Sonoma County health officer faces turbulence, success at helm of coronavirus fight
Driving to and from her Santa Rosa office, Dr. Sundari Mase sees shuttered storefronts and struggling businesses and worries about them.
“I wonder how that restaurant is doing, how that hair salon is doing,” said Mase, who happens to be the person responsible for closing those businesses in the first place three months ago. “I wonder if they're going to make it. I do think about that a lot.”
Mase, Sonoma County's health officer, is empathetic, regardless of how some critics describe her. But she is also a highly regarded epidemiologist, a “disease detective,” as county Supervisor James Gore called her, devoted to “following the science.”
The science has led Mase to some difficult, unpopular places. As the county's field general in its fight against the pathogen that has killed four area residents and nearly 120,000 people nationwide, the 53-year-old has issued a series of sweeping orders that have flattened the coronavirus curve here - COVID-19 infections and deaths are low in Sonoma County, compared to its Bay Area neighbors. At the same time, her tough decisions cast tens of thousands out of work.
The whirlwind of uncertainty did take a definitive turn the last couple of weeks when Mase allowed big waves of business sectors to reopen, including hair salons, restaurants for indoor dining, and the county's crown jewel wine industry can serve visitors tastings of favorite vintages without a required side of food. And churches welcomed people back inside for religious services for up to 100.
Her never-a-dull-moment tenure as the county's health officer began on March 10. The very next day, COVID-19 was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization. Mase has been “in response mode” ever since, grinding through 16-hour days drafting policies she knows will make people safer even as they make some of those same people angry.
“I feel really good about everything we've done so far,” Mase said, in an interview this week, “because I know we've prevented hospitalizations and deaths, especially in vulnerable populations.”
At the same time, she went on, “this is probably the most difficult situation in my career.”
A former physician herself, she is accustomed to “helping people make a decision between two bad choices,” she said. “I've done a lot of that.”
She has spent three decades in medicine, most recently at WHO, and the Centers For Disease Control And Prevention before that. But the last three months have been the hardest of her career, she said. “Because doing one thing has a direct, negative impact on the other thing. There's no middle ground.”
For a mild-mannered scientist and mother of three who insists on cooking dinner for her family no matter how late she gets home from work, Mase has become a remarkably polarizing figure in the county. During the county Board of Supervisors meeting on Tuesday, Mase drew high praise, but also came in for criticism that was harsh, and, in some cases, unhinged. One resident called for her to be imprisoned for “crimes against humanity.”
A lightning rod
The health officer serves as a sort of physician for the entire county. While public health officers once toiled in relative obscurity, their oversized role in battling the coronavirus has thrust them into an unfamiliar, and sometimes unwelcome, spotlight.
Orange County Health Officer Dr. Nichole Quick resigned Monday after receiving threats that followed her order for residents to continue wearing face coverings within 6 feet of others in public. Protesters had brought a sign to a public meeting, depicting Quick as a Nazi. Her home address was read aloud in a meeting. The Orange County Sheriff felt the need to provide her with a security detail.
“That's not exactly what they signed up for,” said Dr. Matt Willits, the health officer in neighboring Marin County.
Quick is the most recent example of a public health officer subjected to “a mob mentality that doesn't belong in public comment,” said Kat Deburgh, executive director of the Health Officers Association of California. Deburgh said Quick is the seventh senior health official in the state to resign during the pandemic.
Recently, Kathy Allard, a town of Sonoma resident, started a petition to have Mase fired. The health officer has neither been transparent, Allard said, nor has she taken into account the economic and mental “devastation” resulting from her public health emergency orders. By Friday, the petition had over 360 signatures.
To be sure, Mase has more supporters than detractors, judging by the interior of her East Bay home, which has taken on the appearance of an impromptu greenhouse.