of Medicine, told Discover Magazine. Potentially successful vaccine projects can fail if the dollars dry up.

That’s not been the case for researchers developing the coronavirus vaccines.

As for residents interested in receiving the vaccine — local health officials have reported a deluge of inquiries — Bernhard said he would not try to dissuade them.

But Bernhard hopes the board will loosen its focus on the pandemic once he joins the panel. Prior to the coronavirus, health officials dealt with a variety of issues that have seemingly disappeared from the board’s agenda, he said.

As an example, he said that the board previously received updates on the prevalence of sexually transmitted diseases in the county’s public schools. He also wants to know more about the health department’s work to regulate public swimming pools and hot tubs in the county.

“Right now, Covid has everybody’s attention, but the board of health is very wide encompassing,” Bernhard said, describing the fixation on the pandemic as shortchanging residents.

“There are many things they receive that are as important to public safety, and yet I have not heard any reports from the department of health or from the board of health on these important issues,” he said.