KATHRYN B. BROWN
Owner
ANDREW CUTLER
Publisher/Editor
ERICK PETERSON
Hermiston Editor/Senior Reporter
THURSDAy, OCTOBER 14, 2021
A4
Founded October 16, 1875
OUR VIEW
Will there be
enough vaccinated
first responders?
I
t was just 14 months that Oregonians
were singing the praises of firefighters
and emergency medical services person-
nel who raced up Santiam Canyon to rescue
those in the path of a wildfire racing down.
Those brave men and women, and their
colleagues across the state who stand up in
the face of the worst natural and man-made
disasters, rightly were hailed as heroes.
What a difference a year can make.
Today, they are being singled out as possi-
ble vectors for the COVID-19 virus and
made to stand down if they decline to be
vaccinated.
We have said at the outset that people
who are able should get vaccinated for the
COVID-19 virus. While we respect the right
of informed adults to weigh their own options
and decide what is right for themselves, we
think the vaccine is the best option.
At the same time, we think government
diktats mandating vaccinations are wrong-
headed and counterproductive. Within a few
days we will see the consequences of Gov.
Kate Brown’s mandate that first responders
be vaccinated by Oct. 18 or lose their jobs.
In the wake of Brown’s mandate, fire and
rescue departments across Oregon expect
to lose many paid staff and volunteers who
choose not to get vaccinated by Oct. 18, the
vaccination deadline.
No one knows for sure how many first
responders the state will lose. Each emer-
gency department EO Media Group talked
to offered a different prediction: 10%, 25%,
50%.
Genoa Ingram, executive director of the
Oregon Volunteer Firefighters Association,
said that while no one knows final numbers
yet, impacts will likely be far-reaching.
“Nearly every district or department I’ve
talked to has indicated there will be some
shortage because not everyone is willing or
can be vaccinated,” Ingram said.
The vast majority of Oregon’s firefighters,
EMTs and paramedics — some experts esti-
mate 90% — are volunteers, many of whom
plan to leave if the mandate is enforced.
While the mandate only covers licensed
medical responders, at most departments fire
and medical calls are handled by the same
people.
We understand Brown’s goal is twofold:
protect patients and responders while
increasing the number of vaccinated Orego-
nians. That’s noble. But, we have to wonder
if it’s worse to risk catching COVID-19 or
to die by the side of the road because there
aren’t any vaccinated volunteer responders
to come to your aid.
On this point, Brown’s office is mute. Her
spokesperson declined to comment on the
potential consequences of the mandate or
measures that could be taken to mitigate and
shortages in emergency responders.
In a few days, the latter becomes more of
a possibility.
Many volunteer departments are chron-
ically short-handed in the best of times.
These are hardly the best of times, and there
is no crush of the vaccinated suddenly will-
ing to take up a post.
What are the departments to do?
It’s never so bad that politicians and
bureaucrats can’t make it worse.
EDITORIALS
Unsigned editorials are the opinion of the East
Oregonian editorial board. Other columns,
letters and cartoons on this page express the
opinions of the authors and not necessarily
that of the East Oregonian.
LETTERS
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of 400 words or less on public issues and public
policies for publication in the newspaper and on
our website. The newspaper reserves the right
to withhold letters that address concerns about
individual services and products or letters that
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Unsigned letters will not be published.
SEND LETTERS TO:
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211 S.E. Byers Ave., Pendleton, OR 97801
Pendleton’s effort in space race
BRIGIT
FARLEY
OPINION
t first glance, October is a month
dedicated to pumpkin spice lattes,
football and preparations for
Halloween — a fall festival of frivolity
before the dark and cold descend.
Surprisingly, though, October on the
historical calendar reveals some serious
inflection points in history: the Russian
Revolution, which birthed the worldwide
Communist movement, the Cuban Missile
Crisis, in which President Kennedy and
Soviet Premier Khrushchev approached,
then backed away from, the abyss of
nuclear war and the assassination of
Anwar Sadat in Egypt, some of the first
shots in the war against modernity by
forerunners of Al-Qaeda.
For me and other Pendleton teach-
ers and students, the launch on Oct. 4,
1957, of a smallish satellite the Russians
termed “Sputnik” became one of these
game-changing events.
The story of Sputnik begins in 1945.
At that time, America bestrode the world
like a colossus. Much of Europe and Asia
were suffering from the ravages of World
War II. Its mainland untouched in the
conflict, the U.S. had emerged robust and
strong and was making its influence felt in
the occupation of Japan and plans for the
reconstruction of Europe.
It had pulled off the technological feat
of the century in the construction of the
atom bomb. By contrast, our chief ideo-
logical competitor, the Soviet Union, had
been victorious with the Allies in the war,
but the cost was high: blasted infrastruc-
ture, shattered cities, burned out villages
and towns, the legacy of the Nazi war of
annihilation there. Many Soviet citizens
A
were living in husks of houses or holes
in the ground and there was widespread
famine in rural areas.
Nonetheless, the Soviet leadership,
as always unfettered by public opinion,
focused its resources exclusively on the
production of new and improved weap-
onry. With the help of several hundred
former Nazi scientists forcibly expatri-
ated from Soviet-occupied Germany,
the USSR exploded a nuclear device in
August of 1949. Space science and rock-
etry also became a top priority. Although
the United States had announced plans in
1955 to orbit a satellite, Soviet scientists
beat them to it with the launch of Sputnik
in October of 1957.
