Dr. Michelle Taylor was nominated last week by County Mayor Lee Harris to be Shelby County’s new Health Department director. Pending a favorable vote from the Shelby County Commission, she will succeed longtime director Dr. Alisa Haushalter and interim director Dr. LaSonya Harris Hall. Here she discusses taking the reins.
Memphis Flyer: Obviously, you’re taking over at a very strategic time when the pressure from the state government is overwhelming.
Michelle Taylor: But we are more independent than some of the more rural county health departments that are under the state health department umbrella. I believe that Shelby County Health Department has already put out a statement that we intend to continue to push vaccines, in the safety of vaccines, and the importance of vaccines to our county residents and their families. So there’s no pressure to follow the state model. And that’s the nice thing about being a metro health department — we can set our own tone about how we want to message to the population here in Shelby County. We’ll let the state take care of the state, but we’re going to continue to practice good public health, which we’ve been doing for a long time.
What do you recommend about continuing to wear masks?
I like to use myself as an example. When you see me wearing a mask, it doesn’t mean that I haven’t been vaccinated. It doesn’t necessarily mean that I’m immuno-compromised. I wear a mask because I have a daughter who is seven and doesn’t have the opportunity to be vaccinated. And if I am exposed to someone who may have COVID, I don’t want to take the chance of bringing that home. So I mask whether I’m going to the store, whether I’m coming into the county building, when I go to the restroom. I wear my mask. But do I still go out to restaurants? Yes. Do I still go out to walk with my mom? Yes. But every encounter is an opportunity for me to possibly bring something back to my daughter, and so I have to deal with the risk of that. And I wear my mask appropriately, thinking about that. That is a personal decision right now. So you may decide to take a different approach. But for me, in my family, I feel like my approach works best.
But it seems clear to me that if you’re not going to be vaccinated, at least you should wear a mask, right?
I believe so. And that’s what the CDC says.
Why is there so much resistance to the idea of taking the vaccine?
Well, I will tell you that, you know, even when I was training at East Tennessee State, we had parents that came in that didn’t believe in vaccines. This is not a new issue. This is not new for people. A segment of the population believes that you shouldn’t be taking vaccines. I could go through a week in clinic and have at least one or two sets of parents come in and say, “Well, we’re coming in for a checkup. We’re not coming in for any shots.” So this is not new. I think that with many things, the presence of COVID-19 has magnified what we see but what some people were calling an antivax movement. You know, there are some people who just don’t believe in vaccinations, there are people who don’t believe in all kinds of modern advances in medicine. That’s not a new thing.
Is there any likelihood that the Delta variant can build to the proportions that we had last year?
Well, I hope not, but the Delta variant is very much with us, and it’s very much a risk. And what we can see from the numbers right now is that most of the people who are being hospitalized with COVID, right now, more than likely have the Delta variant, and more than likely have not been vaccinated. And so I think what is going to be important to do, from the health department standpoint, is to make sure that we are messaging what the risks are to the community, so that folks can make decisions about how best to protect themselves, their families, and the community at large.
How important in the chain of possible infection are teenagers as a group?
Oh, wow. That’s a great question. So teenagers, as we know, are very social human beings. So it is good that the FDA has approved kids 12 and up to be able to get COVID vaccinations, in consultation with their families, if they feel like that’s the right choice for their families. But we know that teenagers, speaking as a pediatrician, tend to their bodies, and their immunities start to act more like adults than children. So at the beginning of COVID, we knew that children were less likely to become infected. And when they did become infected, they were less likely to have severe symptoms. But now that we know COVID has mutated, that maybe that landscape may be changing a bit. And so we really do need to know what’s going on in our teenagers going forward. I do think that that’s going to be important to know what the landscape with COVID is going to look like going forward.
You’re aware of the the campaigns were directed against vaccine chief Dr. Michelle Fiscus, who, of course, lost her job, and state Health Commissioner Dr. Lisa Piercey, for that matter, who’s under a great deal of pressure. Can you foresee that kind of pressure being directed at you?
I cannot foresee that. But I would say that if you interviewed public health professionals across the country, and really across the world, none of them foresaw what we have seen with COVID-19. So if it comes, it comes. it’s not something that would deter me from wanting to step into this role. In fact, that motivates me.
How important a factor in the current state of things is politics ?
Well, politics is quite important. Right now, we know that we’ve seen that over the last 12 to 15 months. A lot of the debate about whether to get vaccinated or not get vaccinated has been driven by politics. But we also know that at the end of the day, for most people, most families, most communities want to be safe. And they’re trying to figure out the best way to be safe, given what they see on the news, given what they see is happening in their own families. So yes, politics plays a part. But I believe that it doesn’t have to be the whole ballgame if we message the people how to protect themselves.
You know, we’ve had enough folks finger pointing. Now let’s get back to some civil conversations about things that we have in common — like how to keep ourselves safe. You know, I tend to look at a community as really a mixed bag of folks. So whether you’re talking about, you know, right versus left, conservative versus progressive, however, you want to turn the population once again, at the end of the day, everybody within the community most of the time, down to a person is really trying to figure out how to keep themselves safe, how to keep their family safe, how to be safe when they go to work. How to be safe when they go to pray, how to be safe when they go out to play. And we have people in this community who like to do that. So no matter what their ideology is, or any contradictions that you may see, that folks may perceive in an ideology, that’s the bottom line. Public health works best when people don’t even know that it’s happening.
I believe most of the people in this community in Shelby County want to get back to that, no matter what their ideology is.
