Extremely disappointing and appalling: Those are the words that first came to mind when I read the other day that New Hampshire’s Department of Health and Human Services has decided to scale back its efforts in contact tracing, an important and cost-effective tool in helping to slow the spread of the coronavirus.

Let me ask those who make the most important decisions in state and local government here in New Hampshire, in the midst of a major snowstorm, do we require that all snow plows and sanders stop working because there’s too much snow? When too many toilets flush at the same time, do we shut down our wastewater treatment plants?

We are in an national emergency and we need every tool in our toolbox to fight the invisible enemy.

We need commanders and generals who are up to the task. Offloading responsibilities to hospitals, physicians, and infected individuals isn’t the type of leadership we need now.

In the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on our country, one of many failures at the national security level was identified as a failure of the imagination. We couldn’t imagine that an enemy would ever do what was done so we never had an effective plan to thwart such an attack.

My point here is, please stop whining that you can’t do this contact tracing to the maximum extent needed. Get creative, mobilize the New Hampshire National Guard and our Army Reserves, ask for senior citizen volunteers. How about our corporate leaders and our faith communities? You could tap into the prison population. I am almost certain that many of those men and women would jump at the opportunity to do something constructive and helpful, if only to better pass the time.

If you’re having trouble contacting people, then it’s time to request that all telecommunications providers transfer to you the names, addresses, and phone numbers of each and every customer in our state, immediately. If this critical information isn’t readily provided, get a court order.

Public health and a national emergency take precedence over privacy concerns. Double down on your publicity efforts concerning the critical role of contact tracing.

New Hampshire is the only state in the Northeast that doesn’t have a mask mandate. This means that the most critical and cost-effective tool in the toolbox is not being used to its maximum extent.

Those who lead the charge in public health have failed here, miserably. How many excess deaths, how much avoidable medical costs, lost wages, and disruptions to people’s lives will there be because of our failure to mandate such a simple effort? I refer to this failure as the New Hampshire disadvantage.

Last spring, during the lockdown, I listened to many of Gov. Sununu’s press conferences where State Epidemiologist Dr. Benjamin Chan and Health and Human Services Commissioner Lori Shibinette spoke and offered guidance to the public and took questions from the media. It was a refreshing departure from the circus act unfolding at the national level.

During one of his lockdown briefings, our governor stated that “transparency is the key to public acceptance.” I can’t agree more. So at this time, I call on one or more trusted media organizations in New Hampshire to request a FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) drop of all coronavirus and COVID-19 correspondence between the governor’s office, Commissioner Shibinette, and Dr. Chan. The people of our state need to know why we don’t have a mask mandate, why contact tracing efforts will be reduced, the costs of contact tracing, funding sources, and the rationale for these critical decisions.

Concerning restaurants and bars in New Hampshire, the decisions made earlier this year to again allow indoor dining and bar service were extremely ill advised. At the Health and Human Services website, you can see for yourself all of the special notices regarding potential exposures at restaurants. The time has come for a complete end to indoor dining and all bars must close immediately. I find it difficult to believe that the final tally for avoidable medical costs including testing costs, lost wages for those who are infected and/or quarantined, and social disruptions caused by poor decisions and irresponsible restaurateurs and their patrons won’t substantially surpass the short-term gains achieved by allowing bars and restaurants to remain open for indoor service at this most precarious time.

How is it that we continue to be seduced by the allure of short-term gains while the virus unfailingly demonstrates to us that it’s playing a long-term game?

We can hope that the vaccines recently announced to be quite effective and apparently safe will be available to us as soon as possible. Will these vaccines and others sure to follow end our collective nightmare? How many people will avail themselves of this? We will need to undertake a massive public health campaign to ensure that as many people as possible receive the vaccine, assuming the risks are minimal. Whose voices will be heard when it comes time to respond to those anti-vaxxers? Will the voices of our governor and our public health officials be loud enough and convincing enough to mount an effective vaccine campaign?

There are several lessons to be learned from what has transpired over the last nine months both in our state and in our nation. We need a reinvigorated civics curriculum at all levels in our public schools as well as colleges and universities. Our young people need to know how to differentiate a trusted source of truth and fact from those who peddle trash behind a false and toxic online identity. Dedicated professional journalists and the credible media are our best friends. We have been flooded with torrents of disinformation by those who are accountable to no one and have no social conscience.

We need to somehow address the culture of disrespect that now exists for those who have professional expertise, vigorous training, decades of meaningful experience, the public accountability afforded by licensure, and the confidence to speak up forcefully when the need arises. These dedicated people in the sciences, medicine, and public health are the people who will save us from ourselves. Are those people that we need the ones that we now have?

(James B. Zeppieri lives in Contoocook.)