STORY AND PHOTOS BY KAREN BOSSICK

As Hailey City Council members made their way into City Council Chambers this week, about 15 protesters gathered along Main Street.

They held up signs that said “Honk!” and “No Mask Mandates” in hopes of persuading Hailey’s representatives to rescind the public health order they had made earlier requiring masks be worn indoors in public places while the Omicron variant was surging through the community.

“Let Kids Breathe,” said another sign. “Idaho Not China.”

Their signs were met with honks from some passing motorists and a retort from at least one passerby who yelled, “Put your masks on!” And they incited a couple youth to hastily make signs of their own that said “Masks work,” which they held up across the street outside Shorty’s Diner.

Leslie Manookian had organized the rally 48 hours earlier by sending out a message to a hundred people on her email list.

She had been prompted, she said, by listening to one of the valley’s mayors tell the other mayors how the South Central Public Health District had stopped requiring its employees to wear masks because officials were concerned about their mental health. The district later reinstated masks on the order of another public health official.

It seems hypocritical, she said, that Wood River Valley residents should be required to wear masks if public health workers were relieved of them because of concerns about the impact they have on people’s mental health.

“The city of Ketchum has rescinded its mask mandate. So has Sun Valley. We want to tell Hailey it’s time to remove its masks. We’re grownups. We can make our own health choices,” she added.

There may have been a misunderstanding about South Central Public Health District, however, said Brianna Bodily, the health district’s public information officer.

At no time did the health district drop an internal mask policy for fear masks were destroying staff or clients’ mental health, she said. SCPHD did, however, relax the mask requirement for a few weeks between the Delta variant spike and the Omicron spike when case counts were low, hospitals were not stressed and disease transmission was low across the region.

When the Omicron surge hit and it became apparent that employees were once again at high risk of getting sick and passing the disease along to coworkers, the district director reinstated the mask wearing policy, Bodily said.

“It’s important to note that even when a mask policy is suspended, SCPHD still has social distancing policies, sick leave policies and other policies to help protect our employees and clients,” she added.

After the protestors had drifted away, the Hailey City Council voted unanimously to extend the city’s indoor mask mandate another 60 days or, at least until the risk of transmission in the county is no longer considered critical by SCPHD standards.

Council members cited the warnings of state health officials such as Health and Welfare Director Dave Jeppesen who pleaded this week for Idahoans to continue to wear masks for the time being, saying, “We’re not out of the woods yet.”

Manookian said she has a problem with city council members and other public servants governing according to the advice of experts.

“First, the people elected the public servants. The people did not elect experts and, while public servants are accountable to the people, unelected experts are not,” she said.

“Second, the experts are nameless, faceless, unelected, unaccountable individuals…who give their input to public servants unchallenged, behind closed doors and on private phone calls to which the public has no access,” she added. “Third, not all experts agree on the dangers of or the appropriate ways to handle the crisis…”

“All we’re asking for is public discourse,” she summarized.

DID YOU KNOW?

The Centers of Disease Control and Prevention is expected to loosen its indoor masking guidelines perhaps as early as next week in light of the rapid decrease in COVID cases among many of the states.Unfortunately, the number of new cases being reported in Idaho each day remains high.

The New York Times COVID dashboard reported 40 new cases in Blaine County on Wednesday.