Category: Pandemic

Conspiracy theories, Coronavirus pandemic, Dangerous Republicans, Embarrassing Republicans, Extremism, Health, Janet Rowland, Pandemic, Weird western slope stuff

County teeing up new Public Health Board members to fire Dr. Jeff Kuhr as longtime Director of Mesa County Public Health Dept., despite being told there is “insufficient evidence” of wrongdoing

by Anne Landman • June 3, 2023 • 4 Comments

Jeff Kuhr won plaudits for helping Mesa County get through the Covid-19 pandemic.

If Mesa County Commissioner Janet Rowland gets her way, the new, temporary members recently intstalled on the Mesa County Board of Public Health (BOPH) will do the Commissioners’ bidding and fire longtime Mesa County Health Department Director Dr. Jeff Kuhr, even though there is insufficient evidence of any financial wrongdoing by Kuhr and even though a large majority of the local public thinks the county commissioners are engaging in a blatant overreach of their authority.

Results of Daily Sentinel survey about the County Commissioners’ multi-pronged attacks on the Board of Public Health and Jeff Kuhr, as of 6/3/2023

The BOPH is scheduled to meet this Monday, June 5, at 1:00 p.m. at the Workforce Center in Business Center D. Item #9 on their agenda is to “Consider appointment of interim director” of the Health Department.

This portends the firing Jeff Kuhr after 12 years of public service as an effective Director of the Mesa County Public Health Department and a person who won Citizen of the Year in 2021 for helping get our community through the pandemic, and all for no substantiated reason.

Firing Kuhr will likely cost taxpayers even more — in the hundreds of thousands of dollars more than this fight has already cost — in severance money that will be paid to Kuhr as well as for the County to fight threatened lawsuit. Kuhr has retained Tim Foster as his attorney and has said if he is fired he will likely sue the county for defamation of character, harassment and hostile workplace, at a minimum.

The Monday, June 5 meeting is open to the public. It will be at the Workforce Center at located at 519 29 1/2 Road, on the north side of the Health and Human Services building, which is on the corner of North and 29 1/2. To get to Business Center D, it would be best to enter on the north side of the Workforce Center. However, there are people who will guide folks to the room from the south entrance as well.

District Attorney: “insufficient evidence” of wrongdoing by Kuhr

The County Commissioners spent $49,000 of taxpayer money on a financial audit of Kuhr that showed the Health Department has failed to follow the County’s procurement procedures to the letter. They also found Kuhr spent $219 in government funds on alcohol at a team-building dinner held for his employees as the pandemic was resolving. Buying alcohol with government funds is not allowed. Kuhr admitted the error and has long since paid back the $219. After these items were discovered, on May 12 the Commissioners and BOPH agreed in writing to a set of measures that would assure procurements by the Health Department would follow County policy more closely in the future, but the commissioners have refused to give that agreement a chance and resumed working to push Kuhr out.

Janet Rowland probably did the most damage to efforts to control Covid-19 through her campaign in 2020, where she denigrated masking and embraced Q-Anon conspiracy theories about Covid-19.

Mesa County District Attorney Dan Rubinstein, who investigated the Commissioners’ claims of financial wrongdoing by Kuhr, announced on May 27th that he found insufficient evidence of any financial wrongdoing by Kuhr, and had officially closed the case against him.

Rowland got herself appointed as the 5th member of the BOPH, as a way to put even more pressure on the BOPH to fire Kuhr.

Four former members of the BOPH — Will Hays, Errol Snider, Gretchen Gore and Deborah Monaghan — all resigned on May 24, 2023 en masse to protest the Commissioners’ threat to fire them if they refused to fire Kuhr — a move that would likely have been illegal under Colorado law. They all believed there was insufficient evidence to fire Kuhr.

Why is Janet Rowland working so hard to fire Kuhr?

We can only speculate, but after taking office in 2021, Rowland announced in an article in the Daily Sentinel that she was going to populate her “cabinet” with people who agree with her personal ideology. Rowland campaigned for office in 2020 in large part by showcasing her antipathy towards public health. During her campaign, and before Covid vaccines were available, Rowland railed against Covid-19 precautions like masking and social distancing, and spread disinformation about Covid-19 on her social media accounts that was linked to QAnon.

