15 October 2020 — 1638 mdt
An effective Flathead crackdown on
Covid-19 containment noncompliance is unlikely
Flathead County’s board of health met earlier this afternoon to consider a proposal for reducing the spread of the SARS-cov-2 coronavirus in the Flathead. Although not without merit, the proposal is weak because it excludes schools and sports.
This morning I produced a histogram of the age distribution of 1606 new Covid-19 cases in Flathead County for September through 13 October.
Bending the Flathead’s Covid curve downward requires enforcing masking up, distancing, and prohibiting nonessential activities. Even if the health department musters the will, and assembles a sufficient army of enforcers, it may not be successful because (a) there are no penalties for not wearing a mask other than perhaps being expelled from a business or event, and (b) the Flathead’s truculent county commissioners, stung by Gov. Bullock’s criticism, and in cahoots with the barefaced lunatic fringe, opposes enforcement, claiming that wearing a mask is a personal choice.
We need a crackdown on public health scofflaws, but the odds we’ll get it are on the order of the cow’s jumping over the moon.