BY EMILY MIBACH
Daily Post Staff Writer
Santa Clara County Health Officer Dr. Sara Cody today (Nov. 15) told the Palo Alto Rotary Club that she’s had protesters outside her window for nearly two years, and she’s “distressed” by the erosion of trust in local government that’s occurred during the pandemic.
Cody told the club during its lunchtime meeting held via Zoom that she’s been “sobered” by her experience during Covid. She’s had protesters outside her office for the length of the pandemic. Last year, a Gilroy math teacher was arrested for sending threatening letters to Cody.
Cody said she’s not alone in receiving vitriol, as most of her colleagues around the state and country have also experienced similar lash back.
Cody said there is a “very vocal group” that’s for the most part in the minority, but are the “loud and disruptive voice of anti-vaccine, anti-mask, anti-testing, anti-contact tracing, who are just very angry.”
“I am distressed by this decay in public institutions and public government,” Cody said. “My sense of things is that we may be less well prepared for the next pandemic, unfortunately, because of the erosion that’s occurred during this pandemic.”
Cody is also worried about the health care workforce if there is another pandemic.
As for the current pandemic, Cody also said she doesn’t see Covid going away anytime soon, with boosters continuing in the future.
“I see us probably transitioning to living with Covid in the way we live with the flu,” Cody said. The problem there is that Covid and some of its strains can be harder to contain and wreak more havoc when there are outbreaks.
Rotary president Khashayar Alaee asked Cody about the “buy-in” she needed to get from county officials to declare the country’s first stay-at-home order in March 2020.
Cody pointed out that at the time, things were changing fast and the county had some of the first cases in the country. The county’s first case was reported on Jan. 31, 2020, and the first death occurred on Feb. 6. The county discovered the Feb. 6 death in April, which made that woman the first Covid-related death in the country.
There was no testing until the end of February 2020, so as that month went on, she and other health departments couldn’t make any decisions because there was no data. But once testing began, it was proven that Covid was more widespread than other counties.
It was also thought at the time that like flu transmissions, children would be the primary carriers into the home, leading to schools being shut down.
Another issue at the time was a lack of guidance from state and federal leaders, Cody said.
So using the power given to her by the state legislature, she called for a shutdown.
Although Santa Clara County was the first to go into a shutdown, it has still seen the highest death rate per capita of Covid.
A total of 1,901 Santa Clara County residents have died due to the virus, according to state Department of Public Health records, or 96.6 per 100,000. Santa Clara County was also often the first county to initiate various lock-downs and ordinances related to the pandemic. At one point, the county advised workplaces to have employees eat in their cars instead of the lunchroom.
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She should be distressed that her draconian tactics have absolutely failed by every single metric. An engaged public that expresses its dissent to elected (and in this case unelected) officials is the backbone of democracy. What Sara Cody wants is blind acceptance of a totalitarian model. When a person has no control over what is/isn’t put into their body, that’s slavery.
We’re the minority eh? Hm well if a power drunk government official says so it must be true. (Sarcasm intended)
Maybe she’s just a tyrant and the people are tired of draconian tactics that have still left us at a nearly doubled case rate than our national counterparts that don’t institute these mandates. Must take a real conspiracy theorist to trust objectivity observable reality. (Sarcasm also intended)
May be she shouldn’t have used ill conceived, draconian and hard handed approaches to solving the problem. Perhaps more troubling is that she continues to use the same hammer (that didn’t work for almost 2 years) even though it is clearly demonstrated by other countries and states that these draconian measures don’t help and instead make the citizen’s life miserable. Just because you have been given a power that doesnt mean you have to exercise it! Show restraint and wisdom. Not impulsiveness and incompetence.
public health officials have only themselves to blame for the erosion of their trust by society. the effectiveness of cloth masks has shown to be “statistically insignificant” (https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2021/09/surgical-masks-covid-19.html). it’s time to end the dogma, follow the science (https://www.cato.org/working-paper/evidence-community-cloth-face-masking-limit-spread-sars-cov-2-critical-review) and end the mask mandates now.
