Dr. Minns ‘subject to brutal, scathing attacks’ that ‘he doesn’t deserve,’ commissioner says

Sedgwick County health officer Dr. Garold Minns does not deserve all the criticism that has been directed toward him for his pandemic orders, two county commissioners said Thursday.

The comments from Michael O’Donnell and David Dennis came during a virtual candidate forum on health care and COVID-19 hosted Thursday evening by the Coalition of Coalitions, an advocacy group interested in public health. They discussed the idea of creating a public health advisory board for Sedgwick County.

“Let me make it clear: a lot of people are giving Dr. Minns problems because they think that he just makes decisions and doesn’t consult with anyone else,” Dennis said. “Truly, he talks to other epidemiologists, to the hospitals, to other doctors — he gets advice from a lot of places. So kind of defacto we’ve got an advisory board through Dr. Minns.”

“I truly believe that the amount of pressure and attention on just one individual, Dr. Minns, is very unfortunate, because he has been subject to brutal, scathing attacks,” O’Donnell said. “And he is a wonderful human being, and I feel bad. We might disagree sometimes on his orders, but he doesn’t deserve some of that.”

Minns, the dean of the University of Kansas School of Medicine in Wichita, has issued various public health orders in attempts to curb the spread of the coronavirus. Some people have criticized him for business shutdowns early in the pandemic, early bar curfews in the past months and the mask order, which he extended to December.

Among the criticisms in the comments section of The Eagle’s Facebook post on Minns’ latest order:

• “Where do the owners of bars & nightclubs pick up their compensation checks for lost revenue? Should they knock on the front door of Dr. Minns home? I’m sure someone here can post it in the comments below???”
• “Now remove this worthless mask order so life can get back to normal you socialist (expletive)
• “I call B.S. on the numbers. How convenient that they suddenly climbed right before the mandate was to expire.”

An oft-repeated inaccurate accusation is that Minns is an un-elected bureaucrat making mandates without any oversight from elected officials.

While Minns was not elected, the Sedgwick County Commission has the power to revoke any of Minns’ orders. On Wednesday, the commission declined to revise or revoke Minns’ latest order. They also did not pass a symbolic motion to affirm the order.

“Dr. Minns is a great guy, and he understands epidemiology better than probably anybody in our entire region,” O’Donnell said. “But there’s other components of the coronavirus that’s not just physical health.”

He pointed to mental health and economic health as also factoring “into the well-being of our community.”