HomeMy WebLinkAbout08.25.21 Board Correspondence - FW_ For delivery to the board
From:Paulsen, Shaina
To:Alpert, Bruce;Bennett, Robin;Clerk of the Board;Connelly, Bill;Cook, Holly;Cook, Robin;Hironimus, Patrizia;
Kimmelshue, Tod;Lucero, Debra;Paulsen, Shaina;Pickett, Andy;Reaster, Kayla;Ring, Brian;Ritter, Tami;
Sweeney, Kathleen;Teeter, Doug
Cc:York, Danette
Subject:Board Correspondence - FW: For delivery to the board
Date:Thursday, August 26, 2021 8:14:18 AM
Please see Board Correspondence below.
Shaina Paulsen
Administrative Assistant, Senior
Butte County Administration
25 County Center Drive, Suite 200
Oroville, CA 95965
T: 530.552.3304 | F: 530.538.7120
From: David Welch <davidwelch311@gmail.com>
Sent: Wednesday, August 25, 2021 8:25 PM
To: Clerk of the Board <clerkoftheboard@buttecounty.net>
Subject: For delivery to the board
ATTENTION: This message originated from outside Butte County. Please exercise judgment before opening
..
attachments, clicking on links, or replying.
I am operating on the assumption that I can send a single communication to you that will be
forwarded to the entire board. If that is not the case, I would appreciate it if you would let me
know. Thanks
To the Butte County Board of Supervisors
It has come to my attention that you will consider rescinding the declaration of emergency related
to COVID at your upcoming meeting. I feel that I must comment about that. Please forgive me if
this is a bit long and, perhaps, a bit personal.
I worked as an RN at Enloe Medical Center for 37 years, primarily as a patient educator. My
specialty was not infectious disease but I felt a need to make sure I was giving patients accurate
information and I did a lot of reading of both technical medical literature and non-technical health
information to keep up to date. I think I can safely say that interpretation of health information and
the detection of false health information are among my strong professional skills.
I still have many friends working in hospitals, both locally and in other cities. There is a profound
crisis going on in America’s health care system that will affect every one of us. We already were
short of nurses before this pandemic. America has never invested enough in training nurses and a
great many nurses around my age have retired in recent years. Now, with the stresses of the
pandemic, many nurses have reached the limit of their tolerance and are retiring or moving into
other work. The effects of this will be felt for many years in the future. One of the reasons that
nurses are leaving the profession is profound frustration with the current climate. Good friends of
mine come out of work at the end of a 12 hour shift that has become 14 hours and sit in their cars
and cry before they can pull themselves together to drive home. And then they go on social media
to vent about the stress they are experiencing and people call them liars liars and say that it’s all a
hoax.
One good friend talked to me about the agony of looking into the eyes of a 47 year old man just
before he was intubated, knowing the he was almost certain not to survive and hearing him ask “Will
I be OK?”. And then having some of his family members yell at her and saying it couldn’t really be
COVID because that was all a hoax.
Los Angeles and San Francisco have strict indoor mask mandates once again. As I write this, on
th
August 25, they have already passed the peak of this Delta Variant surge. Butte county numbers
are still rocketing upwards. Los Angeles hospitalization numbers peaked at about one-forth of the
numbers from the winter surge. Butte County numbers are nearly back up to the levels of the
winter.
Our premier hospital, Enloe, is staffing its telemetry floor at illegal levels because it doesn’t have the
nurses to do any better. That means that many of the patients admitted there are getting sub-
standard care. Not because management wants to give substandard care, but because they have no
choice. Multiple studies show that, when hospital units of any kind are understaffed, patients die.
And understaffing leads to nurse frustration and more nurses leaving, leading to still worse
understaffing.
I call on you to maintain the current state of emergency and, if anything to strengthen it. I ask you
to give the strongest possible support and back-up to the health department and give them all the
tools to do what is necessary.
Ignore the crazies and liars who come before you with their uninformed theories and listen to the
people who really know.
Thank you
David Welch
Chico.
Sent from Mail for Windows