Poor Rex Bohn.

At the very end of Tuesday’s five-hour Board of Supervisors meeting on vaccine mandates for county employees, after hours and hours of public comment from antivaxxers along the spectrum from exasperating to unhinged, Supervisor Rex Bohn — who, throughout the pandemic, has been a steadfast public champion for vaccines and a mostly pretty decent public champion of things like masking and other public health orders — had had enough.

Stuffed to bursting with the fears, harangues and veiled threats of righteously unqualified people who have done their own research, Bohn took aim at the county’s own public health division, in the persons of Health Officer Ian Hoffman and Health and Human Services Director Michele Stephens. Why do people have bad information, he wondered. Why don’t they have good information?

He said, in full:

I think I’ve said this for a year and a half, and I do hope Director Stephens and Dr. Hoffman are listening. One of the biggest problems we have is misinformation. So can we attack the misinformation and put more information out there? I know you say you are, but the misinformation’s out there. We have a whole team …

And I don’t know. I don’t know how to do it. You have professionals, you have professional people over there that are versed in putting out press releases and everything else. We need to attack some of these things that are coming out. I mean, you know: “If you get the vaccine you’re gonna grow a third arm,” or whatever the case would be. I get dozens of things every day saying, you know, that people are people are dying daily. We had somebody say today that one percent, only one percent of all the misfortunes of vaccines you’re getting reported. So I did the math. I think that’s like a million and a half people are dying after they get their vaccine. I don’t think that’s happening.

So I we need to address this, and you guys have .. you guys have the platform. Some of us on the board have been trying to use our platforms, but we’re just supervisors and we just have, you know, our Facebook or whatever the case may be, or if we get a chance to do media …

And I just … it sounds like our focus needs to be getting the truth out there, so these people have are making a well-informed decision rather than a Dr. Google, Dr. Facebook decision. And that’s just my … because it was mentioned by everybody today that there’s so much misinformation out there, and you guys control the information mission.

So it just feels, maybe … Maybe you don’t, I just … I don’t …

As he petered out thusly, he waved an exasperated hand into the air. He just, he doesn’t …

What reception did this heartfelt speech get? You probably guessed. The other participants of the Zoom broke out in open laughter. Stephens’ face, in particular, was an open book. It read, “Awwww! That is so cute, and also so sad!”

Why is it sad? It is sad because Rex is Rex, and so his solution to the problem of COVID misinformation is the same as his solution to every other problem he has ever faced and every other problem he ever will face, in this life or the next. Here’s what needs to happen: People just need to roll up their sleeves and get ’er done! COVID misinformation is a stall that needs mucking. Are people standing in the way? Get them out of the way! Hoffman and Stephens have been provided the rakes and shovels, yet the stall remains unmucked.