Dr. Robert Berke
County Physician Dr. Robert Berke stated “We’re at war” with COVID-19 in a video posted on the County Health Department‘s Facebook page Monday.
Dr. Berke, who has served as a public health officer in Canada, Africa, Thailand, and here in the United States, said this has been the most exasperating year of his career with seeing how the pandemic has been mishandled, “And right now we’re looking at 800,000 deaths of which probably almost two-thirds were avoidable because there’s vaccine available. And still such low percentage of people vaccinated in this country where other countries have gotten to 90% and are doing much better. It’s really very, very disappointing.”
Berke said when it comes to things like mask mandates, it’s not political or an infringement of your personal rights, “This is 100% personal responsibility. Each of us, I’m responsible for you. You’re responsible for me. I’m responsible for your family, my family, everybody else out there. And there’s nothing about your right to do whatever you want. It’s about the public’s responsibility toward each other and it doesn’t matter if you’re red, white, blue, independent – that’s irrelevant. The issue is, we have to look after each other. We’re at war.”
Berke said the challenge is that what is known about the novel coronavirus keeps changing, so the science keeps changing as well which is hard for people who want black and white answers, “There’s no ‘yes, no’ here. What there is, is an enemy that we’re fighting that’s constantly mutating and changing because that’s what it does to stay alive. And we are stupidly going along and just feeling like this is going to go away and we can just go about our lives again. And we can’t until we get this under control.”
Berke added that vaccines are necessary even with the virus mutating because it’ll keep most people from getting seriously ill, ending up in the hospital, or dying. He said everyone he’s seeing in the hospital right now is unvaccinated.
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