In the past year, Central District Health, which services Ada, Boise, Elmore and Valley counties, has delivered more than 4,600 immunizations to prevent everything from influenza to measles.
On Friday, May 9, the district’s board of health heard a lengthy and sometimes emotional debate on whether to discontinue one of those vaccines. Since July 2024, CDH has administered over 300 COVID vaccines; and that’s something, constituent Sydney Buffington told the board, that should absolutely continue.
“Please do not deny this vaccine that’s the first line of defense for the elderly, immunocompromised and the people that care and love for them,” said Buffington. “And please do not erode the trust of public health.”
But what followed for the better part of an hour, was a series of online presentations from out-of-state COVID vaccine skeptics, each invited by some of the board’s own skeptics. One of the invitees was Michigan-based biologist Christina Sparks who insisted, “This is about the fact that this genetic vaccine technology is not safe.”
But a representative of caregivers inside Idaho pushed back hard. Dr. Alejandro Necochea, chair of the Idaho Medical Association’s public health committee urged the board to beware of what he called "a resurgence of anti-COVID vaccine campaigns."
“Many proponents leading the push for this vote have unfairly attacked the integrity of public health professionals. They have compared physicians who recommended COVID vaccines to Nazi war criminals,” said Necochea. “Their presentations are more effective in bamboozling the audience rather than educating.”
Board member and family nurse practitioner Jane Young said that was enough for her to propose that the board tap the brakes on any effort to halt the vaccines. “I'd like to move that we table the topic,” she motioned.
Those voting against Young’s motion were board chair Greg Ferch, a chiropractor, Clay Tucker, and Dr. Ryan Cole, a Garden City pathologist who has regularly promoted falsehoods about the vaccine. In fact, Cole went as far as insisting that the board order testing of existing COVID vaccines at CDH for what he claimed was "contamination."
But the majority of the board voted to table the issue indefinitely, with registered nurse Betty Ann Nettleton, Elmore County commissioner Crystal Rodgers and Valley County commissioner Katlin Caldwell joining Young in voting “yes.”
With that, COVID-19 vaccines are still available within the four-county jurisdiction of Central District Health.
Find reporter George Prentice @georgepren
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