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WEDNESDAY, APRIL 21, 2021
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APPEAL TRIBUNE
Excess
Continued from Page 1A
Of those, 1,719, or 44%, were attribut-
ed to COVID-19.
The remaining 2,134 died from other
causes such as drug overdoses, cancer,
heart conditions and Alzheimer’s dis-
ease.
But experts believe many of those
may be indirectly related to the pan-
demic — people reluctant to go to the
hospital or their doctor out of fear of
contracting COVID-19, or a delay in ad-
dressing health problems due to pro-
longed isolation.
“I have been calling that collateral
damage, the collateral damage of CO-
VID-19, and that’s been largely over-
looked,” said Chunhuei Chi, director for
the Center for Global Health at Oregon
State University. “Actually, the collater-
al damage is way beyond that.”
Deaths outnumbered births in Ore-
gon in 2020 for the first time ever, ac-
cording to a post by Oregon economist
Josh Lehner.
One bright spot: Fears about spikes
in suicides, particularly with students
separated from their friends and at-
tending classes virtually, appear to
have been unfounded.
Low in COVID-19 deaths, high in
other
Oregon had fewer COVID-19-related
fatalities per capita than most states –
it ranks fifth lowest in the country. But
the state saw one of the highest per-
centages of excess deaths in the nation
attributed to causes other than CO-
VID-19.
A high number of excess deaths dur-
ing the time of a widespread disease is
not unprecedented.
In the 1980s and 1990s, the AIDS/
HIV epidemic led to a spike in excess
deaths in Africa as health resources
were diverted from other health con-
cerns to stop the spread of the disease.
“It’s a zero-sum game because
they’re sacrificing all other health sec-
tors,” Chi said. “In three years’ time, the
prevalence of AIDS in Haiti dropped in
half. That’s a remarkable outcome, but
the price Haiti paid was everything else
in health deteriorated.
“That’s exactly what I have been
suspecting happened here.”
Gov. Kate Brown ordered health clin-
ics in Oregon to close in March 2020 to
preserve the supply of personal protec-
tive equipment such as face masks.
They were allowed to reopen two
months later.
Such clinics are often the primary
healthcare option for lower-economic
residents.
The state also had some of the strict-
est stay-home orders in the nation,
possibly contributing to people not
seeking medical treatment even after
clinics reopened.
Dr. Bud Pierce, a Salem oncologist,
said his practice saw a 15% decline in
patient visits during the early months
of the pandemic despite not closing. He
said visits went up again in the summer
as the number of COVID-19 cases
dropped and restrictions loosened.
Pierce said it was especially difficult
for people in nursing homes in Oregon
to seek medical attention as they were
largely locked down for much of 2020.
“My sense from an oncology point of
view, early on, people just couldn’t get
out of the nursing facilities,” Pierce
said. “There wasn’t the energy or ability
to get there.”
Due to a lack of testing for COVID-19
early in the pandemic, some of those
excess deaths also could have been due
to the virus and never recognized as
such, Chi said.
“How do you account for those
deaths?” Chi said.
Spike in drug use, overdoses
According to the Oregon Health Au-
thority, at least 339 people in Oregon
died of drug overdoses in the state be-
tween January and June 2020, an in-
crease of 40% from the same period in
2019.
The OHA said most of those over-
dose deaths involved opioids, fentanyl,
synthetic opioids and methamphet-
amines. Fentanyl deaths increased by
92% during that six months, and meth-
amphetamine deaths increased by
37%.
Similar spikes were seen nation-
wide. In the United States, there were
about 90,000 overdose deaths in 2020,
up from 70,000 in 2019.
According to the Oregon Liquor Con-
trol Commission, the state had record
sales of marijuana and distilled spirits
in the early months of the lockdown,
despite bars and restaurants being
closed.
“The COVID lockdown I think has
led many people to use mind- and
mood-altering substances, the illegal
fentanyl, the illegal opioids, metham-
phetamine, cocaine,” said Dr. Paul
Christo, pain specialist at Johns Hop-
kins University School of Medicine and
host of Aches and Gains on SiriusXM.
“It’s due to the situation, loss of jobs,
economic hardship. It’s led many peo-
ple to use drugs to cope. It’s been a very,
very stressful year due to COVID-19.”
During lockdown, there also was a
spike in relapses, Christo said.
“I think it’s due to the stresses relat-
ed to COVID 19 and the means of coping
with those extreme stresses,” Christo
said.
In the early days of the pandemic,
public safety organizations in Oregon
and nationwide also reported rises in
domestic abuse calls.
Homicides in Oregon increased 18%
in 2020, to 155 from 126 in 2019 accord-
ing to the Oregon Health Authority.
Deaths by unintended injuries rose 2%
to 2,288, from 2,224 a year before.