There was data coming out of East Asia as early as February and March of 2020 from Worldometers and Johns Hopkins, and the numbers from China, Taiwan, Korea, and Japan showed 0.2 CFR. In other words, a bad flu season. The lockdowns (and social distancing and masks) were completely unprecedented, not in any plandemic playbook, and was a China 2020 policy. Worse, they not only failed to control a virus that is endemic and zoonotic but destroyed lives, livelihoods, and educations in the process. To add insult to injury, many of the blue state governors forced Covid positive patients into nursing homes. The government and media driven hysteria led to panic and irrational behavior by the public. Only mental illness can explain the continued insistence by public health officials that masks, lockdowns, and distancing work. Thank god for Sweden, Florida, and the relatively few “sane” states that disproved the mainstream narrative on Covid. We may never recover from the government measures. Lastly, notice Cody’s reference to continued boosters. Think the double shot was the end? Think again. This doesn’t end until the people stop going along with the craziness.
I am loving those comments!
Please create a more friendly environment for me to transmit.
You want to talk about a friendly environment to transmit? The worst covid outbreaks are happening in the world’s most vaccinated places: Israel, Singapore, Seychelles, Vermont, etc.
Sara Cody took such pride in being first in destroying human life. When Nuremberg 2 happens, she can be first once again.
Thank the double and triple jabbed with their leaky vaccines for creating the friendliest environment for new variants.
get over it SARS-Cov-2, your glory days are long behind and you’ve got nothing but beagle torturer Fauci and his health director sycophants ruining people’s lives from coast to coast. You nasty lying health directors had a good run, now the writing is on the wall. Nuremberg 2.0 see you there Cody.
This is rich! Dr. Cody is feeling threatened! Think what the typical small business owner felt when they had to deal with Dr. Cody’s mandates that ultimately dried up their savings and put them out of business. Yeah, threatened is one word for it. I can’t believe she’s gotten away with this assault on our local businesses and now is playing the victim.
We didn’t give health officials our constitutional rights – they took them. In the meantime, the Center for Disease Control (Fauci) did a terrible job informing the population about where Covid came from, who was most vulnerable (elderly and people with weak immune systems), and best practices to avoid it (thin paper masks?). All we got was testing mandates (almost useless for general population because you can catch Covid on the way out of the test center) and eternal confinement (basically, sorry if it ruins you, your job, your business, your life). Shutting down the country was the worst thing we could have done and they forced it. Our society will be years recovering from the authoritarian excess of our public health officials. But the worst offense is that health officials had almost no plan for such an event – everything done on the fly. Doctors and Hospitals were out of the basics within a week – you would think the Center of Disease Control and it’s junior and local agencies would have had some of that ready to go. Health officials have really tarnished their image and need to change.
I share your sentiments about Cody who is the worst, but the question I have is why did the small business owners – the restaurants, hair salons, etc. – go along with the insane lockdown orders? They could have talked with each other, organized as a united front, and defied the county mandates? The county would have had to back off the businesses in that case. It’s shocking how they went along allowing their businesses to collapse.
You’re blaming the victim. Cody should not have these powers in the first place.
Ms. Cody knew exactly what she was doing in March of 2020, as she literally copied the work she, herself, wrote for the several-hundred page 2006 “novel influenza” pandemic response for Contra Costa County, along with Marty Fentersheib, which advocated for every single thing we are now currently doing for COVID, none of which have lead to improvements in the majority of peoples’ lives or health. And that response became the template for a national two-year overreaction to what she now says will be “like the flu” anyways.
She bears more responsibility for this catastrophe than almost anyone else in the entire nation, in my opinion. People listened to her, they followed her, and they still follow her, with results that are nothing short of tragic.
I am a Democrat and a Californian, but I see Ms. Cody’s failings quite well, and I do hold her ultimately accountable for the hysteria in this state, so very little of which has been grounded in Science. She will alter the course of history in ways she cannot even begin to now imagine, and none of these alterations will speak favorably about her thinking or ethical compass.
Dr. Cody is a tyrant like many in our government/governments around the world. History has taught us there’s only one solution for tyrants.