Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:He had no empathy for parents and kids. Despite being a pediatrician he seemed completely unaware of children’s needs and unsympathetic to what they were going through. He was arrogant. He showed distain for constituents. Not a nice guy. Good riddance to him and Jack Smith.

I’m sorry. He wanted to keep you and your kids from getting sick. He may think that’s more important than your super important work zoom meeting, Jennifer, but it was his job to keep from overwhelming our health system, not make sure you had childcare.

Not Jennifer. Gayles had no problem with me sending them to childcare though. Didn’t hear a peep from him over my toddlers home daycare did we? Why is that? Gayles was wrong. Nothing to do with his race or sexuality. Jack Smith is a straight white dude and he sucked too.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Gayles is currently outside of the USA on vacation , during a pandemic

In fact he's in France, which has the highest risk rating (Level 4) according to the CDC:
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/travelers/map-and-travel-notices.html

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:To the person harping about the playgrounds - they were closed for what, three weeks? You couldn’t figure out how to entertain your kids for three weeks? Nobody had complete information back then, we thought that covid could spread on surfaces and that we had to avoid any and all gatherings.

Ours had fencing around it for a few months.

And you had to parent without a public swing set and slides? Oh nooooooo! Thoughts and prayers.

This county is truly the twilight zone. I traveled quite a bit this summer and even the bluest of states in the northeast are way more normal in how they handle covid. Hated coming back to this crazy place.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:To the person harping about the playgrounds - they were closed for what, three weeks? You couldn’t figure out how to entertain your kids for three weeks? Nobody had complete information back then, we thought that covid could spread on surfaces and that we had to avoid any and all gatherings.

Ours had fencing around it for a few months.

And you had to parent without a public swing set and slides? Oh nooooooo! Thoughts and prayers.

This county is truly the twilight zone. I traveled quite a bit this summer and even the bluest of states in the northeast are way more normal in how they handle covid. Hated coming back to this crazy place.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:To the person harping about the playgrounds - they were closed for what, three weeks? You couldn’t figure out how to entertain your kids for three weeks? Nobody had complete information back then, we thought that covid could spread on surfaces and that we had to avoid any and all gatherings.

Ours had fencing around it for a few months.

And you had to parent without a public swing set and slides? Oh nooooooo! Thoughts and prayers.

Anonymous wrote:Gayles is currently outside of the USA on vacation , during a pandemic

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wasn’t this the guy that people emailed about the closures last year (outdoor spaces/playgrounds, and the attempts to close private schools), and he responded by forwarding their emails to other members of the local govt to make fun of them and call them Karens?

Worse than that, sadly. He said "The privileged class of Montgomery County are showing their a$$es." He is horrendous. So glad he is gone.

He was dumb to put it in writing in an email, but he was 100% not wrong.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wasn’t this the guy that people emailed about the closures last year (outdoor spaces/playgrounds, and the attempts to close private schools), and he responded by forwarding their emails to other members of the local govt to make fun of them and call them Karens?

Worse than that, sadly. He said "The privileged class of Montgomery County are showing their a$$es." He is horrendous. So glad he is gone.

He was dumb to put it in writing in an email, but he was 100% not wrong.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wasn’t this the guy that people emailed about the closures last year (outdoor spaces/playgrounds, and the attempts to close private schools), and he responded by forwarding their emails to other members of the local govt to make fun of them and call them Karens?

Worse than that, sadly. He said "The privileged class of Montgomery County are showing their a$$es." He is horrendous. So glad he is gone.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:To the person harping about the playgrounds - they were closed for what, three weeks? You couldn’t figure out how to entertain your kids for three weeks? Nobody had complete information back then, we thought that covid could spread on surfaces and that we had to avoid any and all gatherings.

Ours had fencing around it for a few months.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Gayles is currently outside of the USA on vacation , during a pandemic

Nice, Travis.

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It is terrible he was getting death and other threats. Absolutely unacceptable.
He was also horrible in this role during the pandemic crisis time.
He probably would have been adequate in 'normal times' dealing with whatever the 'normal' set of issues would be that he would need to manage. But during the pandemic, he was terrible and actually not very science driven.

We have the highest vaccination rate around and relatively lowest transmission of large counties (we were last in the region to go from ‘moderate’ to ‘substantial’)

Nothing to do with gayles. We all drove an hour plus for vaccines on our own in April. A lot of people can and are working from home. Moco’s population (liberal, educated, affluent, covid cautious) is why.

It's both. Rational leadership and rational population (for the most part). You can't just have one, and end up with the vaccination rates and mostly good behavior we've had since March 2020.

Gayles literally outlawed outdoor playgrounds and tried to close private schools that were set to follow the CDC guidelines at the time; he perpetuated restrictions for reopening MCPS-- while other large school districts around the country successfully opened in hybrid fashions. He made the mask mandate in MoCo start at age 2 instead of age 5-- once it was reduced from I think 9 at the initial outset-- and never provided data for that. Much of NOVA with similar demographics/numbers has had an age 5 mandate. I could go on...
I have no idea exactly where the locus of control on this was, but everyone I knew was driving/traveling at least 45 minutes in each direction to get vaccines for a LONG time-- at the least, he did not succeed in any advocacy about getting reasonable amount of vaccines downcounty.
Yes, keeping businesses at very reduced capacity for a while obviously impeded the spread of the virus...but at what cost? A very compliant and risk-averse population is the driver here, IMHO, of a lot of the 'success.'
To his credit, it does appear that he and his team were successful in reaching (from what I've read) harder to reach minority populations who have significant vaccine hesitancy (as illustrated by the inner city of Baltimore and their abysmal vaccine numbers).
But overall? Not rational leadership at all.

