Think you’ve got pandemic fatigue? Try being a public health official.

As we finish our second year in the COVID-19 pandemic, we’re all suffering now from acute pandemic fatigue.

We’re tired of getting shots. Tired of social restrictions. Tired of masks. Tired of worrying. Tired of family members getting sick or even dying. Our tempers are frayed and patience sounds like something people used to have back in the bygone days.

Well, if you think you’re weary, imagine how public health officials feel. They’ve faced the pandemic and its fallout 24/7. They’ve gone from being hailed as heroes to being vilified on social media and sometimes threatened face-to-face.

I’m biased, but for my two cents’ worth, among the best public health workers in Kentucky is Cassie Prather, my daughter-in-law, who’s director of the Woodford County Health Department. She’s been lauded by state and local officials for her tireless and innovative efforts to protect Woodford Countians.

I interviewed her about the challenges public health officials continue to face.

From the beginning, the pandemic has been an ongoing crisis heaped atop health departments’ normal jobs—working with expectant mothers and young children, providing the community with social workers and dieticians, teaching health education.

For two years and counting, Cassie and her staff have been on call nights and weekends, around the clock. If a Woodford County resident calls 911 with what might be a COVID-related emergency, the call center “will immediately connect that call to me. Any case reaches us, anytime.”

Early on in the pandemic, before vaccines and advanced treatments, the department did intensive contact tracing when people got infected. That was demanding not just because of the volume of work required but because many people the department contacted became belligerent or evasive.

When the vaccines were released, the department started giving the injections.

Today, cases numbers from the Omicron surge are declining, but local people remain seriously sick and need groceries, pulse oximeters or medications. The health department helps distribute such items.

“We’ve been here for our community in every way we possibly can be,” Cassie said. But “there’s only so long you can endure that.”

In addition to the burden of long hours, critics in the community have mocked those serving in public health and questioned the validity of their scientific data.

“It’s a lot to deal with and not take it personally,” she said.

For instance, Cassie’s been on the public hot seat lately after she recommended Woodford County public schools temporarily continue their masking mandate for students and employees.

This wasn’t a recommendation she arrived at lightly. She and my son John have their kids in those same schools, so her recommendations directly affect her family.

Some critics argue that masks inhibit their children’s ability to learn in school. Cassie sympathizes. But she has to consider a broader picture.

There are, in fact, work-arounds that schools can use to help children learn despite the mandate, such as special masks that enable them to see lip shapes.

And masks offer two-way protection—for the wearer, but also for those they interact with. Cassie wonders how many of the critics have ever been inside a classroom for functionally and mentally disabled children.

Those kids can’t wear masks and already are highly susceptible to COVID’s worst outcomes. The masks other students and staff wear add a layer of protection for these disabled children and their teachers.

There are school employees to consider. While COVID-19 usually doesn’t make otherwise healthy kids seriously ill, statewide dozens of school adults—teachers, bus drivers, custodians—have died of the virus, and countless others have been hospitalized.

And there are still more folks to think about, immune-compromised siblings or parents at home, as well as elderly grandparents with co-morbidities, to whom mildly ill or asymptomatic kids can transmit the virus if they catch it at school.

Much of the pushback she encounters seems to be based on a misunderstanding of the coronavirus reporting data. Or on a distrust of the vaccines fed by misinformation from social media. Or on the fact the critics themselves are healthy at the moment and don’t care about the vulnerable. Or on a generalized hostility toward government.

“I wish people would see how COVID affects the population as a whole, not just them personally,” she said.

She also wishes folks would remember the progress health officials and schools have already made. Earlier, schools were shut down. Now they’re open. Now they have “test to stay” programs. Remote learning is available for kids who are sick.

“We have come so far, and I don’t want to completely blow it here at the end” of the Omicron surge, Cassie said.

I imagine you could talk to directors and their staffs at any local health department in the state, or in the nation, and you’d hear similar experiences.

Public health workers concentrate on helping those among us who are most at risk for all manner of ills, not just the coronavirus.

“People don’t go into public health for the fortune or the fame,” she said. “We are all public servants. Public health still cares.”

Paul Prather is pastor of Bethesda Church near Mount Sterling, Ky. You can email him at pratpd@yahoo.com.