Recent editorials of statewide and national interest from Idaho newspapers:
If the warning light flashes, don’t turn it off
The Lewiston Tribune
Aug 9
You wouldn’t override a circuit breaker that constantly flips.
The answer to a blaring smoke detector is not removing its batteries.
And disabling the check engine light is only asking for trouble.
So why would Idaho remove the legal warning signal flashing over its plans to reopen schools in the midst of a COVID-19 pandemic?
That device is Idaho’s liability law.
Liability laws are how victims get compensated for the bad behavior of others. If you’re injured due to someone’s negligence, you deserve to be made whole.
At the same time, the threat of lawsuits and expensive verdicts discourages stupid, negligent and even reckless behavior.
Idaho officials have good reason to worry about their own liability when it comes to reopening schools.
As Idaho Education News’ Sami Edge reported last week, three-quarters of Idaho’s school children live in what the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention defines as “hot spots.” These are areas where more than 5 percent of people tested for corornavirus come back positive.
Under those circumstances, CDC Director Robert Redfield recommends remote and distance learning. But the political leadership of Idaho is determined to reopen schools to in-person instruction.
Doing so, however, would require drastic changes to ensure students engage in the appropriate social distancing.
A good roadmap would be the checklist Idaho Education Association President Layne McInelly compiled:
- Hire more teachers to accommodate smaller class sizes.
- Line up more substitute teachers to replace those who get sick. There’s already a shortage and many of Idaho’s substitutes are retired teachers whose age puts them at greater risk of becoming seriously ill from COVID-19.
- Recruit more bus drivers and obtain more buses to transport a smaller group of students.
- Secure more medical personnel to respond to students and employees who appear to be coming down with the coronavirus.
- Round up more counselors who will be needed to respond to emotionally distressed students.
Of course, that is not how Idaho conducts business.
Not only is it locked in the nation’s basement in terms of the amount of money it allocates on behalf of each student, but Gov. Brad Little has cut the new budget by $99 million.
So Idaho is going to force teachers and students to return to crowded classrooms.
Someone is going to get sick.
It could be a teacher or a school staffer.
It could be a student.
It might be a family member who was infected because his child or her spouse brought the virus home.
When that happens, someone could argue the state negligently contributed to his illness.
Rather than spend the money to protect students and employees - or simply defer to caution and maintain distance learning - lawmakers want to disconnect the warning light.
Under a bill that appears headed toward rapid passage during a special legislative session that Little has slated for later this month, the state and school districts would be immune from a COVID-19 lawsuit.
It’s one thing to extend immunity to so-called good Samaritans - people who in good faith try to help someone in distress but inadvertently cause additional harm. You don’t want to discourage people from bringing assistance.
It’s quite another for politicians to use immunity laws to play favorites. Along those lines would be a bill shielding an electric utility from liability incurred because its equipment touched off catastrophic wildfires.
Idaho’s plan is veering more toward the latter than the former.
Politicians - and ultimately insurance companies who sell liability policies - would benefit.
Left to suffer the consequences would be students, their families and their teachers.
If this is a prerequisite to reopening Idaho’s schools, doesn’t that tell you something?
Online: Lewiston Tribune
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Idaho falls short in protecting our most vulnerable residents and keeping families informed
Idaho Statesman
August 11
Idaho is five months into the coronavirus pandemic, and we still haven’t gotten a handle on cases in the state’s nursing homes and long-term care facilities.
As Idaho Statesman journalist Audrey Dutton reported, the system of reporting COVID-19 cases and deaths is unorganized and disjointed, leading to an underreporting of cases and leaving families unaware of and misinformed about outbreaks and deaths in facilities where loved ones are living.
A Statesman analysis of state and federal data found that the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare’s records don’t include 13 nursing homes that have been reporting active COVID-19 outbreaks to the CDC.
In addition, seven nursing homes reported outbreaks to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that appear to be stable or resolved but have never shown up in the state’s record of outbreaks.
The state gets its information from local health districts, while the CDC gets outbreak information directly from nursing homes.
Both of the data sources have contained inaccuracies caused by data entry or processing errors in a fast-changing pandemic that has overwhelmed long-term care facilities and public health agencies.
Further, the CDC database contains only nursing homes, which are federally regulated, while the state list contains nursing homes and state-regulated residential assisted living facilities and group homes for people with disabilities.
We already know that the elderly are at most risk from the disease caused by coronavirus.
In Idaho, 60% of the 237 deaths were in people 80 and older, and 94.5% of all deaths have occurred in people 60 and older.
Our highest priority must be protecting those in the most vulnerable populations. Protecting those populations, though, can’t happen if we’re unaware of outbreaks and cases.
In addition, with Ada County in Stage 3 of Idaho’s phased reopening plan, that means visits to long-term care facilities are prohibited. That leaves families often at the mercy of individual facilities to let them know what’s happening within those walls where loved ones may be exposed to the deadly virus.
Unfortunately, the Statesman found, many family members are left in the dark.
Several family members spoke with the Statesman and said they were unaware of cases or outbreaks at their loved ones’ facilities. In one case examined by the Statesman, one Boise facility failed to inform family members that a resident had died from COVID-19 earlier that day. In that facility, nursing home staff had been testing positive for coronavirus for weeks, but family members had not been informed.
Other family members told the Statesman of similar experiences, receiving confusing, conflicting or delayed information about COVID-19 from the facilities that house their loved ones.
Meanwhile, the state merely “recommends” facilities notify residents and their designated representatives and families “within a reasonable timeframe.”
Further, state officials at the Department of Health and Welfare rely on an “education” strategy rather than fines or imprisonment for failure to notify families.
As with other problems the state encountered, we have been willing to give officials the benefit of the doubt in responding to an unprecedented event that overwhelmed agencies.
But now that we are five months down this road, it’s well past time for the Department of Health and Welfare to have this figured out. It’s also become clear that private care facilities, for whatever reason, are not doing an adequate job of informing family members of exposure to coronavirus for people living and working in their facilities.
These places need to do a much better job of reporting coronavirus, and the state needs to do a much better job of holding their feet to the fire.
The lives of thousands of our most vulnerable residents are at stake.
- Statesman editorials are the unsigned opinion expressing the consensus of the Idaho Statesman’s editorial board. Board members are publisher Rusty Dodge, editor Christina Lords, opinion editor Scott McIntosh, newsroom editors Dana Oland and Jim Keyser and community members Mike Wetherell and Sophie Sestero.
Online: Idaho Statesman
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