Wagner & the Anti-Maskers get their way: Dr. Quick Gives Up on Orange County!

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Our county’s lost Health Officer, on a backdrop of growing OC hospitalizations and ICU rates.

May the Lord have mercy on this drooling County.  Two months after the scientist, Dr. David Souleles, who was supposed to lead our vitally important Covid testing program, left “to spend more time with his family,” Dr. Nichole Quick, our head health officer, has quit her post, hounded out of office by a mob of raving anti-mask fanatics, aided and abetted by a couple of conspicuously unsupportive Supervisors.  (Don Wagner & Michelle Steel.)

The mob in question had worked itself into a hysterical lather over the last two weeks since Dr. Quick issued a “strong recommendation” for OC folks to wear masks in public whenever they are less than six feet from each other.  The mob managed to convince each other, sometimes to the point of tears and hysteria, that masks were going to kill them, and that Dr. Quick was thus a murderer.  “We have the FACTS on our side, we have the SCIENCE,” these unhinged autodidacts slobbered.

One particularly psychotic anti-masker, a Costa Mesa “human rights attorney” named Leigh Taylor Dundas, broadcast Dr. Quick’s home address to the world a couple meetings ago, and threatened to bring a crowd over to do calisthenics on her front porch wearing masks until they all die of “hypoxia,” and then have Nichole charged with murder.  A few days later, a crowd of protesters DID show up in Nichole’s front yard, with signs depicting her with a Hitler mustache.

Dr. Quick has three small children.

But of course, the Board of Supervisors, who hired her, had her back, right?  Not so much.  You know how they say, “The best lack all conviction, while the worst are filled with a passionate intensity”?  That describes the feeble, mumbling support Dr. Quick got from Supervisors Chaffee, Do and Bartlett, versus the fervent, crusading know-nothingism of Supervisor Don Wagner.  (Backed by Steel whenever she could form a sentence.)

You may remember that two weeks ago Don expressed his strong dissapointment that “Just as the Governor is allowing us to move FORWARD by opening up businesses, Dr. Quick is trying to move us BACKWARD to wearing masks!”  He strove to outdo that brilliance the following week, repeatedly demanding to know what Dr. Quick had “learned” from listening to the anti-maskers’ raving, as she tried her damnedest to be polite.

He badgered her over WHY we have to have the same onerous “strong mask recommendation” that Los Angeles and San Diego Counties have, when “We are MUCH MORE SIMILAR to Riverside and San Bernardino Counties?!”  Quick was no doubt puzzled, and nobody asked in what way the OC resembles the Inland Empire more than our populous beachside neighbors.  I think Wagner’s answer would be that WE ARE FREEDOM-LOVING REPUBLICANS and DON’T TRUST THE GOVERNMENT and NOBODY TELLS US WHAT TO DO!

Some of the anti-maskers had complained in their speeches about being “shamed” for their masklessness, and some of those claimed to have special conditions that made masks unsuitable for them, and so Supervisor Bartlett puzzled aloud, “Is there some way that folks who can’t wear masks can let others know?”  Wagner, sensing an opening for a quick NAZI CRACK, flipped on his mike and sneered, “Yeah, how about ARMBANDS?  That’s worked at other times in history!”  (Maybe he was inspired by thoughts of Dr. Quick with the Hitler mustache?)

At one point Wagner puzzled aloud over the Board’s options in the face of such an unreasonable order, and snuck in a veiled threat, “apart from firing Dr Quick or Dr Chau, and that’s not on the table right now.”  Smooth.  “Nice health agency you have here, shame if something happened to it.”  Finally he left Dr Quick with a stern homework assignment:  You had better explain to all of us CLEARLY next week EXACTLY why this mask order is necessary – in a way we ALL can understand.  No surprise, Nichole has now responded with a loud clear “Fuck this noise.”

Its down to CHAU now!

Now we’re left with Clayton Chau (left) as the remaining voice of scientific reason.  I’m pleased to report he seems tough as nails and sardonic as necessary. 

Fellow Asian-American immigrant Michelle Steel really seems to HATE Clayton Chau, have you noticed?  It seems like the deep abiding hatred that an ignorant unaccomplished trophy wife who’s been elevated to way above her competence level feels toward an accomplished, successful fellow immigrant. 

I’d list my observations backing that, but I’m all snarked out and ready for bed.

Godspeed Dr. Quick, and may God have mercy on our STOOPID County.

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About Vern Nelson

Greatest pianist/composer in Orange County, and official political troubadour of Anaheim and most other OC towns. Regularly makes solo performances, sometimes with his savage-jazz band The Vern Nelson Problem. Reach at vernpnelson@gmail.com, or 714-235-VERN.