Suicides decreased in 2020
Throughout the pandemic, health
professionals, community leaders and
parents have voiced concerns that an
extended lockdown — especially one
that included keeping school buildings
closed — would lead to an increase in
suicides in 2020.
But according to preliminary data
released by the Oregon Health Author-
ity, suicides dropped 11% in 2020 to
809, from 908 in 2019. The youth sui-
cide rate also decreased.
According to OHA data, suicide-re-
lated visits to emergency rooms and ur-
gent care clinics dropped during
months most Oregon school buildings
were closed and students were learning
completely online, including March,
April, May, October, November and De-
cember.
There were fewer than 400 visits in
May 2020 compared with more than
600 in May 2019.
In January, Brown cited suicides in
youth, including those in children ages
11 and 12, as part of her decision for prio-
ritizing teachers for COVID-19 vaccines
before seniors and those with preexist-
ing conditions who were more likely to
die from the virus. Oregon was one of
the few states to move teachers toward
the front of the line.
The Oregon Health Authority hasn’t
released a breakdown of ages for those
who died in 2020 due to suicide.
When the Statesman Journal asked
Brown in March about her earlier com-
ments related to suicide numbers, she
said she was referring to suicide at-
tempts.
“In terms of conversations that I’ve
had with superintendents, with educa-
tors and parents, there is absolutely no
question that our children are suffering
from the pandemic and not being in in-
person learning, whether it’s an in-
crease in suicide attempts, whether it’s
depression, whether it’s anxiety,”
Brown said.
Heart attacks, Alzheimer’s, cancer
The Oregon Health Authority has
not released a full breakdown of causes
of death from 2020, but spokesperson
Jonathan Modie said the top three
causes are cardiovascular disease, Alz-
heimer’s disease and cancer.
“As to why these are up during the
pandemic, we can only speculate, but it
certainly could be related to disruption
of preventive services and access to
care, as well as numerous stressors (so-
cial, financial, etc.),” Modie said in an
email.
According to a data dashboard by
the National Center for Health Statis-
tics, of the 3,525 excess deaths in Ore-
gon between Feb. 1, 2020, and April 1,
2021, 651 were categorized as “other
diseases of the respiratory system.”
According to the figures, the second-
highest cause of excess deaths in Ore-
gon was Alzheimer’s, with 484 deaths.
Chi said when his father was diag-
nosed with Alzheimer’s at age 80, he
lived another 10 years due to attentive
care.
“If you give the patient more phys-
ical activity and more social interac-
tion, you can extend their life and their
health,” Chi said. “By those factors, I am
not surprised there are excessive
deaths from Alzheimer’s. Had this pan-
demic not limited our interactions and
activity, more people could have lived
longer. One could say those Alzheimer’s
patients died of loneliness.”
Other diseases with significant
numbers of excess deaths in Oregon
were cancer (423), diseases of the cir-
culatory system such as heart attacks
(361), hypertensive diseases (332), ce-
rebrovascular diseases such as strokes
(331) and diabetes (186).
During the lockdowns, efforts to
help the elderly, disabled and the
homeless suffered, Pierce said. That
could have led to preventable deaths.
“When you get under COVID stress,
we’re not nearly as sacrificial as taking
care of the old, the disabled and I’ll
throw prisoners in there,” Pierce said.
“It’s hard for people to put their necks
out when they’re afraid of dying.”
Bill Poehler covers Marion County
for the Statesman Journal. Contact
him
at
bpoehler@statesmanjournal.com
or
Twitter @bpoehler.
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Sentenced
Continued from Page 1A
Sentenced
something was going to happen.
A knife, a fight and guns
When he came upstairs, Bravo asked
her, “Where’s my s***?” and said, “I’ve
got to go to range.”
They exchanged words before he
went to her side of the bed and tried to
grab her.
The woman put her knees up to use
her feet to put distance between herself
and Bravo and push him away. She said
the tactic is used in defensive law en-
forcement training.
Suver said when Bravo pulled a knife
out of his duty vest, the woman called
911 on the landline. She answered ques-
tions from dispatchers throughout the
struggle.
During trial testimony, the woman
confirmed she put a pillow between her-
self and Bravo and he stabbed it once or
twice while attacking her.
He put the knife away in his vest once
the woman noticed their daughter in the
doorway to the bedroom. The woman
had to also hold on to a rifle that was in a
case on the bed to prevent Bravo from
unzipping it.
At one point, she grabbed both his
arms behind his back and pushed him
against a dresser to keep him from get-
ting a firearm from his nightstand draw-
er. But he was able to free one hand and
tried stabbing at her backward, Suver
said.
The struggle moved to the closet
where he began to hit her as she tried to
prevent him from grabbing a rifle.
