It was last week Thursday when Marilla Town Supervisor, Earl Gingerich Jr. fired off a letter to the Erie County Department of Health saying Marilla would not comply with the implemented mask mandate last Monday by Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz.
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Shortly following Gingerich Jr.'s thoughts of Erie County's mask mandate, West Seneca Town Supervisor Gary Dickson issued a statement on his displeasure with the mask mandate, but did mention they will not break the policies set in place by the County Executive.
"I am not anti-vaxx, and I am not anti-mask. I've been vaccinated, I have the booster, and if a business wants me to wear a mask when I go in, that's fine. What I am against is mandates on the public without exhausting all possible alternatives first, without explaining why they're doing the things that they are," Dickson said to WBEN on Monday.
When listening to Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz making the announcement last Monday of the mask mandate and how it was the staffing levels and the hospitals' capacity issues that were the reasoning for the mandate, Dickson was curious as to the current capacity of the hospitals in the area.
Dickson then said he did some research utilizing the reports and numbers from hospitals given to the Department of Health and Human Services. What he found was for a good part of 2021, Erie County had about 2,300 beds available in hospitals. However, that number is now down to about 2,000, which is more than a 10% decrease in capacity.
He says if the hospitals had not lost those beds, the county would not be in the crisis that it is in today.
"It is the hospital capacity that the County Executive is using to justifying the mandate. He says because of hospital capacity, we have to do the mandate," Dickson explained. "To me, the logic in that is if we did not have the capacity problems, we would not have the mandate. So it goes back to where did those 300 beds go? I don't know. I'm not an expert. I'm just a guy sitting at home on a Saturday morning doing the data. They can answer that. It's entirely possible it's because of staffing issues. These are all staffed beds. There's no point saying you have a bed if you don't have staff for it. OK, maybe that's the case, what was done to prevent it?"
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So why hasn't the issue of the reduction of hospital beds been brought up more in conversations? Dickson says he's not sure why those answers aren't being brought up.
"I suspect that it's a difficult problem," he said. "It's much easier to say that we're going to institute a mandate than it is to say this is a very complicated problem, possibly exacerbated by our own governmental policies, which is to tell healthcare workers that you were working without a vaccine for a year and we treated you like a hero, and you didn't get sick. But now that we have a vaccine, all of the sudden you're the enemy and we're going to fire you. I don't think that's conducive to cooperation or to solving the problem. I think that exacerbates it."
As for possible ways to address the issue of hospital capacity going down, Dickson suggests that the county should put more money into either addressing many of the staffing shortages, or even figuring out ways to expand capacity at hospitals. One way he believes that can be done is using the money given to the county from the American Rescue Plan.
"[Poloncarz]'s got $178 million this year and next year for the American Rescue Plan money. Has any of that money been used to alleviate the staffing shortages?" Dickson said. "What's the plan in the future?
"Since he attributes it to the lack of capacity in hospitals, it would be interesting to know why we are where we are, where did those staffed beds - the staff mainly - where did they go, why did they leave, but more importantly, what is being done to fix this? I don't know. He's got the experts. Tell us what you're doing to alleviate the hospital situation besides putting in these mandates, besides letting hospitals stop elective surgeries. Is there anything, or are you telling us that you can't do anything? That we're just stuck with this - all these smart people can't think of any way to alleviate it."
Dickson understands that COVID-19 is likely going to be around for quite a long time with the vaccines losing effectiveness and the new variants popping up across the globe. He feels that hospitals should be well-prepared to be able to handle periodic spikes of COVID-19 cases, and if it takes the money from the American Rescue Plan to do so, then so be it.
Going forward, Dickson is hoping for the local government in Erie County just to be more transparent with the residents and businesses, and also provide the people options on how they can do their part to alleviate the issues at hand before taking measures.
"We're not a center of revolution. We're simply, I'm simply a guy asking the questions. I'm not telling them what to do. I'm saying you have all the experts, just treat us like adults. Tell us what's happening."
You can listen to our entire conversation with Dickson below:
