Coronavirus, Covid 19, Mandatory face coverings, misinformation, Solano County Board of Supervisors, Solano County Health Department, Solano County Health Officer Bela Matyas

Dixon author Kelly James: Enough with COVID misinformation

The county public health department — specifically Bela Matyas — has been feeding the community misinformation…When will the county administration stop being complicit?

Fairfield Reporter Letters, by Kelly James, September 1, 2021
Dr. Bela Matyas, Deputy Director of Health and Social Services, Solano County Health Officer

When is enough, enough?

Over 2,000 new COVID-19 infections in the last couple weeks — primarily due to people going to parties, playing beer pong, and sharing cigarettes? So the infection and subsequent COVID death of the individual in the care facility was the result of their participation in summer parties and frat games? How about all the recent infections among the under 18 age group?

From the onset of the pandemic, the county public health department — specifically Bela Matyas — has been feeding the community misinformation. It began with his assurance to parents that kids were basically immune, continued with his social media video stating that masks weren’t necessary and the virus wouldn’t spread in confined spaces as long as you had a partition to protect you, and now, once again, he is making comments that are misleading and contradicting himself constantly in his public statements.

Until very recently he was still informing the public that COVID was primarily transmitted through droplets expelled by an infected person who coughed or sneezed or by someone touching a surface on which these droplets had settled and then touching their face and so forth. This despite the fact that in recent months the CDC and every other major medical association in the United States and the world had changed their assessment of the modes of transmission (based on lengthy, verifiable medical studies and research) to infections primarily occurring through microparticles which stay suspended in the air when people breath, talk, etc., as well as large droplets expelled when coughing and so forth. These studies are what fueled the initial spring and summer mask advisories made by the CDC. These are the “new information” which Dr. Matyas refuses to acknowledge as it validates the obvious need for indoor masking and contradicts his advisements to the public.

All of this absurdity is laughable from a distance, but for many of us living in Solano County, it’s a nightmare. When is the Solano County Board of Supervisors going to step in and do something? Do they or does anyone for that matter truly believe that every other medical professional, public health department, and health agency in the state is wrong and ours is right?

Solano County has been consistently the last in the state to be proactive and as a result, people have and are dying. We will get shut down again if basic precautions continue to go unheeded or enforced. When will the county administration stop being complicit?

— Kelly James/Dixon

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