Can Public Health Ever Be Conservative?

Is there room for conservative people and ideas in public health?

Just about anything, Liberal or Conservative, could be written on that sign.

Even as public health and healthcare organization representatives begged the public to take precautions against the current surge of the Omicron variant of the novel coronavirus, the Board of Commissioners of a certain county in Maryland voted against a mask mandate for businesses and public spaces. One of the commissioners took it one step further in his dissent of a vote to institute a mask mandate only for county government facilities. He said, “I will solicit every employee out there to get together and level a class action lawsuit against [a fellow commissioner] for discriminatory policy if this passes, and also solicit all the citizens out there and community to rise up as well because this motion is nothing but virtue signaling by my colleagues because it accomplishes absolutely nothing.”

Interesting choice of words in “rise up,” right?

This lack of public health action and exchange of heated language is typical of many places around the country where socially and politically conservative leaders are acquiescing to the demands of the small-but-vocal crowd among their constituents who see public health actions as some sort of “tyranny.” The argument is that things like mandated mask-wearing to protect others…