Janet Rowland played down the death rate from Covid-19 during her 2020 campaign for Commissioner, without considering the crushing effects of the virus on overrun medical systems, the suffering and expense to society of long-haul Covid survivors, or the suffering and devastating losses to family members left behind after their loved ones died from Covid. As of April 26, 2023, Covid has killed more than 1.1 million Americans.

Rowland’s Facebook posts claimed Covid-19 was no more deadly than the flu. She agitated against the temporary shutdown of non-essential businesses, one of the only tools available at the time to limit the spread of what then was a highly communicable and deadly virus. Rowland also promoted Alex Jones’ “InfoWars” conspiracy theory that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control was intentionally inflating the number of Covid deaths, claiming hospitals got more funding if people died of Covid.

Now Rowland is dead-set on taking over the Mesa County Public Health Department in order to install someone as Director who thinks like she does. Her previous terms as county commissioner were also marked by a high churn in department heads. During Janet Rowland’s previous time as county commissioner (2005-2015), the county had three different administrators and four different DHS directors.

The Monday, June 5 BOPH meeting is open to the public. The Workforce Center is at 519 29 1/2 Road, on the north side of the Health and Human Services building, which is on the corner of North and 29 1/2. To get to that conference room it would be best to enter on the north side of the Workforce Center. However, people will guide folks to the room from the south entrance as well. Here’s the agenda:

Item #9 on the agenda represents the firing of Jeff Kuhr. To protest it, show up at the meeting and tell the new BOPH members you oppose it.

Conspiracy theories, Dangerous Republicans, Economics, Extremism, Health, Janet Rowland, Pandemic, Public health, Safety, Scams

Mesa County Commissioners working to seize control of Mesa County Board of Public Health

by Anne Landman • May 19, 2023 • 34 Comments

MCPHD Director Jeff Kuhr, Ph.D. won plaudits for helping Mesa County get through the Covid-19 pandemic

Mesa County Public Health Department (MCPHD) Director Dr. Jeff Kuhr has been under attack by the Mesa County Commissioners, who for some reason have been working for months to generate credible reasons to fire him. Commissioner Janet Rowland in particular has targeted Kuhr, accusing him of financial impropriety and grievous errors in MCPHD’s procurement processes. The Commissioners have ordered the Mesa County Board of Public Health to fire Kuhr, but they refused, saying there is no actual evidence that he’s intentionally done anything wrong. Not only that, but the State of Colorado rates MCPHD as having the lowest possible financial risk (pdf) in its compliance with federal and state contracts, making it clear that the state trusts MCPHD, but our right wing commissioners don’t. (This financial risk rating is done every three years, but the state skipped it during the pandemic. The MCPHD is currently undergoing this analysis again.)

“Gold standard” medical study finds Ivermectin does not reduce risk of severe Covid-19

by Anne Landman • April 4, 2022 • 106 Comments

A large number of Mesa County residents harbor the mistaken belief that the anti-parasitic drug Ivermectin, used to de-worm horses and prevent heart worm in dogs, can treat Covid-19, even though the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) says this is not true.

The bogus idea that Ivermectin is effective against Covid was promoted locally by Grand Junction area chiropractors who spread medical misinformation about Covid-19, including one who urged people to buy livestock-strength Ivermectin and administer it to themselves as a Covid-preventative. Some local chiropractors spread medical misinformation and discouraged people from getting safe and effective vaccines against the disease as a way to help sell their own proprietary brand of supplements they claimed would prevent Covid-19. Members of the Mesa County Republican Party even introduced a resolution for their party’s platform to try to make Ivermectin an over-the-counter drug in Colorado.

After Ivermectin poisonings surged across the country in 2021 due to the spread of this dangerous misinformation, the FDA created an entire web page explaining why people should not use Ivermectin to try to prevent, treat or mitigate Covid-19.

Now there’s even more proof that using Ivermectin to treat Covid is pointless: A large-scale “gold standard” study on using Ivermectin to treat Covid was just published in the New England Journal of Medicine, and it concluded Ivermectin does not reduce the likelihood of hospitalization from Covid-19.

