Anger follows this Whatcom panel’s rejection of an anti-vaccine applicant

Anger and accusations dominated a Whatcom County Health Board meeting over the County Council’s recent refusal to include a vaccine opponent on the Public Health Advisory Board.

Councilman Todd Donovan abruptly left the meeting Tuesday morning, Jan. 31, after health advisory board Chairman Steve Bennett and other county officials were denounced repeatedly for rejecting the application of anti-vaccine activist Misty Flowers and others at the County Council’s Jan. 10 meeting.

Donovan walked out of Tuesday’s meeting, where the County Council had convened as the Health Board in a mixed online and in-person format.

At the meeting, council members Tyler Byrd and Kathy Kershner criticized Bennett and the health advisory board for ignoring community members who disagreed with Whatcom County’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“For almost three years, maybe two and half, we have heard every two weeks (in public comment sessions) from a segment of our community that has a differing opinion on how the pandemic was handled and how we’re continuing to handle the pandemic,” Kershner said.

“How are you planning to incorporate those voices into our public health advisory board, the inputs and the outputs, if we don’t allow a member from that group to join and express their views and be part of the solutions that we have going forward?” she asked Bennett.

Bennett heads the 18-member volunteer panel, which advises the Whatcom County Department of Health and Community Services on community health needs, the effects of government policy and other topics.

He is an assistant professor at the Western Washington University College of Humanities and Social Sciences and has a doctorate in public health, environmental health and infectious diseases from the University of Minnesota.

Byrd echoed Kershner’s comments and told Bennett that each of the 10 residents who sought appointment to the health advisory board had “fantastic experience that would lend itself to this group.”

Only four people were selected to fill seven vacancies on the panel at the council’s Jan. 10 meeting.

Flowers and five other applicants were passed over.

“In listening to your comments today, it strikes me that there is a thought or an opinion that (the Public Health Advisory Board) is somehow separate in what it does., and that — to be honest — (it’s) almost as if the (County) Council and the Health Board is secondary to (the health advisory board). And I want to make clear that (the health advisory board) exists to advise us,” he said.

Health Director Erika Lautenbach, whose agency guided the pandemic response, interrupted Byrd, saying that he was out of line.

“This is a committee of volunteers who participate. Do not chastise them in open public comment, in an open public forum,” Lautenbach said.

“This is totally inappropriate. Totally inappropriate. This is a volunteer. Do you want community input, or do you want to just yell at them?” Lautenbach said.

Flowers, a musician who ran unsuccessfully for County Council with 9% of the vote in the August 2021 primary, had applied to be part of the health advisory board.

She addressed the Health Board during the open public comment part of Tuesday’s meeting, offering distorted information about the pandemic.

“We are very concerned that people are having major adverse reactions to these injections. The CDC has admitted that this month,” Flowers told the Health Board.

In fact, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that major adverse reactions to COVID-19 vaccines are extremely rare.

“If you do not understand the reality that’s going on in Bellingham right now, I urge you to look on the obituaries for Legacy.com, type in ‘Bellingham died suddenly.’ There are hundreds of people that are in their 20s, 30s, and 40s that are dying suddenly without cause,” Flowers said.

On her health advisory board application, Flowers said that she has been a wellness coach for 12 years and an advocate of “informed medical consent,” but she didn’t disclose her vocal opposition to vaccines and her specific opposition to the COVID-19 vaccine and public-health requirements such as masking, business closures, social distancing or other measures designed to slow the spread of the disease early in the new coronavirus pandemic.

“I believe they are not safe or effective,” Flowers said about vaccines in a June 25, 2022, episode of the podcast “Nontroversy.”

She’s also been a frequent critic of how Whatcom County officials responded to the pandemic, offering false and misleading comments about COVID-19 and its vaccines at Bellingham City Council and Whatcom County Council meetings.

You Tube briefly suspended the Bellingham City Council’s account in mid-2021, citing comments that broke the social media company’s rules governing medical misinformation.

For his part, Bennett told the Health Board that its members aren’t a rubber-stamp committee.

“We have a diversity of opinion on (the health advisory board), but the diversity of opinion on one issue such as the pandemic is not the whole of (the health advisory board’s) job. We are not a monolith of thought on (the health advisory board),” Bennett said.