Richard L. Harvey, B.S., M.P.H.
on April 15, 2020 at 7:35 pm
What actual bills or actions are proposed??? I could not locate any proposed bills on this website for the special session planned for 04/16/2020 as I was led to believe would be available. The biggest threat to us in Utah is rushing to open everything up too soon. It makes no sense to try to open everything up in 8 weeks because no matter how low the rate is at that time, if covid19 is endemic in Utah at the time the smoldering cases will find sufficient non immune individuals to cause it to spread again. What the legislature needs to determine is how many lives we can afford to loose in order to rush to open up. From 30 years of work in Public Health here in Utah working to reduce indoor and outdoor air pollution, strengthen immunization requirements, reduce quackery and many other common sense public health reforms, that our State Government invariably choose to slow walk or choke off altogether most public and environmental health progress. The legislature most often placed more emphasis on business and extremist “conservative” ideology than in protecting public health. A good example of that was the 20 years and thousands of hours of effort it took to get meaningful tobacco smoke (Indoor Clean Air Act) regulation enacted. Remember, an illness that most likely will be no worse than maybe a bad cold to younger people, is in all likely-hood a death sentence to my generation!!!!????
What actual bills or actions are proposed??? I could not locate any proposed bills on this website for the special session planned for 04/16/2020 as I was led to believe would be available. The biggest threat to us in Utah is rushing to open everything up too soon. It makes no sense to try to open everything up in 8 weeks because no matter how low the rate is at that time, if covid19 is endemic in Utah at the time the smoldering cases will find sufficient non immune individuals to cause it to spread again. What the legislature needs to determine is how many lives we can afford to loose in order to rush to open up. From 30 years of work in Public Health here in Utah working to reduce indoor and outdoor air pollution, strengthen immunization requirements, reduce quackery and many other common sense public health reforms, that our State Government invariably choose to slow walk or choke off altogether most public and environmental health progress. The legislature most often placed more emphasis on business and extremist “conservative” ideology than in protecting public health. A good example of that was the 20 years and thousands of hours of effort it took to get meaningful tobacco smoke (Indoor Clean Air Act) regulation enacted. Remember, an illness that most likely will be no worse than maybe a bad cold to younger people, is in all likely-hood a death sentence to my generation!!!!????