She was able to get herself and her
two children out of the house as Keizer
police officers arrived at about 10 p.m.
Suver said officers initially came into
the home and began giving Bravo re-
peated commands to show his hands
and come downstairs. One officer, who
said he recognized Bravo from training
at the police academy, tried talking to
him.
Police eventually backed out of the
Logging
Continued from Page 1A
The lawsuit says ODF skipped a
critical step, required by law, in ana-
lyzing forest types and ways to protect
values such as fish and wildlife habitat
before putting up timber sales.
“They just skipped a step because
they knew it was scientifically inde-
fensible,” said Nick Cady, legal director
for Cascadia Wildlands. “We also call
out that post-fire logging is not sup-
ported by the best available science.
Some of these timber sales are for very
popular recreation areas designed to
become older forests, and that we
have aerial footage of showing that
they are largely green and alive.”
ODF said it couldn’t comment on
the lawsuit, but previously defended
the plan as “balanced,” noting that
only 3,000 acres of 16,000 acres
burned would see any cutting. In addi-
tion, they noted the plan prioritizes
leaving green (alive) trees uncut while
maintaining waterway buffers.
“Overall, I think this is a pretty bal-
anced plan,” Jason Cox, spokesman
for ODF, told the Statesman Journal in
a previous story. “We heard a lot of
concern about being careful to leave
green trees standing and that’s reflect-
ed in this plan.”
Within the 3,000 acres, there are
two different types of logging pro-
posed. Around 1,100 acres is proposed
for “partial cut harvest,” meaning for-
esters would focus on cutting dead
trees and leaving alive ones intact. The
house, noting Bravo was wearing a ballis-
tic vest emblazoned with the word “PO-
LICE” and likely had similar tactical train-
ing and access to firearms upstairs.
Keizer police, Salem SWAT and Marion
County Sheriff’s Office authorities en-
gaged in a three-hour stand-off before
Bravo came out of the house.
At about 1:40 a.m., a Salem police
SWAT K9 subdued Bravo and officers
took him into custody.
‘He wasn’t in the right frame of
mind’
Bravo’s defense attorney, Jason
Thompson, argued the sleeping pills Bra-
vo took throughout the day led him to fall
into a state where he was unaware of his
actions.
“The question in this trial isn’t neces-
sarily what happened, it’s why it hap-
pened,” Thompson said in his opening
statement. “Ambien is what led to all
this.”
Ambien, also known as Zolpidem, “is a
hypnotic sedative that impairs your cog-
nition, it impairs memory, and it impairs
your motor performance,” he said, adding
it can cause sleepwalking and perfor-
mances of action without conscious
thought or intention.
Thompson said Bravo was prescribed
Ambien due to long shifts at various
hours at the Silverton Police Department.
“(Ambien) is an extremely, extremely
dangerous drug,” Thompson said. “If
used properly, it can help you sleep. But, if
you take that Ambien and then you have a
reaction to it, crazy things can happen.”
Both Suver and Thompson acknowl-
edged the victim said she did not want
the prosecution to proceed and asked for
Bravo’s charges to be dropped.
“I’ve never wanted my husband to go
to jail or be arrested,” the woman said
while testifying during the trial. “I wanted
what was happening to stop, and obvi-
ously, I was emotional at the time that it
happened.”
Court records show the woman also
took a class for survivors of domestic vio-
lence through the Center for Hope and
Safety, a class for those who wish to
waive a no-contact order.
See SENTENCED, Page 3A
other 1,900 acres is “regeneration har-
vest,” which is essentially clear-cutting
standing dead trees and then re-plant-
ing.
“Even in areas that are clearcut, our
focus is still to leave green trees intact
wherever possible,” Cox said previously.
“These aren’t green tree timber sales.
We picked the areas that burned most
severely.”
The timber industry said previously
that ODF’s plan was too conservative
and left thousands of acres of burned
forest that could be turned into mer-
chantable timber on the table.
“The reality is that 3,000 acres is less
than half of what needs to be done to get
these forests cleared, replanted and
back into healthy working order,” Seth
Barnes, director of forest policy for the
Oregon Forest & Industries Council, told
the Statesman Journal previously.
Instead of leaving standing dead
trees to rot in the forest, OFIC said har-
vest and reforestation is the better
choice.
“There are millions of acres set aside
for Mother Nature in national forests
and wilderness areas. Let’s manage
these state forests to supply timber and
take care of human needs instead of try-
ing to set aside every stick of wood,” Mill
City mayor Tim Kirsch said.
Zach Urness has been an outdoors re-
porter, photographer and videographer
in Oregon for 13 years. To support his
work, subscribe to the Statesman Jour-
nal. Urness can be reached at zur-
ness@StatesmanJournal.com or (503)
399-6801. Find him on Twitter at
@ZachsORoutdoors.