Our View - County totally mishandled the mask mandate

Watching the county commission handle whether Hill County should have a mask mandate has been like watching The Keystone Cops. Except it isn’t funny.

The chair of the Hill County Board of Health, Hill County Commissioner Mark Peterson, said Monday the mask mandate is over. Whether he had the authority to do that is another question, but more on that later.

After COVID-19 numbers and deaths shot through the roof in the state and in Hill County last fall and early winter, the county issued a mask mandate and shortly afterward Gov. Steve Bullock issued a statewide mask mandate.

The numbers have dropped, and Gov. Greg Gianforte rescinded Bullock’s mask order in February.

A couple of weeks after Gianforte did that, the Hill County Board of Health voted in a split decision to put a county mask mandate in place.

Now, citing the drop in confirmed cases in the county, Peterson ended the mandate.

That begs the question is it the masks that helped drop the numbers, and will the numbers start to rise again in a month or two?

That has happened in Europe, and massive restrictions are once again being enacted in countries there.

But aside from whether the mandate should be lifted, how it was lifted is ridiculous.

While Peterson put in the official statement saying mandate was lifted that the board encourages people to wear masks when social distancing is not possible, lifting the mandate is a horrible signal, especially as numbers are starting to creep up in the state again and new variants, suspected to spread much more quickly, are being confirmed in the state including in Hill County.

And the confusing way this has been handled is a mess.

Peterson was the deciding vote on the mandate in February, voting with board members Kristi Kline and Erica McKeon-Hanson to enact it, to be reviewed after 90 days or when the county dropped below a certain level of daily confirmed cases.

Board Member and Hill County Commissioner Diane McLean, who has seemed to oppose restrictions to slow the spread of COVID-19 from the start, voted against it.

Board Member and Hill County Commissioner Jake Strissel abstained with no comment on why he was abstaining, and has not spoken at any of the meetings on the issue.

But then Peterson, after voting to approve the order, refused to sign it, saying he had concerns about enforcement. He called a meeting for Monday a week ago to review the mandate, but no vote was taken after Kline pointed out voting on the mandate had not been put out on a public agenda, which is required before a public board votes on an issue.

Three days later, last Thursday, Peterson signed an order issuing a mask mandate.

But Monday he announced it was over due to the number of cases dropping.

Nobody seems to know where things are. McKeon-Hanson said Monday what she voted for was to review the mandate once the numbers dropped, not for the mandate to simply end.

“However, the order that was written up and signed by the board chair did not reflect that language for reasons unknown to me at this time,” she emailed Havre Daily News.

Whether Peterson had the authority to simply say the mandate is over is unknown to Havre Daily News at this time.

And in the confusion, people might forget where we are — in the middle of the deadliest pandemic in more than 100 years. While numbers of new cases have dropped in the United States, in Montana and in Hill County, numbers are starting to rise slightly again — including in Montana, which has had about a 5 percent increase in the weekly average of daily new cases from two weeks earlier.

And, again, that news comes as the CDC confirms more-contagious variants of the disease have been found in Montana, including in Hill County.

And when things were at their worst last fall and early winter, Hill County was among the Montana counties with the highest risk in the state for catching the disease, and with a death rate totally out of proportion for its population.

After the disease had been confirmed in the state for about five months — Hill County’s first case was confirmed in March, its second in July — the county jumped from 88 cases and two deaths the start of September to 1,354 cases and 31 deaths three months later, the start of December.

The daily numbers have slowed — Hill County has had many days in recent weeks with no new cases confirmed — but it still has grown, with 1,930 cases confirmed by Monday.

And the deaths have continued. Hill County Health Department reported the county’s 40th death Jan 14, the 41st in its report March 8 and the 42nd death in the county last week, reported Thursday evening.

Blaine, Chouteau, Hill and Liberty counties now have a tally of 72 deaths from what is essentially a completely preventable disease if people take precautions — like wearing masks — and have almost 3,300 cases confirmed.

The state tally — coming as more contagious variants are confirmed here — was listed Monday as more than 103,000 cases confirmed and more than 1,400 deaths.

The state announced that COVID-19 was the third-leading cause of death in Montana last year, and the first death was at the end of March — it became the third-leading cause of death for the year in just more than nine months.

Whether the mask mandate is in effect or not, people need to remember that and to remember, unless everyone does their part — wearing masks, socially distancing, not going out if they don’t need to, washing hands and washing and disinfecting surfaces — the COVID-19 surge could come right back, as it is in Europe.