Well summarized. Then there were his nasty internal emails regarding a parent who was trying to get more info. He was divisive - everything was class warfare to him. Good riddance.

Member when we were wiping down groceries? That’s because we thought there might be surface transmission. Don’t say this wasn’t a thing because it was. That’s why they initially shut the playgrounds. He also didn’t try to shut down private schools who were trying to follow cdc guidelines. He knew that some private schools had good plans set up and knew others did NOT have good plans. Listen, these are schools not health experts or doctors! So he wanted to work together with them to develop and implement plans that were actually safe. He could not do this if they didn’t communicate their plans to the health dept. As for vaccine access, you can thank Hogan for his allocations to mass sites everywhere except MoCo. That was not Gayles at all who made you drive to six flags. You may think he kept things shut longer than you would have. But you cannot say that anything he did put the community at more risk. He minimized our community spread very effectively and reached all kinds of groups with vaccine hesitancy and access issues. I can’t believe you are whining that your 4 year old or whatever had to play in your own backyard and had to wear a mask and you had to drive 45 minutes twice (when you prob drive 6 hrs to obx like everyone else around here). This man was the one making the tough choices and I hope he knows there are many of us who are thankful for his efforts even as people treated him so incredibly poorly.

Yes, to all of this.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:He had no empathy for parents and kids. Despite being a pediatrician he seemed completely unaware of children’s needs and unsympathetic to what they were going through. He was arrogant. He showed distain for constituents. Not a nice guy. Good riddance to him and Jack Smith.

I’m sorry. He wanted to keep you and your kids from getting sick. He may think that’s more important than your super important work zoom meeting, Jennifer, but it was his job to keep from overwhelming our health system, not make sure you had childcare.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It is terrible he was getting death and other threats. Absolutely unacceptable.
He was also horrible in this role during the pandemic crisis time.
He probably would have been adequate in 'normal times' dealing with whatever the 'normal' set of issues would be that he would need to manage. But during the pandemic, he was terrible and actually not very science driven.

We have the highest vaccination rate around and relatively lowest transmission of large counties (we were last in the region to go from ‘moderate’ to ‘substantial’)

Nothing to do with gayles. We all drove an hour plus for vaccines on our own in April. A lot of people can and are working from home. Moco’s population (liberal, educated, affluent, covid cautious) is why.

It's both. Rational leadership and rational population (for the most part). You can't just have one, and end up with the vaccination rates and mostly good behavior we've had since March 2020.

Gayles literally outlawed outdoor playgrounds and tried to close private schools that were set to follow the CDC guidelines at the time; he perpetuated restrictions for reopening MCPS-- while other large school districts around the country successfully opened in hybrid fashions. He made the mask mandate in MoCo start at age 2 instead of age 5-- once it was reduced from I think 9 at the initial outset-- and never provided data for that. Much of NOVA with similar demographics/numbers has had an age 5 mandate. I could go on...
I have no idea exactly where the locus of control on this was, but everyone I knew was driving/traveling at least 45 minutes in each direction to get vaccines for a LONG time-- at the least, he did not succeed in any advocacy about getting reasonable amount of vaccines downcounty.
Yes, keeping businesses at very reduced capacity for a while obviously impeded the spread of the virus...but at what cost? A very compliant and risk-averse population is the driver here, IMHO, of a lot of the 'success.'
To his credit, it does appear that he and his team were successful in reaching (from what I've read) harder to reach minority populations who have significant vaccine hesitancy (as illustrated by the inner city of Baltimore and their abysmal vaccine numbers).
But overall? Not rational leadership at all.

Well summarized. Then there were his nasty internal emails regarding a parent who was trying to get more info. He was divisive - everything was class warfare to him. Good riddance.

Member when we were wiping down groceries? That’s because we thought there might be surface transmission. Don’t say this wasn’t a thing because it was. That’s why they initially shut the playgrounds. He also didn’t try to shut down private schools who were trying to follow cdc guidelines. He knew that some private schools had good plans set up and knew others did NOT have good plans. Listen, these are schools not health experts or doctors! So he wanted to work together with them to develop and implement plans that were actually safe. He could not do this if they didn’t communicate their plans to the health dept. As for vaccine access, you can thank Hogan for his allocations to mass sites everywhere except MoCo. That was not Gayles at all who made you drive to six flags. You may think he kept things shut longer than you would have. But you cannot say that anything he did put the community at more risk. He minimized our community spread very effectively and reached all kinds of groups with vaccine hesitancy and access issues. I can’t believe you are whining that your 4 year old or whatever had to play in your own backyard and had to wear a mask and you had to drive 45 minutes twice (when you prob drive 6 hrs to obx like everyone else around here). This man was the one making the tough choices and I hope he knows there are many of us who are thankful for his efforts even as people treated him so incredibly poorly.