To put it mildly, Sputnik shocked
Americans, as much for its display of
superior technical skill as its implied
ability to carry a nuclear warhead. While
many science enthusiasts were intrigued,
accusations and recriminations from
wounded pride flew in officialdom. These
fortunately translated into the founda-
tion of NASA, dramatizing American
commitment to space exploration, and
a new initiative designed to improve
our country’s ability to understand and
compete with the Soviet Union and the
rest of the world.
Congress passed the National Defense
Education Act less than a year after Sput-
nik, on Sept. 2, 1958. The act infused
millions of dollars into higher education,
to benefit students of math, science and
foreign languages.
Sputnik and the NDEA soon made
their mark on Pendleton. At Pendleton
High School, Principal Don Fossatti and
history and English instructors Phil Farley
and Cal Plants caught the competitive
spirit of Sputnik.
They had learned of a new project from
the College Board, author of the SAT tests,
that prepared high school teachers to offer
first-year college classes. Fossatti, Farley
and Plants promptly worked up syllabi and
launched Advanced Placement courses in
U.S. History and English. They wanted
capable Pendleton students to enter
college with college credits, so that they
could accelerate their coursework and
contribute to the country sooner. Today,
PHS offers AP in a number of subjects.
A few years later, in 1965, Joyce Brock-
way (now Hoffman) took a job teaching
foreign languages at PHS. The NDEA
had financed her education at the Univer-
sity of Utah, where she studied French
and Russian. In 1967, Hoffman received
NDEA support for advanced French
language training in France. She went on
to teach French and Russian to hundreds
of Pendleton students, many of whom used
their language proficiency in the pursuit
of degrees in science, foreign languages,
government, area studies and law.
Hoffman’s superb instruction helped
me to win grants and fellowships in
successor programs to the NDEA for
graduate work in Russian history and
language. I have in turn taught these
subjects at Baylor and Washington State
University for 30 years. it is hard to imag-
ine a more far-reaching investment in the
future than the NDEA.
The Soviet Union would go on to score
more wins in segments of the space race —
first dog, then first man, then first female
in space. But thanks largely to the United
State’s constructive response to Sputnik,
the country won the ultimate prize —
landing a man on the moon in 1969 — and
strengthened itself immeasurably in other
ways. Whenever I contemplate the Octo-
ber sky, in which Sputnik made its fateful
journey, I am always proud that Pendleton
became a part of that effort.
———
Brigit Farley is a Washington State
University professor, student of history,
adventurer and Irish heritage girl living
in Pendleton.
would obviate against that conclusion.
There is no state or federal law that
mandates telling someone you may
carry a venereal disease either, but does
passing it on to them, with or without
your knowledge, make that right? As to
your banal claim that “three quarters of
new COVID cases arising from large
gatherings in a Massachusetts town
occurred in vaccinated people,” I am
one of several in town who have been
fully vaccinated and yet were victims of
a “breakthrough” infection. At my age,
it is only the vaccination that has saved
me from your “right to infect others” as
determined by “Harvard Law.”
To further state “that unvaccinated
people are selfishly (and criminally)
putting others at risk makes an appeal to
emotion, but it lacks legal and evidential
support” absolutely stuns me against
the “evidential, untheoretical” deaths of
millions around the globe. What more
evidence do you need, Ms. Patton?
What you will never get is that being
a willing asymptomatic carrier of this
known killer is not and can never be a
“legal issue” or one based on “personal
freedom.” It is strictly and solely a
moral issue. It is not one of “personal
rights” but entirely of ethical compas-
sion for everyone else with whom you
come in contact. I beg of you and the
rest of the unvaccinated possible killers,
please have just a smidgeon of compas-
sion and mature social decency.
The Rev. Matt Henry
Pendleton
YOUR VIEWS
Unvaccinated should have
compassion, social decency
In a recent East Oregonian, Rebecca
Patton of Enterprise claims that drunk
driving is not the same as being unvac-
cinated because “the law” prevents one
from doing the former but not so the
latter. She bases her position on how the
law school at Harvard defines what is
“lawful.”
This argument is specious and cruel.
What makes your position so inaccurate
and harmful is the asymptomatic nature
of the virus. If killing someone while
driving in a drunken state — because
drunk driving is against Harvard law
— is not the same as willingly, but
unconsciously killing someone else by
flagrantly ignoring the deadly effect of
my unknown transmission is both cruel
and moronic.
To state that it is a (proven) supposi-
tion “that an unmasked/unvaccinated
person poses a real (as opposed to theo-
retical) risk to others,” can only be deter-
mined with frequent testing from being
an unconscious and unwitting asymp-
tomatic carrier of the virus. Have you
been tested Ms. Patton? The thrust of
your white hyper-individualist argument
Get vaccinated for you
and your community
Pendleton is in my blood. I lived in
Pendleton for 25 years, raised my kids,
went to every Round-Up (best rodeo in
the world), rode my horse in multiple
parades, practiced OB/Gyn and deliv-
ered many of your babies, served on
city council. I know you, I follow your
news, and now I am alarmed because
I see many of the valued community
members sick and dying of COVID-19.
Why? Mistrust of medicine/facts/
government? Is it worth it? Look around
you and count the cost. Man enough to
wear pink? Then maybe man enough
to get vaccinated. If you don’t do it for
yourself, do it for your family, your
neighbors and for your Round-Up
community. We’re counting on you.
Dr. Cheryl Marier
Bellingham, Washington