This will probably ruffle some feathers and rub some people the wrong way, but with Deschutes County applying for Phase Two re-opening from the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown this week, I just have to say that I do not believe the County should be opening. In fact, I don’t believe Deschutes County should even be in Phase One right now, due to non-compliance. I have to wonder what’s going at the County in regards to health and safety during the pandemic; right now it simply feels like a desperate rush to re-open without consideration of the health of the community.

The County opened up on May 15 under Phase One despite a surge in COVID-19 cases linked to social gatherings, and didn’t even have the required number of contact tracers to help track outbreaks (it still doesn’t!). That same day, KTVZ ran a story about the opening showing large crowds of people without masks or—in many cases—any safe distancing. I keep hearing about and reading similar stories; crowds of people apparently oblivious to the guidelines and a complete lack of effort on the part of businesses to try to enforce masks and social distancing.

Worse, the County won’t even enforce the violations that have been reported, according to this story from KTVZ.

It’s been almost two weeks since restaurants and bars opened their doors back up to the public, in limited fashion. During that span, Deschutes County health officials say they’ve received more than 100 complaints about businesses violating Gov. Kate Brown’s guidelines.

When a complaint comes in, [Deschutes County environmental health supervisor Eric] Mone said his department will reach out to the business and provide education and technical assistance, to help them meet the reopening guidelines.

Mone said the Deschutes County Health Department has also had weekly meetings with the OLCC, OSHA, local law enforcement, code enforcement teams and the Oregon Department of Agriculture to figure out which agency is supposed to respond to each business sector and decide what the educational campaign should look like, to keep the message consistent.

“When it comes to enforcement, there have been a lot of questions about who’s supposed to do what with regards to enforcement,” Mone said. “That’s been a real challenge.”

No business in Central Oregon has received a fine yet — and Mone said it’s not likely that will ever happen.

“(We) try to figure out how we can get compliance without going through the citation route, because nobody wins if you do that,” Mone said. “I think that the businesses that are complying are the ones that are going to succeed fastest.”

So there’s no actual enforcement on the part of the County Health Department, which gives businesses absolutely no incentive to even try to comply to the guidelines. (I’m not saying most restaurants are violating the guidelines, from what I’ve seen I believe most are compliant, as far as their staff and employees are concerned—however, they could and should definitely be doing more to encourage customer compliance.)

It extends to the County commissioners as well. The Source has been on top of COVID-19 coverage, and this May 7 article, “Are We Ready To Reopen?” lays out the issues.

Deschutes County commissioners Patti Adair, Anthony DeBone and Phil Henderson want Gov. Brown to open all local businesses—not just the ones she’s already outlined for counties in phase one. Commissioner Adair said she wanted churches open as soon as possible because she considers them essential businesses.

So the commissioners went rogue (a headline from OPB which I found amusing despite the subject).

Deschutes County officials drafted an “order concerning restrictions on worship” without consulting the county’s own health director. It would direct county employees not to enforce restrictions limiting religious gatherings to 25 people, and not to help state employees enforcing those rules either.

County health department director George Conway confirmed Wednesday that he was not consulted on the order, nor was he aware of it until OPB contacted him.

Memorial Day and tourism were (and continue to be) a complete disaster, even with the City of Bend actively discouraging tourism. The Source again, from June 3: “Tourists Won’t Stay Home”

On Monday, the Deschutes County Commissioners voted to send its Phase Two reopening application to the State which would allow gatherings of up to 100 people outside. If approved, local theaters, pools, churches and camps could reopen as soon as Friday.

Meanwhile, anti-tourism sentiment exploded on social media. People who live here feared outsiders coming to visit and bringing coronavirus with them. Strong non-essential travel advisories are flaccid without enforcement mechanisms.

Despite the ongoing recreational travel ban, visitors from the Willamette Valley flooded into Bend. Visit Bend—along with city and state officials—have been broadcasting the message to “stay home, stay safe,” even after Deschutes County entered Phase One.

It doesn’t look like it’s working.

The County, in an update on Facebook yesterday, even admits its non-compliance for Phase Two:

This afternoon, the Oregon Health Authority requested additional information from Deschutes County Health Services about local cases from the week of May 25 to May 31. We had 9 cases in Deschutes County during that time period.

When the State updated its data today and analyzed data from May 25 – 31, Deschutes County did not meet the State metric requiring that new cases not traced to a known source be below 30% for the last 7 days. This metric helps us assess community spread. However, some of the cases that could not be traced had a history of recent travel. This indicates that they may not have been acquired in Deschutes County.

There should be no “however” towards the end of that update, much less one offering an excuse as to why the County can’t perform it’s duty, if 3 or more of the 9 cases can’t even be traced. It seems to me “not acquired in Deschutes County” doesn’t much matter when the patient is in fact actually in Deschutes County!

Let’s face it. There’s no enforcement, the County literally doesn’t qualify to even be in Phase One, and tourists won’t stop coming here. There’s no way Deschutes is ready for Phase Two. But let’s conveniently ignore and gloss over all that.

I’m not against getting businesses re-opened and reinvigorating the economy. But the way it’s being handled is reckless with a disregard for the health and safety of the community, all in a mad rush to re-open without considering the consequences. All that does is set us up for a worse situation if/when the second wave of coronavirus hits.