Don’t throw Tacoma-Pierce public health workers into further chaos during pandemic

We are in the middle of our third surge of the unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic of 2020. I’ve been a physician for 30 years and have never seen our hospitals and medical community grapple with a threat of this duration and magnitude.

Our teams are seeing record numbers of new daily cases, surging hospitalizations and alarming predictions of increasing deaths. Our doctors, nurses and public health workers are exhausted.

As a nation, state and community, we anxiously wait for the breakthrough therapies that will, in the months to come, bring our lives back to normal.

We are in a fight for people’s lives and livelihoods. It is impossible to understand why two members of the Pierce County Council, with no prior discussion with partners or the community, chose this moment to introduce a bill to dissolve the long-standing Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department and rush towards a dissolution that will have profound impacts on how Pierce County residents are served.

At this moment, our public health workers are focused on the task at hand, saving lives and defeating COVID-19. They should not be distracted by a rushed effort to tear down our first line of defense.

A capricious move to dismantle TPCHD at this critical juncture puts those in greatest need at highest risk. This type of short-sighted action is the opposite of what our council should be doing in the middle of the most dangerous part of the pandemic.

I’ve been on Pierce County’s Board of Health for over four years. I can attest to the staff’s dedication and unsung work on high-profile issues such as the opioid epidemic, infant mortality in high risk populations and gun violence.

We also work on more seemingly mundane issues such as ensuring access to clean water and safe food. These issues touch every neighborhood in every part of our county.

However, nothing has prepared us for, nor has any issue engaged the public more, than this year’s pandemic.

We are all exhausted, angry and despondent. Like prior American generations who faced a crisis, we can persevere, but only if we focus, together, on defeating this pandemic.

We can now see the light at the end of the tunnel, but these months ahead will be our hardest yet. We must allow our public health workers to stay focused on their work, not throw them into further chaos.

There’s no question we need to take stock of our public health system and how to best prepare for our increasingly complex future public health needs — not just against communicable diseases like COVID-19, but all our ongoing environmental and public health challenges.

Our communities must be part of that conversation. There are profound ramifications associated with dissolution of the TPCHD. We need rigorous analysis and debate. But the time for that is not as we’re entering the hardest final hours of the pandemic.

I implore the Pierce County Council to defer its upcoming vote. Let’s have this conversation after our community is safe. Do not divide, disenfranchise and dissolve partnerships for the sake of political expediency.

William K. Hirota of Steilacoom is a volunteer Board member of the TPCHD, a staff physician for CHI Franciscan and immediate past president of the Washington State Medical Association.