Karen Gleason
delriomagnoliafan@gmail.com
A visibly-frustrated member of Val Verde County Commissioners Court on Wednesday
called on the community “to do the right thing” in mitigating the spread of COVID-19.
“We’ve been at this for nine months now. Everybody in America knows what they need to do. As a government official, I don’t like to be the dictator, trying to tell people what to do, but this isn’t about protecting people who want to go do stupid stuff. If you want to go get sick and die, that’s on you,” County Commissioner Pct. 3 Beau Nettleton said Wednesday.
“This is about protecting the healthcare workers, the doctors, the teachers, the EMS
people, those who are putting their lives at risk so that you can go do something that you
know is not right. It’s not fair to those people, that they’re being put at risk because you
refuse to do what you’re supposed to so,” Nettleton continued.
Nettleton made his comments during a discussion of the county’s COVID-19 situation
during Wednesday’s December regular term meeting of county commissioners court.
The commissioners and County Judge Lewis G. Owens Jr. learned during that meeting
the area’s COVID numbers are bad and expected to get worse.
Nettleton said the rules and regulations about social distancing and mask wearing are in
place to protect the entire community.
“I don’t know what happened to this country, that we quit caring about the people. The
cases at the hospital, those are the numbers I watch. It’s not the number of positive cases,
it’s the number of people admitted to hospitals. Those are the trends that I watch,” the
commissioner said.
“We’re going to find ourselves right back where we were before, where we can’t
transport the (really sick people) to San Antonio or San Angelo or anywhere else, and the
last time we got into this, we were lucky enough to get some nurses and doctors from the
Navy to help us out, but this is becoming a nationwide problem, so we may not be able to
get those people anymore,” Nettleton said.
“It’s simple. People need to do what they need to do. Don’t force us or the city to have to
do what we have to do, and then complain because we’re invading your privacy or your
privilege or your freedoms. Think about your neighbors. Think about the doctors, the
nurses. Think about the people who are at risk for this. Those are the people we’re trying
to protect. Everybody knows what they need to do. Just do it,” he added.
Nettleton asked the community to be patient a little longer. He said he believed the
vaccine, once widely distributed, will bring back some semblance of normalcy.
“If you don’t care about yourself, that’s fine, but please care about these doctors and
nurses who are putting themselves at risk, these waitresses and other workers who are
putting themselves at risk. That’s what this is about. It’s not about telling people what
they can and can’t do and taking away people’s freedoms,” he said.
