(Idaho Statesman) – Southwest District Health will no longer offer the COVID-19 vaccine to residents who want to pay for it.
Health district board members voted 4-3 to stop administering the vaccine at its clinics after a handful of vaccine opponents, including Dr. Ryan Cole, who sits on the Central District Board of Health, gave presentations in a lengthy meeting on Tuesday evening. Before the meeting, the board received hundreds of public comments calling on the health district to remove the vaccine from its programs.
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Dr. Perry Jansen, the health district’s medical director, gave the only presentation in favor of continuing to offer the COVID-19 vaccine. The health district serves more than 300,000 people in Canyon, Adams, Gem, Owyhee, Payette and Washington counties.
“I think the most important thing we want to emphasize is that we believe in the patient’s freedom of choice in their care,” Jansen said. “We’re not talking about vaccination requirements or anything like that, but about the opportunity for patients to make decisions for their own health in consultation with their doctor.”
Dr. John Tribble, the only doctor on the board, said that the vaccine “poses far more risk than benefit” and that recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to get it were “patently absurd.”
The CDC recommends people ages 6 months and older receive the updated COVID-19 vaccine released this fall.
“Given the waning of population immunity due to prior exposure to the virus and prior vaccination, we strongly encourage those who are eligible to consider an updated COVID-19 vaccine to provide greater protection against variants currently circulating offer,” Dr. Peter Marks, director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, said previously in a statement.
In his presentation, Jansen acknowledged several rare but adverse effects of the vaccine, noting that the benefits outweigh the potential risks. For example, he noted that some cases of myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart muscle, were observed in young men who received an mRNA vaccine (Moderna or Pfizer-BioNTech), particularly after the second dose. The CDC says such cases are rare and that symptoms have resolved in most patients by the time they are discharged from the hospital.
“In this group, ages 18 to 29, the risk of dying from COVID is very low, but higher, quite a bit higher than the risk of getting myocarditis in the first place,” Jansen said. “So you have to weigh those risks.”
He said that while there are fewer hospitalizations and deaths related to the virus today than there were a few years ago, the virus is still circulating and “people are still dying from COVID.”
Boise saw a spike in COVID-19 levels in wastewater in early September, according to the city’s dashboard. The state and its health districts no longer track the number of positive cases, so wastewater testing has become a useful tool for tracking local spread.
Tribble argued at the meeting that since the health district is not the sole provider of the COVID-19 vaccine, it is not a matter of personal freedom.
“You can get it for free at Walmart,” Tribble said, but didn’t mention that it’s free at those stores only with insurance. “If we continue to offer this, we are tacitly supporting these vaccinations even though we shouldn’t. We are here to protect the public.”
Jansen noted that the vaccine is no longer free. Most health insurance plans cover the cost, but the updated vaccinations cost about $200 out of pocket, he said. The health district has the option to purchase vaccine doses at a discount and offer them to uninsured residents at a lower price.
Previously, a federal program covered costs for uninsured or underinsured people.
David Wiseman, a life scientist who said he led a research and development program at Johnson & Johnson, joined the meeting via teleconference and told the board that he agreed with Jansen that patients should have the freedom to decide whether they would like to receive the vaccine. His question, he said, is whether the vaccinations should be funded by the health district.
Jansen spoke up again and clarified that the vaccines are not subsidized by the health district. Patients pay for the vaccinations themselves, and most come in and ask about them, he said.
“We are not using taxpayer money to buy vaccines and give them to people,” Jansen said.
He reminded the board that there is consensus in the scientific and medical community that the COVID-19 vaccine is broadly safe and effective. He also told the panel that “you are frankly not qualified” to determine whether the vaccine is safe or not.
Still, the board ultimately decided to halt the offer after listening to conspiracy-laden presentations from several doctors who were accused of spreading misinformation about COVID-19, including:
McCullough claimed in his presentation that the vaccines infected people with COVID-19.
“Doctors like me are now seeing patient after patient who have received a COVID vaccine, and because the vaccines don’t work, they get COVID too,” McCullough said.
Nearly three hours into the meeting, Kelly Aberasturi, board chair and trustee, urged speakers to “get this done as quickly as possible,” saying the same presentation had been made to the board a few years ago.
After the presentations, Jennifer Riebe, a Payette County commissioner, advocated for continuing to offer the vaccine at the health district’s clinics.
“I just want to remind us that there are a lot of taxpayers in our county who would love to come here and get this vaccine,” Riebe said. “You speak, I think, for the taxpayers who don’t want the vaccine. We have a larger constituency.”
Riebe expressed concern that the board would next consider other vaccines, such as measles, polio or shingles vaccines. The health district offers more than a dozen vaccines for diseases that reportedly can cause hospitalization or even death, particularly in infants, young children and older adults.
“I’m not comfortable with that,” she said.
Board members who voted to stop administering the vaccine at health district offices include Tribble, the physician representative; Viki Purdy, Adams County Executive Council representative; Canyon County Commissioner Zach Brooks; and Gem County Commissioner Bill Butticci. Those who voted against were Riebe, the Payette County commissioner; Aberasturi, the Owyhee County board chairman and commissioner; and Washington County Executive Vice Chairman Lyndon Haines.
By law, Idaho county health departments must have a representative from each county in the county and a physician if one is available.
The COVID-19 vaccine remains available at pharmacies and health clinics in counties covered by the health district.
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