Dr. Dawn Comstock, Former Executive Director, Jefferson County Public Health
Colorado’s politically savvy Governor Jared Polis was the first Democrat governor to declare the COVID-19 pandemic to be over and ended all state mandates. Of course, 75% of Coloradans remained under mask and other mandates imposed by local health authorities, so nothing really changed other than Polis being hailed by the left wing and right wing as a man of the people.
Our progressive City and County of Denver loved its mask mandates, social distancing, and lockdowns. Denver’s problem was if all the surrounding counties of Jefferson, Arapahoe, Adams, and Douglas did not follow suit the slow ruination of downtown and the city would be accelerated with businesses and residents deserting it for the suburbs.
That was why the rise of the Colorado health officials was so important. Dr. John Douglas of Tri-County Health (Arapahoe, Adams, and Douglas) and Dr. Dawn Comstock of Jefferson County Health, along with their respective boards, could lockdown and mask up those counties without any say of the citizens and their elected officials and they did so with relish.
No amount of public protestation mattered. Schools went to “virtual learning” (meaning no learning at all) to the delight of schoolteachers’ unions who demonstrated that their highest goal is to be able to get full pay with little or no work. Parents did notice that Catholic and other private schools stayed open without any increase in COVID-19, but their teachers were not unionized.
Dr. John Douglas, Executive Director, Tri-County Public Health
It did not seem to matter to Dr. Douglas that he was slowly destroying the state’s largest and best-known health department. First Douglas County, then Adams County, and finally even Arapahoe County withdrew from Tri-State Health destroying the jobs of over 600 health professionals and staff. The most employable of that health department have exited to new jobs while the people filling those vacancies were so substandard that having Tri-County on your resume is now considered a black mark.
Dr. Douglas did not seem to care as mandates and lockdowns were more important to him than anything else. It did not seem to matter to him that masks and lockdowns appear not to slow the spread of the virus or its severity, and may have caused more deaths from suicide and other causes than it saved. Being 68-years-old Dr. Douglas did not have to worry about getting a new job as he can retire on a highly generous public pension and his co-workers be damned.
His counterpart in Jefferson County, Dr. Comstock is not quite as fortunate. She was hired in February of last year replacing Dr. Mark Johnson who retired as the head of Jefferson County Health after over 30 years to become the president of the Colorado Medical Society. He went out with unanimous praise and honors.
Dr. Comstock got her board to reinstate the all-important mask mandate in the fall of 2021 along with other anti-COVID measures. She didn’t seem to notice that the public had turned against her. She even went to court to try to force three private Christian schools to bow down to her mask mandate. She was the only witness in a daylong hearing with the court packed with parents who did not want their kids masked all day long, especially since the cloth masks were deemed ineffective in stopping the spread of the virus. She won the court battle but lost the war.
She was hauled before the Jefferson County Board of Health on February 7 for a two-hour executive session where she apparently refused to back down on the mask mandates and was required to resign. The Board then quickly lifted the mandates.
Because of health official tyrants like Drs. Douglas and Comstock many people in Colorado have learned not to entrust their lives to unelected bureaucrats even if they have the appellation “Dr.” before their names.
Lord Acton’s admonition that “power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely” applies to all manner of men and women no matter what their profession.
- Editorial Board