Twenty years ago, “brain drain” meant the international migration of people toward better standards of living and more stable political conditions.

The United States was a brain-drain beneficiary, wooing thousands of educated people away without dwelling too long on the cost to the home countries.

But today’s brain drain is happening on our doorstep, in a field that can ill afford it.

The one-two punch of COVID-19 and political instability is fueling the largest mass exodus in public health history, Kaiser Health News and The Associated Press reported last year, with more than 250 state and local public health leaders resigned, retired or fired since April 2020.

Lisa Peacock, health officer for the Benzie-Leelanau Health Department and Health Department Northwest Michigan, leaves her post next month, resigning because of a “hostile work environment” and a lack of support from some members of the HDNM health board. Her crime? Instituting a school mask mandate as school opened to a surge in COVID-19 cases.

For this:

Peacock said she was subjected to aggressive and threatening behavior by members of the public at a seven-hour long HDNM Board of Health meeting in Charlevoix, according to a complaint filed against the Board of Health with Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel’s office. Peacock said she was kicked at, accused of violating the Nuremberg Code and followed to the women’s bathroom, while officers from the Charlevoix Police Department did nothing, according to the complaint which remains under investigation by the Michigan State Police.

Peacock and her staff were subjected to threatening emails, phone calls and social media posts prompted by Facebook posts made by a health board member.

Peacock added that a number of measures have come up that she wouldn’t want to enforce, including BLHD move to cancel her own contract and an HDNM proposal to cut department funding by 10 percent over five years. “I’ve heard of county boards cutting funding to a health department, but not a department cutting its own funding,” Peacock said.

Shades of her experience have been echoed in other stories: the lapse of Grand Traverse Medical Director Michael Collins’ contract after 28 years in the department, after he spoke against county commissioners’ measures to manage health department messaging on vaccines; health officers enduring threats of physical violence here, and nationwide.

Today, as mask mandates ease and case numbers fall, we should take a breath and measure the fallout of these tense years, as we will be seeing its impacts for a long time. Treating people as disposable will haunt us, as institutional knowledge, skills and experience do not grow on public health trees.

Worldwide, countries that suffer brain drain see limited capacity to innovate, reduced economic growth, demographic shifts and higher costs of living.

This would not be good for our health.