the town dandy / By Hank Sims

Barf Bag

(Dec. 13, 2007)  Everything we know we learned from the norovirus:

The present writer considers himself fortunate not to be numbered among those who suffered from the dreaded viral outbreak that swept across the county last week. From what we can gather, norovirus plays out like a scene from 28 Days Later — disease-crazed infectees running around the streets of the city at high speed, tackling friends and passersby to puke contaminated blood into their faces. Unlike in the movie, though, everyone picks himself up a day or so later, evidently no worse for wear and (knowing Humboldt County) possibly even somewhat gratified for having taken part in such an interesting experience. If you were one of the 166-and-counting who were afflicted you have our sympathy or congratulations, whichever the case may be.

It must be said that the folks at Baywood Golf & Country Club, the source of the irruption, handled themselves with class throughout. Though it must have been uncomfortable, they were thoroughly forthcoming with the press and the public. The same could not exactly be said of the county’s public health department. The department’s first press release on the outbreak, dated Dec. 6, warned people to be on the lookout for symptoms, but did not disclose that the primary risk factor associated with the disease was having dined at Baywood between Dec. 1 and Dec. 5. Why not? If you’re looking to stem the spread of the disease, wouldn’t that information be rather useful?

In the aftermath, some people assumed that the county was simply covering up for Baywood. As it turns out, those people are more or less right.

“It’s our role to investigate the outbreak,” wrote Public Health Director Alexandra Wineland in an e-mail. “Revealing the name of the facility may give a false impression that there is something wrong with the facility, and that is not necessarily the case. We would only reveal the name of the facility if it was necessary to inform people that they should seek treatment. There is no treatment for the suspected norovirus.”

If Wineland or anyone else within the Byzantine halls of the county health department had made themselves available to talk, which they did not, we would have asked the obvious follow-up: What does “investigation” or “treatment” have to do with it? What we’re talking about is an effort to control a threat to public health. Some of those who had eaten contaminated food at Baywood may not yet have become symptomatic. Wouldn’t it have been helpful to let them know to watch out for symptoms and to take care not to spread the disease to others?

No, as per usual the county simply chose the bureaucratically safe course. Of course they knew that the secret would not be kept, not in a county this small; it’s just that top county brass feared taking leadership or responsibility, or even fulfilling their charter. Par for the course, as it were. Contrast their actions with the full-on menschiness of the Baywood staff. It’s kind of sad.

Everyone’s all fired up for the big railroad right-of-way clearing this Saturday morning. At the time of this writing, those eager to build a Eureka-Arcata pedestrian trail are sharpening their clippers and tuning their weed-whackers and walking around in a gleeful stupor, giddy with the prospect of claiming the moribund railroad right-of-way for their own. Aux armes, citoyens! Aux armes! Meanwhile, over at the railfolks’ final redoubt, the Altamont Press online bulletin boards, the ancien régime throws itself a great big pity party, one member suggesting that the board of directors of the North Coast Railroad Authority, a public agency, should be hauled off to federal prison if they allow the event to proceed.

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