Woman makes Q-Anon style threat against Telluride School Board

by Anne Landman • March 23, 2022 • 37 Comments

Gabriella Moorman’s letter to the Telluride Board of Education and Superintendent

Taking a leaf from the QAnon playbook of turning school boards into battlegrounds for unhinged conservative politics, a woman named Gabriella Moorman threatened individual members of the Telluride School District board in San Miguel County as a way to rail against district policies that guided masking during the pandemic, sex education, Critical Race Theory (which is not taught in K-12 schools) and other practices and policies the school board has taken in the past.

Moorman wrote to board members that “you could lose your house, your cars, your job, your retirement, etc., if you DO NOT PAY ATTENTION. You are inviolation of multiple State, Federal and International laws … and you could be facing time in FEDERAL PRISON for your actions if you do not cease and desist.”

Looks like District 51’s conservative school board majority is getting ready to fire Superintendent, Assistant Superintendent and Director of Equity & Inclusion

by Anne Landman • February 6, 2022 • 19 Comments

Meeting agenda quietly put up on the School Board’s website on short notice announcing a special meeting the next day to discuss employment contracts of the Superintendent, Assistant Superintendent and Director of Equity and Inclusion

The District 51 School Board’s new conservative majority — Andrea Haitz, Angela Lema and Willie Jones — appear to be getting ready to fire School District Superintendent, Diana Sirko, Assistant Superintendent Brian Hill and Tracy Gallegos, the District’s Director of Equity and Inclusion, who was hired into that position in July, 2021.

The three Board members gave short notice about a special meeting to be held on Monday, February 5 at 5:00 p.m. discuss these three employees’ contracts with attorneys they just hired in January to serve as their own representatives: David Price and Tammy Eret of Hoskin, Farina and Kampf.

The Board members produced the agenda on Saturday evening, 2/5/22, and then quietly slipped it onto the School Board’s meeting website (pdf) on Sunday evening, 2/6/21.

7th Street Deli saved by Tim Foster

by Anne Landman • February 2, 2022 • 5 Comments

The 7th Street Deli has been at the same location on 7th Street and Bookcliff for 15 years

The 7th-Street Deli has been saved!

The deli was threatened with eviction in mid-January for non-payment of back rent. The owner had suffered a prolonged 50% loss of business due to back-to-back renovation projects that took place on 7th Street in 2019 and 2020, and then got hit with the no-indoor dining order in 2020 from Covid. Deli owner Debbie Allen had made it through all those obstacles and was finally getting out of her debt when the property owner slapped her with an eviction notice and a lawsuit for tens of thousands in back rent. The deli started a GoFundMe account and donations poured in. By the end of January they had raised about $8,000, but it wasn’t enough to pay off all the back rent.

Another Rimrock Wellness Center chiropractor dispenses dangerous medical disinformation

by Anne Landman • January 28, 2022 • 13 Comments

Charles Daniel Vaden

For many people, chiropractors are de facto primary health care providers, particularly in medically underserved rural areas like the western slope. Many people find it easier and more affordable to see a chiropractor than an M.D., and tend see their chiropractors far more often than they do M.D.s., generating familiarity and a relationship of trust with these health professionals. This puts chiropractors in a unique position to deliver vital public health information to a good portion of the community. They could, for example, be educating people about positive health behaviors, informing them about what’s scientifically proven to keep people safe from contracting Covid-19, telling people what works best to keep them of the hospital if they get Covid-19, and helping them know when to seek further medical care.

But instead of using their valuable position to benefit public health, it turns out many Grand Junction chiropractors are dispensing egregiously false medical information about vaccines and how to prevent Covid-19. And these chiropractors aren’t just flushing their value as a community public health asset down the toilet. They are lying to the people who support them financially and trust them the most, misleading people in very dangerous ways and often doing it for profit.

Mesa County Concerned Citizen meme demonstrates local cluelessness about respiratory transmission of disease

by Anne Landman • January 20, 2022 • 0 Comments

Meme in an email blast sent out by the far right group Mesa County Concerned Citizen on 11/15/21, showing that likely many local people lack any understanding of how respiratory disease transmission works — vital information that’s central to getting a pandemic under control

The above meme was sent out in an email blast last November 15, 2021 by the far right extremist group Mesa County Concerned Citizen.

The meme makes it clear that many Mesa County residents likely lack an understanding about how the transmission of respiratory diseases works — information that is massively important to our ability to bring the virus under control. This could be one reason why the coronavirus has been able to spread so efficiently in Mesa County, and why it is likely to persist here.

