I’ll take
“Inner Tyrant seizes an opportunity”
for $500, Alex

OpEd: Why is a Social Worker Dictating COVID-19 Policy for the Country’s Largest County?

Los Angeles County is, by a wide margin, the most populous county in the United States. At an estimated 10 million, its population is larger than all but seven states and over a hundred countries. In fact, LA County has nearly the same number of inhabitants as, dare I say it, Sweden.  Yes, that neo-Nazi, baby-killing, fascist, herd immunity gathering, bastion of pure evil Sweden (sarcasm intended).  Not only is LA County full of people, it is also full of money, having nearly the same GDP as Saudi Arabia.

A county with that population and wealth should have an army of world class scientists leading the battle in the fight against COVID-19. Let’s take a look at who is leading this world class team.

Our LA County Public Health Commissioner is Dr. Barbara Ferrer. You can find her bio here.

Impressive, right? Well, look a little closer. She must have graduated from a top-tier medical school, or so one would think…

Now is when I usually get the “OMG” response, even from the most liberal of liberals.

To be clear she is not even a medical doctor. She has a Doctorate in “Social Welfare.”  So essentially, we have a high-powered social worker (albeit one of the most well-known in the country) leading the largest county in the United States in the fight of our lives against this biological threat.

Yes, this is the real-life version of “I’m not a doctor but I play one on TV.”

Instead of looking at science and data and adapting her public health response to attack what we now know are the strengths and weaknesses of this virus, she is essentially behaving like an elementary school principal (probably because she was one). Exerting her new-found unchallengeable and unelected power over an entire population that she views as children. She tells us what to do, how to do it, and even threatens to take away our few remaining freedoms, if we misbehave.

To be clear, I am not writing this to disparage Dr. Ferrer. She has had an illustrious career and has worked hard to achieve . The problem is that, in this fight against a novel coronavirus, we need a team of medical doctors and (apolitical) scientists guiding us, not a sociologist. In a place as populous and wealthy as LA County, we should expect to be led by some of the best in the world. We are clearly not.

She, like many of the public health directors across the country, is faced with a problem that a bureaucrat isn’t practiced or proficient enough to be fighting. Throw more common health issues at her, such as HIV prevention, homelessness, or opiate addiction, and I’m sure she could succeed. But, in the face of a brand new biological pandemic, she has no chance, and the numbers show it…………

LA County has the resources and financial wherewithal to focus on scientifically-targeted approaches, guided by data, and led by world-class medical doctors and scientists. Instead, we have allowed unelected bureaucrats to better their political lives by destroying all of ours.