Health departments feel lasting impacts from COVID-related threats and abuse

ANNAPOLIS, Md. - As COVID-19 cases decline and restrictions are lifted, health officials say they still feel the impact of abusive and threatening behavior over the last two years.

Don Curtian, Anne Arundel County’s Director of Environmental Health, said what he saw was like nothing else during his 40-year career at the county health department. He said he often felt fear for his employees’ safety as they enforced COVID restrictions.

"When I have to call the police to get my staff safe, that will always stick with me. I don’t want to have a conversation with one of my employees’ spouses or their family to tell them they didn’t make it home because they were doing their job," Curtian said.

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The health department shared a video from an inspector who Curtian said was enforcing the county’s mask mandate at a business and started recording when she felt threatened. 

In it, a woman tries to slap the phone from the employee’s hand and a man goes on to curse at and berate her as police stand by.

Curtian said another employee was surrounded at his car outside a restaurant. Someone photographed him and posted his photo and name on social media calling him a piece of s---.

"There’s a lot of scar tissue," Curtian said. "The comments, you know, that you see on social media of how the public or local people think about you, that sticks with you."

Anne Arundel County Health Officer Dr. Nilesh Kalyanaraman said his home address was shared online.

"There were some times, yes, I feared for my safety and also thought about my family’s safety," Kalyanaraman said.

He said it wasn’t just those against COVID restrictions who were abusive. Kalyanaraman said the hardest stretch of the pandemic was when vaccines first came out and some didn’t want to wait their turn. 

"It came from different directions at times. It wasn’t always do less, but do more and do better," he said.

Across the country, there has been an exodus from public health jobs due to multiple factors revolving around the pandemic.

"We’ve definitely seen turnover has increased. We’ve seen more people leave," said Kalyanaraman. "And we know that’s a combination of all of the above. There's abusiveness, but there’s also just the hours, the stress, the fatigue. It’s taken a toll on us as a health department."

New Maryland bill could criminalize threats against health care workers

In an effort to support public health officials, Maryland lawmakers are considering a bill that would make it a crime to threaten health officials.

House Bill 267 imposes penalties up to $500 and 90 days in prison for those who make or send "a threat to a public health official with the intent to intimidate, interfere with, or impede a public health official from performing the official's duties." The crime would be a misdemeanor offense.

At the hearing in January, Washington County Health Officer Earl Stoner said he put in a security system at his home after threats to his family. Dr. Travis Gayles, the former chief health officer in Montgomery County, shared a racist, explicit email he received during his time as health officer.

The bill has stalled in committee, but a spokesperson for Del. Karen Lewis Young (D-Frederick), one of the bill’s sponsors, says there is still hope it will pass this session.

"A bill like this does help send a message," said Kalyanaraman.

"We should not be threatened to do our job," Curtian said.