7th Street Deli threatened with eviction

by Anne Landman • January 18, 2022 • 2 Comments

You’ve seen it…you drive by it all the time. After 15 years in this location, the much-loved 7th Street Deli, a woman-owned and operated family business that makes home-made food, has been threatened with eviction.

The 7th Street Deli just south of St. Mary’s Hospital may soon be forced to close its doors.

The restaurant has been there for 15 years, and has been owned and operated by Debbie Allen and her daughter for the last 8 years. It is woman-owned business and the only restaurant close to the hospital. Their food is damn good and now they might have to close.

On January 5th, the landlord who owns the Medical Arts complex where the deli is located threatened Debbie and her family with eviction by the end of the month for non-payment of rent. The eviction notice comes after the restaurant was faced with a long series of unfortunate events starting in 2018. It has been struggling to come back, and just as business is finally starting to improve again, now this.

How did they get into this position after having so much success for so long?

Former KKCO weatherman Butch McCain now shilling for anti-vaxxers

by Anne Landman • January 17, 2022 • 17 Comments

Former KKCO Channel 11 weatherman Butch McCain, who was fired last October for refusing to get vaccinated against Covid-19, stands in front of a fake weather map in a video promoting the anti-vax group Stop The Mandate GJ

Former longtime KKCO weatherman Butch McCain, who was fired from KKCO last October after refusing to get a Covid-19 vaccine in compliance with his employer Gray TV’s Covid-19 vaccine policy, is now promoting the anti-vax group Stop the Mandate GJ, which is encouraging others in our area to also refuse the vaccine.

McCain now appears on the first page of StoptheMandateGJ’s website, talking in front of a fake weather map and saying in part,

“It’s not about Covid any more, it’s about forced compliance…Let’s be the resistance to their nationwide tyranny…

Another local chiropractor spreads dangerous misinformation about Covid prevention and treatment

by Anne Landman • January 14, 2022 • 6 Comments

Photo: YouTube, 2010

In October, 2021, the U.S. News and World Report revealed chiropractors are a major force stirring up anti-vaccine sentiment and spreading medical misinformation across the country in the pandemic. Often regarded as trusted health professionals, chiropractors who do this pose a potent threat to the public by hawking supplements as alternatives to vaccines, working to help people evade vaccine mandates, recommending unapproved and potentially toxic medication regimens to treat and prevent Covid, and abetting anti-vaccine movements at the local level.

That is certainly happening here in Grand Junction, too.

G.J. chiropractor recommends novel but fraudulent way for anti-vaxxers to try to avoid mandatory Covid vaccination

by Anne Landman • January 10, 2022 • 4 Comments

New Life Chiropractic on Patterson Rd., operated by Wesley Sheader, recommends “VaxControlGroup.com” to anti-vaxxers who are trying to evade vaccine mandates. The only problem is, it’s fraudulent.

Grand Junction chiropractor Wesley Sheader of New Life Chiropractic at 2532 Patterson Road is giving people trying to evade Covid-19 vaccine mandates a unique way to evade the jab: he suggests they join an unvaccinated study control group which can issue them an official-looking ID card saying they can’t be vaccinated because they are a participant in the study.

The only thing is, there is no study and the “control group” is a scam.

“Mesa County Concerned Citizen” fraudulently promotes $182 ripoff box of common OTC items as an “early and effective treatment of COVID-19”

by Anne Landman • January 9, 2022 • 7 Comments

Screen-shot from a January 6, 2022 email sent out by Mesa County Concerned Citizen in which the group links to this box of every day drug store items selling online that claims to be an “early and effective treatment for Covid-19.” The box sells for $160.00 plus $20 shipping and $12.37 tax, for a total of $182.36 — all for about $60 worth of over-the-counter items.

In its January 3, 2022 email blast, the local extreme right wing group “Mesa County Concerned Citizen” included a plug for “The Defense Box,” an item selling online that contains about $60 worth of common over-the counter items like Pepcid, Listerine, Vitamin C and baby aspirin, that costs $182.36, including shipping and tax.

The group says the items are an “early and effective treatment option” for Covid-19.

None of the items in the box are approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for the treatment, prevention, mitigation or cure of Covid-19.

