OKANOGAN — The Okanogan County Public Health Department's (OCPH) mission statement "is to promote health, prevent conditions of disease and/or disability, and to protect the health of the residents of Okanogan County", but many in the community believe that its Facebook page, at least, has been straying from that mission.
Near the center of this controversy, are two social media posts, which were added to the Department's official Facebook page - apparently by an authorized staff member, lamenting the passing of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on Friday, Sept 18th, 2020. One of the department's posts was sharing a post written by an academic who is very partisan for the political left, and who criticizes President Trump in nearly every post she makes.
Neither the fact of Justice Ginsburg's passing nor the Department's comments on it - on its official page - seemed particularly in keeping with the mission of Public Health, and, as these communications from the Department appeared to have significant partisan overtones, there were a number of people in the community who were speaking out and criticizing the posts in the public comment area underneath the main entries.
It wasn't too long before there were comments appearing in which individuals complained about their earlier comments being hidden or deleted. All the comments that were hidden appeared to be ones that were generally negative on the Department's actions. These censoring actions on certain comments only played further into the appearance of political bias from the Public Health Department that many of the commenter's were already quite unhappy about.
Later, the Department's staff appeared to give up on attempting to hide or remove the negative comments, responding to one individual with, "we have decided to go ahead and unhide it all, people can comment as they choose."
It seems that the Department was also in a quandary over whether it should keep their own troublesome posts or not, as later in the day, one post was initially deleted, but then reposted a short time later. But by late into the weekend, both posts ended up deleted for good.
It seems that OCPH didn't learn any lessons here though, as it wasn't even three weeks later that it posted the words of a statement from John Wiesman, Washington State Secretary of Health, which attacked President Trump for his positive outlook after have recovering from his bout with COVID-19, calling it "highly irresponsible".
I will be leaving the great Walter Reed Medical Center today at 6:30 P.M. Feeling really good! Don’t be afraid of Covid. Don’t let it dominate your life. We have developed, under the Trump Administration, some really great drugs & knowledge. I feel better than I did 20 years ago!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 5, 2020
The statement by Wiesman had at least a tangential relationship with public health, which is apparently why the OCPH's post quoting it is currently still available, as that was thin but sufficient cover to justify it. Though, as the statement came after Governor Inslee's own news release attacking President Trump's words, and the language of both attacks seemed quite harsh and overdone in comparison to the President's words that they were responding to, many people commenting on that post saw it as further evidence of more politically motivated bias by the Public Health Department.
Of course, it seems that the Secretary of Health may not be completely on the side of science here, as studies have shown an indisputable link between having a positive outlook and health benefits like lower blood pressure, less heart disease, better weight control and healthier blood sugar levels. The Mayo Clinic has an article from earlier this year on the health benefits of positive thinking. Johns Hopkins Medicine also had a study where their researchers found similar results. In another study, researchers found that activation in brain areas associated with negative emotions led to a weaker immune response to a flu vaccine.
Those researchers found that people who were optimistic about a specific and important part of their lives, such as how well they were doing in school, exhibited a stronger immune response than those who had a more negative view of the situation. In this time, shouldn't we be encouraging anything that might help with stronger immune responses?
There's another aspect to the evidence of political bias on the part of OCPH, as well. And it's one that the Public Health Department, as well as all Okanogan County departments, should be fully aware of, to avoid wasting taxpayer dollars on lawsuits.
In 2017, President Trump was sued by a free speech group, along with a number of Twitter users, for blocking those users from his personal account. Their lawsuit argues that the block “unconstitutionally restricts” the individual’s rights to read or participate in the public forum, to access public statements and to “petition the government for redress of grievances.” In May, 2018, the federal court determined that the president’s Twitter account is a public forum, and blocking people on the basis of viewpoint is a violation of the First Amendment. The case's various aspects were still working their way through the courts as recently as July, 2020, but on critical points the courts have been quite clear, and unanimous as well, that such blocking or restrictions is not acceptable under the law. U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Barrington D. Parker wrote in an opinion, that government officials can’t exclude people “from an otherwise open online dialogue because they expressed views with which the official disagrees.”
It seems pretty certain that the Okanogan County Public Health Department can't post whatever its employees wish on its official public Facebook page, and then remove or hide from view certain undesirable comments from the public on those same postings. The hypocritical attitude of the old saying, "rights for me, but not for thee" should be called out and corrected again and again wherever it crops up, and most especially when such an attitude is held by government officials.
Note: The Okanogan County Public Health Department, via Dr. John McCarthy, OCPH Health Officer, and Lauri Jones, OCPH Community Health Director, declined multiple requests for comment and questions regarding this article.
