The Shasta County Board of Supervisors has appointed an outspoken critic of COVID-19 vaccine mandates to be the county’s new public well being officer.

The hiring of Redding household doctor James Mu comes 17 months after the board fired its earlier public well being officer, Karen Ramstrom, whom supervisors had criticized for following state mandates requiring masks and vaccinations in the course of the pandemic.

“I would like to follow evidence-based policy. However, if there are medical dogma that are not good for the population in our county, then I will question and even challenge them,” mentioned Mu, who additionally opposed vaccines and masks for kids, after the supervisors voted to rent him Tuesday night time.

The largely rural Northern California county has struggled to rent a public well being officer — the particular person chargeable for stopping the unfold of infectious ailments, imposing authorities well being orders and ordering quarantines — since Ramstrom’s firing in May 2022.

Dr. James Mu speaks to the Shasta County Board of Supervisors after his appointment as public well being officer.

(Shasta County Board of Supervisors)

After at the least three failed attempts to rent for the place, the Board of Supervisors in June lowered the job requirements.

Previously, a candidate was required to have 5 years of expertise as a physician and both a grasp’s diploma in public well being or two years of expertise as a public well being officer.

The minimal qualification now’s that an applicant merely be a medical faculty graduate eligible for a California license to observe drugs.

Shasta County, a deeply conservative place that’s house to 182,000 folks, turned a lightning rod for political discourse in the course of the pandemic.

Residents usually threatened elected officers and public well being employees over COVID mandates throughout supervisors’ conferences.

At one assembly, a person in a Grim Reaper masks tried, unsuccessfully, to mild a surgical masks on fireplace. At one other, an anti-vaxxer tried to put all of the supervisors beneath citizen’s arrest.

After a person offended about coronavirus restrictions introduced Ramstrom’s house handle throughout a gathering, Redding police did additional patrols of her neighborhood.

All the whereas, Shasta County constantly had one of many lowest vaccination charges and highest charges of loss of life from COVID-19 within the state.

Mu was one in all 12 Shasta County physicians who, in February 2022, publicly signed an “Open Letter on COVID-19” that decried vaccine mandates, the testing of asymptomatic folks and “the physical, psychological, and social impacts of mask and vaccine mandates on children.”

An October 2020 protest towards coronavirus restrictions and vaccines at Turtle Bay Exploration Park in Redding.

(Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times)

The letter touted the advantages of pure immunity and promoted the usage of “early treatments” to stop the illness.

The letter stemmed from a public forum at Pathway Church in Redding by which these physicians promoted the usage of house treatments — together with nutritional vitamins and iodine nasal sprays — to stop and deal with COVID-19.

There, docs promoted the use of discredited COVID-19 therapies ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine.

“When they mandate something, they’re taking some of your rights away,” Mu mentioned in a speech on the discussion board, referring to the federal government. “They’re taking some of your autonomy away.”

Mu downplayed COVID-19 as “primarily a disease for the elderly and also those who are immunocompromised.”

He mentioned the vaccines are “very effective in preventing severe illness, and if you are high-risk, you should really consider getting it.”

But, he added, he didn’t suppose individuals who had already been contaminated by the coronavirus ought to get inoculated and that “children who are healthy” shouldn’t be vaccinated — recommendation opposite to recommendations by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Mu couldn’t be reached by The Times for remark.

His hiring comes three weeks after the Board of Supervisors appointed Jon Knight, a right-wing conspiracy theorist — who warned about weaponized bugs and “flying syringes that will mass vaccinate the population” — to the Shasta Mosquito and Vector Control District board.

The highly effective Board of Supervisors is led by a hard-right majority — supported by members of a local militia, State of Jefferson secessionists and residents livid about pandemic mandates — that usually clashes with mainstream Republicans who’ve lengthy held native authorities energy.

In an editorial for the native information web site A News Cafe days earlier than her termination, Ramstrom, who couldn’t be reached for remark, wrote: “We were never more restrictive than the state required; we followed the state law. Period. … I don’t want to leave my job and I don’t want to be muzzled. I object to being terminated.”

Donnell Ewert, the retired director of the Shasta County Health & Human Services Agency — who personally known as Redding police after Ramstrom began getting threats — mentioned her firing was “a miscarriage of what’s right.”

The County of Shasta Administration Center, the place the Board of Supervisors meets, in Redding, Calif.

(Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times)

“She worked so hard for all of that time,” he mentioned in an interview. “We had to practically beg her to go on vacation or go on breaks or not work on weekends.”

Ewert — whose company oversaw the Public Health Branch for which Ramstrom labored — retired shortly earlier than she was fired. With the brand new hard-right majority on the Board of Supervisors, he figured he can be fired for supporting masks and vaccinations too, he mentioned.

“It felt like a losing battle, trying to tell the truth,” Ewert mentioned. “We heard all kinds of crazy things: that Bill Gates was behind the vaccine and was going to inject microprocessors in us to track us,” he mentioned. “That it was experimental gene therapy.”

Last month, the supervisors rejected the appliance of Ewert, an epidemiologist, for the mosquito abatement board. Instead, they selected Knight, who owns a hydroponic gardening provide retailer and who was pictured exterior the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, holding what seemed to be a white energy image.

A supporter of former President Trump drives by means of Redding in 2020.

(Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times)

The Board of Supervisors voted 3 to 2 to rent Mu as the brand new public well being officer close to the top of an eight-hour assembly Tuesday.

Patrick Jones, a gun retailer supervisor and the hard-right chairman of the Board of Supervisors, praised Mu as “someone that did not just bow down to whatever the governor said” in the course of the pandemic.

“He did what’s best for his patients, which is what we’re looking for for the residents of Shasta County.”

Supervisor Kevin Crye, who voted for Mu, added: “I would like to tell Dr. Mu and his family: Buckle up.”

During public feedback, Nena Perry, a Redding doctor, mentioned that whereas she believed Mu has the “potential to do a good job,” she hoped he might “get past his personal perspective and really look at the public health of the community.”

Stephanie Taylor, an epidemiologist who labored for the Shasta County Health & Human Services Agency for 15 years, by means of 2022, informed the supervisors that she apprehensive about Mu being requested to guide a public well being employees exhausted by the pandemic.

Mu, she mentioned, had “publicly undermined their work.”

Times employees author Sean Greene contributed to this report.