Redlands chiropractor spreads dangerous medical misinformation amid pandemic

by Anne Landman • January 8, 2022 • 6 Comments

In a video on his business web page under the heading “Covid Treatments,” Grand Junction chiropractor Ronald Engler of the Redlands Chiropractic and Wellness Center administers horse deworming medication to himself and encourages others to do the same to themselves, in violation of FDA guidance on use of the drug.

NOTE: This video has been banned on YouTube previously for posing a serious risk of egregious harm. It was uploaded again here for purposes of criticism in this article. We’ll see if it lasts.

————

While some Grand Junction chiropractors are profiting from the pandemic by marketing proprietary dietary supplements that they falsely infer will prevent or treat Covid-19, others are using their credibility as health care providers to openly promote dangerous medical misinformation to the public.

One of these is Ronald W. Engler of the Redlands Chiropractic and Wellness Center.

Trump urges his supporters to get vaccinated. Will Mesa County listen?

by Anne Landman • December 29, 2021 • 7 Comments

“I recommend taking the vaccines. It’s good. I did it. Take the vaccines.”

“The vaccines do work and they are effective.” — Sept. 1, 2021

— Donald Trump

An NPR analysis of more than 100,000 people across the country showed that people who live in counties that voted 60% or more for Trump in the November, 2020 election had 2.73 times higher death rate from Covid-19 than counties that voted for Biden. Counties with an even higher share of the vote for Trump have even higher death rates from COVID-19.

65% of Mesa County voters voted for Trump in the 2020 election.

Mesa County, obviously a strongly pro-Trump county, would appear to be a death trap. Our County is sadly is averaging more than a death a day from Covid-19. Eighty-five percent of people admitted to local hospitals for Covid-19 are still unvaccinated.

Local chiropractor Greg Haitz is behind “Stop the Mandate GJ,” hawks unproven supplements for Covid-19

by Anne Landman • December 25, 2021 • 6 Comments

Stop the Mandate GJ’s street address matches that of Greg Haitz’s business, Rimrock Wellness Center

Greg Haitz, owner of Rimrock Wellness Center

Rimrock Wellness Center, a chiropractic office at 12th and Patterson that also sells fat-loss treatments and supplements, has the same street address as “Stop the Mandate GJ,” the group agitating to stop hospitals, nursing homes and doctors’ offices from requiring health workers be vaccinated against Covid-19, the highly communicable, often deadly disease causing the pandemic. At the same time it is encouraging people to remain unvaccinated, Rimrock Wellness Center is also trying to profit off unvaccinated people’s fear of getting Covid-19, as well as their misperceptions of the relative safety and efficacy of Covid-19 vaccines.

Haitz fraudulently promotes his own brand of supplement as protective against Covid-19

HD-55 candidate Cindy Ficklin (R) now blames taxpayers and a Daily Sentinel reporter for her getting Covid, and is taking unproven treatments for the disease

by Anne Landman • December 23, 2021 • 9 Comments

Ficklin says she “went underground” to get Ivermectin to treat her Covid-19 infection, and displays the bottle in a Facebook post. There is no evidence Ivermectin cures Covid-19, and the FDA urges people not to use it.

Republican House District 55 candidate Cindy Ficklin is using non-medically approved treatments for Covid-19, including the animal de-worming medication Ivermectin. She also says she is inhaling “silver and Glutathione” with a nebulizer to “prevent conjestion [sic] from hardening in my lungs.”

Anti-mask, anti-vax Republican candidate for HD55 Cindy Ficklin has Covid-19, blames it on government

by Anne Landman • December 22, 2021 • 7 Comments

Cindy Ficklin announced on December 19 that she has Covid-19. Ficklin is a militantly anti-mask, anti-vaccination Republican known for spreading the ideas masks are symbols of oppression and vaccines contain “nanotechnology.”

Anti-mask, anti-vaccination candidate for HD-55 Cindy Ficklin (R-Mesa County) announced December 19 on Facebook that she has contracted Covid-19 and is blaming it squarely on the U.S. government.

Ficklin announced she had the disease after emerging from a 30 day ban from Facebook. Facebook has banned Ficklin numerous times for spreading lies and conspiracy theories on her page. Ficklin has repeatedly asserted without proof that the SARS CoV2 virus was created in a laboratory to target obese, elderly and unfit people; she has spread lies about vaccine deaths and about public health physician Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Disease, profiting personally from the virus.

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