What you need to know about Stanislaus COVID emergency declarations
To all the people who paraded to the microphone at Tuesday’s Stanislaus County Board of Supervisors meeting apparently thinking that revoking a local emergency declaration would have a meaningful impact on their lives, here’s a news flash: It won’t.
They had passion and fervor. They exercised the privilege of publicly addressing our leaders — for about two hours, stridently demanding that supervisors cancel the COVID-19 emergency declaration. And unfortunately, all seemed misinformed about what an emergency declaration is, and who has power over it.
Let’s review.
Knowing that the world was about to get walloped by the coronavirus, Stanislaus Public Health Officer Julie Vaishampayan on March 11, 2020 declared a health emergency. County CEO Jody Hayes, acting in his then-capacity as director of emergency services, immediately declared a local emergency as well. Six days later, the five elected supervisors ratified both.
We’ll let it slide that no one speaking during Tuesday’s lengthy public comment period appreciated the distinction; it wasn’t publicized effectively at the time and hasn’t been discussed much since.
What people do need to know is what an emergency declaration does. In general terms, it authorizes the director of emergency services to issue orders bypassing elected leaders so things related to the emergency get done more quickly.
Since the pandemic’s onset, Hayes has passed the director of emergency services baton to Sheriff Jeff Dirkse. He’s the one — not elected supervisors — calling any shots under the emergency declaration, a point that no one Tuesday seemed to get.
Speaker after speaker made clear their opposition to vaccines and masks while demanding that the emergency declaration be erased. None seemed to understand that neither vaccines nor masks have anything to do with the declaration. None.
If you’re angry or surprised to hear this, answer this one question: Which of Dirkse’s orders, if canceled, would improve your life?
You can’t answer because you can’t name even one example of how the sheriff is imposing tyrannical rule to ruin your livelihood or happiness based on his special COVID-combating authority.
Dirkse isn’t ordering your children to wear masks at school. He isn’t forcing anyone to get shots. If you’ve heard anything about Dirkse related to the virus, it’s probably that he’s publicly said his deputies won’t enforce onerous state rules that nearly every speaker chafed about Tuesday.
Stanislaus leaders may act Feb. 8
Hayes told the crowd that supervisors — who do retain responsibility for ending emergency declarations — at their Feb. 8 meeting will revisit them, as have governing bodies in other areas. We’re sure to learn much more then.
Should they be revoked?
Of course not, for the health emergency. We’ve never had a worse public health crisis. As of Tuesday, 1,525 of our friends and neighbors have died, and 106,771 have been infected. Our hospitals are packed, and people are misusing emergency rooms to get COVID tests, taking up space desperately needed by others suffering real emergencies.
Some of the omicron surge will have passed by Feb. 8, but we won’t be out of the woods by then. And suddenly declaring that we are won’t make it so.
Yes, we’re all tired. We all want a return to normal, or something like it.
But demanding that leaders take meaningless action just to provide an empty victory to one side of the political divide isn’t going to get us there.
This story was originally published January 26, 2022 at 4:00 AM.
