A virtual meeting attended by dozens of Vermont Department of Health employees on Thursday revealed deep frustration among a swath of the staff, who expressed exhaustion from nearly 18 months of responding to the Covid-19 pandemic and divided viewpoints on the state’s response to the latest surge.
The internal meeting — one in a series regularly held by the department — followed a letter sent last week by 91 of the department’s employees to its leadership, including Health Commissioner Mark Levine. The signatories expressed concerns about a “lack of adequate Covid prevention guidance from our Health Department to Vermonters” in light of a Delta-driven rise in cases.
Levine addressed the letter during Thursday’s meeting, according to two people in attendance, and was met by yet more concerns about the state’s pandemic response. A record of the “chat” function of the remote meeting, which was obtained by VTDigger, detailed additional frustrations about department working conditions.
The chat record showed more than 70 messages sent over roughly an hour. Most of the comments were posted anonymously, and it was not clear how many employees were represented among the comments. VTDigger could not view a record of the video portion of the meeting, including Levine’s verbal comments.
The two health department employees, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of reprisal, said Levine chided employees for going to the media and told employees that they should instead come to leadership.
The chat transcripts show that employees at the meeting reiterated the same issues brought up in the letter, criticizing officials for not implementing their recommendations on masking, testing, quarantine and more.
“Our job is to make the best, expert recommendations — not create policy,” one staffer wrote. “It feels as though [the Vermont Department of Health] is now bending to the will of politics and policymakers [versus] saying the hard thing and letting state leadership decide what to do with it.”
Ben Truman, a spokesperson for the health department, said in an email Friday evening that the “tone and tenor of the discussion reflected the input, comments, questions — and yes, frustrations — from a highly professional staff who each day tackle the unrelenting public health efforts required to meet the challenges of this long-term, complex and ongoing pandemic response.”
The criticism was not universal. Some people said they felt “betrayed” that last week’s letter had been made public, saying they had believed it would remain an internal message. A few offered support for leadership’s response to the pandemic.
But others said that media attention was necessary because leaders had not fully addressed the substance of their concerns. One said the letter “shows how burned out people are, and traumatized at the thought of what feels like unending Covid work.”
Wrote another: “The dialogue internally has gotten us nowhere. Staff is struggling. We have serious concerns for our own health and the health of the state.”
In an interview, Steve Howard, executive director of the Vermont State Employees’ Association, said the letter was a “very brave action by a group of people that put the health of the public first.”
“They say these measures need to be taken because what they’re seeing necessitates more leadership,” he said. “The public deserves to know that.”
In a statement provided via Truman on Friday evening, Levine said that “one meeting cannot suffice to deal with all employee concerns.”
“I am fortunate to have what are probably the most committed public health staff in the country, and I’m personally committed to demonstrating to my team that they are heard and supported,” he said.
Back and forth
The employee letter, reported by VTDigger on Aug. 26, urged state officials to consider the rising tide of the pandemic, including the high rate of cases among unvaccinated children.
“It is our belief that our current public guidance, which encourages only unvaccinated individuals to wear a mask and makes no mention of the risk of Covid-19 among unmasked vaccinated individuals, is not based on our best understanding of the way the Delta variant is spreading,” the letter said.
The letter asked the department leadership to “publicly and strongly” make several changes in Vermont’s guidance, including: recommending indoor masking regardless of vaccination status; recommending testing and quarantining of close contacts regardless of vaccination status; encouraging testing before and after large social gatherings; and discouraging travel to high-transmission areas.
Levine responded to the letter publicly at a press conference Tuesday, saying there were “no differences of opinion within the Department of Health.”
He recommended vaccinated Vermonters wear masks indoors, but said masks weren’t required in all situations. Instead, individuals could use their own judgment on the safety of the situation, including factors such as other people’s vaccination status and the ability to social distance.
He also commended health department employees for their hard work in forming public health guidance, but said there were other considerations in mind.
“My letter back to them just tried to convey the sense that we don’t operate in a vacuum,” he said. “We are not the ones who are in total control of everything that happens during the pandemic. It’s a very collaborative and deliberative process.”
During Thursday’s staff meeting, Levine expressed frustration that the letter was provided to the media, according to the two employees who spoke to VTDigger.
One said that Levine conveyed that the public letter conflicted with the culture of the department and that people should come to him with their grievances.
“Which is funny, because we have been coming to them for a very long, long time,” the employee said.
“It felt like we were being gaslit,” the employee said.
The second employee said Levine “didn’t really engage with the substance of the letter as much as he engaged with his disappointment that it had … gotten to the press. That seemed like his issue.”
Dozens of the comments in the record of the meeting chat appeared to express some sort of grievance, either related to public health recommendations or the working conditions of the department.
“Aren’t we fostering mistrust with the public by not imposing the same mandates, etc., that were imposed when Covid was first on the scene?” one person wrote.
Some also said the health department’s justification for masking and quarantine rules no longer made sense.
The “talking point” has been that mask-wearing is a personal choice or calculation, one employee wrote, but federal data shows that masks are best used to prevent further transmission of Covid at a population level.
One pointed out that health department guidelines that say vaccinated people do not need to quarantine were written before the Delta variant became widespread. “Do you feel that this guidance needs to be updated with more breakthrough transmission?” they asked.
Another said that, as a parent of a school-age child, “the lack of guidance feels like we are skiing down the mountain without the ability to snowplow or stop.”
“Children are watching these mixed messages — and it makes our jobs as a parent immensely challenging,” the person wrote. “Children with colds are missing school without work being sent home, entire classrooms of children are home [to] quarantine, and this seems to be the beginning of many absences.”
Under pressure
Other commenters complained about the amount of stress they were under as they worked long hours to track and combat the pandemic.
Staff members have “worked hard” during Covid, including people who were deployed to the pandemic team and people keeping normal operations going, one person wrote.
“The number of folks who are leaving or changing jobs shows how burned out people are, and traumatized at the thought of what feels like unending Covid work,” the person wrote.
“What is leadership planning to support the well-being of staff?” another person commented. “I don’t mean workshops on breathing. I mean increased pay and/or more credited leave time.”
The health department has an employee assistance program that is meant to give employees access to mental health care. But a few commenters said it wasn’t enough.
“And I feel like leadership has not been listening to our concerns that we have been screaming about for over a year,” one wrote, calling the department a “toxic work environment.”
Howard, who represents the health department employees as part of the state workers’ union, said he had heard about issues of burnout from long hours and new responsibilities.
“They’ve given up their weekends [and done] massive amounts of overtime, doing everything they can to ensure Vermont has one of best track records in the country” on Covid, he said.
The union is working on addressing it through a labor management committee. But he said employees had had to fight to create the committee, which is contractually obligated, and they still hadn’t made a lot of progress.
“Management really needs to look at what they’re asking people to do, and build into their management infrastructure” someone who can reduce stress, he said.
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