4A
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 8, 2020
Baker City, Oregon
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news@bakercityherald.com
OUR VIEW
Leaders
needed on
vaccination
Oregon lawmakers have tried at least a couple of times
to make it more diffi cult for parents to avoid vaccinating
their children, unfortunately with little success.
And while those who support the idea may face an
uphill battle this year when the Legislature meets, they
must keep trying.
Gov. Kate Brown, along with state Sen. Herman Baer-
tschiger, R-Grants Pass, killed the 2019 effort to save the
massive new business tax bill Democrats wanted so badly.
At least 28 Oregonians came down with measles in
2019, in part because at least three travelers passed
through the Portland airport when they were ill. The
measles is particularly contagious. The virus can live in
the air for two hours, infecting those who pass through or
touch surfaces that have been contaminated, according to
the Centers for Disease Control.
Worse, measles can be a killer. In Samoa in late 2019 an
outbreak claimed nearly 80 lives in a country where only
31% of the population had been vaccinated. Herd immu-
nity, which generally prevents measles from spreading
much, kicks in only when 93% to 95% of a community
is vaccinated. Oregon’s kindergarten vaccination rate is
93%, right on the ragged edge of real problems should an
infected child show up at school. The overall vaccination
rate for adults and children is only 78 percent.
Meanwhile, Beth Crane, who chairs the Oregon Public
Health Association’s policy committee, noted recently
in an article for The Oregonian that even without mass
outbreaks measles cases cause problems.
A third of those who caught measles here in 2019 spent
time in the hospital being treated for serious complica-
tions, for one thing. Here’s another: Cancer patients,
whose immune systems are often weakened by chemo-
therapy, are at extra risk for the disease, even if they’d
been vaccinated earlier. Crane writes that some 20,000
Oregonians will be diagnosed with cancer this year.
Brown may well hold the key to vaccination legislation
in her hand again this year, though she apparently plans
to do nothing about the problem, if a statement released
Thursday by her press secretary, Charles Boyd, is any
indication. “Governor Brown will not be introducing a
bill on vaccination during the short February session.
However, especially in light of recent outbreaks of measles
and other diseases for which effective vaccines exist, she
continues to believe vaccination is critically important
to the health of all Oregonians, and that parents should
make sure their children receive all the vaccinations they
need to live healthy lives.”
It’s a disappointing, but probably not unsurprising,
stand from the woman elected to lead Oregonians to bet-
ter things.
Unsigned editorials are the opinion of the Baker City Herald.
Columns, letters and cartoons on this page express the opinions
of the authors and not necessarily that of the Baker City Herald.
Iran’s supreme leader misjudged
Trump’s capacity to take action
Qassem Soleimani was never going to
die peacefully in his bed.
As leader of the Quds Force of the
Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps,
and puppet-master of militias and ter-
rorist groups across the Middle East, he
had the blood of hundreds of thousands
on his hands: Syrians, Iraqis, Yemenis,
Lebanese, Palestinians, Israelis, Ameri-
cans and fellow-Iranians, among others.
His death was hoped for and prayed for
by the families of his victims, and plot-
ted by their governments.
It is a measure of Soleimani’s brash-
ness that he nonetheless strutted
around Baghdad in the company of
other wanted mass killers, whose faces,
in another age, would be on “Wanted”
posters on the walls of local post offi ces.
It was incautious to the point of suicidal
that he should have been doing so in
the days after his most brazen stunt:
the New Year’s Eve assault by his Iraqi
proxies on the U.S. embassy in Baghdad.
Soleimani’s death-by-drone was the
predictable denouement of his escalat-
ing recklessness over the years. That
his top local lackey, Abu Mahdi al-Mu-
handis, should have perished with him
is appropriate.
The Iraqi had been the instrument
of Soleimani’s decision to step up rocket
attacks on U.S. bases, leading to the
trigger event of this week’s turmoil: the
BOBBY GHOSH
killing of an American contractor at a
base near the northern city of Kirkuk.
This escalation in deed matched
a similar intensifi cation in word by
Soleimani’s boss, Supreme Leader Ali
Khamenei, who goaded President Don-
ald Trump in the manner guaranteed to
get his goat: by taunting him on Twitter.
“You can’t do anything,” Khamenei
tweeted, after Trump blamed Iran for
the embassy attack.
Khamenei and Soleimani seem to
have calculated that Trump would re-
spond to their provocations just as the
leaders of Saudi Arabia and the United
Arab Emirates have to progressively
brazen attacks on their shipping and
oil installations.
Perhaps they thought he couldn’t
risk a war, or a crisis that would send
oil prices spiking, in an election year.
Or perhaps they thought he simply
didn’t have the stomach for a confron-
tation.
Whatever their reasoning, playing
chicken with the American president
was a hideous mistake. Contrary to
Khamenei’s taunt, Trump could do
many things, ranging from tighten-
ing the economic sanctions that have
already cost Iran dearly, to striking
Iran’s proxies, as with last Sunday’s
bombing of Muhandis’s Kataieb Hez-
bollah. These may have been accept-
able outcomes for Khamenei: After all,
a man who only weeks ago ordered the
slaughter of hundreds of Iranians is
unlikely to balk at causing more pain
to his own people or proxies.
But Khamenei failed to reckon with
Trump’s own capacity for reckless-
ness. Rather than merely ratchet up
sanctions, the president chose to order
a drone attack that brought a fi ery end
to the life and career of one of Iran’s
most fearsome and important military
commanders.
What now? The cycle of recklessness
that the supreme leader began leaves
him little option except to keep raising
the stakes. But he must now do so
without his most effective instrument
of terror, a commander distinguished
for his unquestioned obedience and
apparently inexhaustible appetite for
violence. Those are qualities Khamenei
will surely miss amid the mayhem he
has unleashed.
Bobby Ghosh is a columnist and member of
the Bloomberg Opinion editorial board. He
writes on foreign affairs, with a special focus
on the Middle East and the wider Islamic
world.
Change will help Herald deliver fresher news
The word “news” is, you’ve no
doubt noticed, pretty much the
same as “new.”
This is no coincidence.
The Baker City Herald’s goal as
a newspaper, as it has been for the
past 150 years, is to bring to you,
our readers, information that is
new to you.
In many cases this information is
about an event that happened very
recently, that is itself “new” — a
public meeting or a sporting event
or a wildfi re that took place only
hours before the paper reaches you,
for instance.
But we also publish stories about
things that didn’t happen quite so
recently, but that you haven’t read
about before.
That’s news, too.
Since June 2009 the Herald has
published three issues per week, on
Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.
Starting the week of Feb. 4 we’re
shifting our schedule to publish on
Tuesdays, Thursdays and Satur-
days.
This will affect the freshness, as
it were, of the news we bring to you.
And on balance I believe that
that news will be, well, newer.
That’s because we’re going to take
advantage of the revised schedule,
not simply deliver each issue a day
later.
JAYSON
JACOBY
There are a few exceptions to
the newfound freshness to our
news, due mainly to the Baker
City Council typically meeting on
Tuesday nights.
We cover those meetings, and
publish stories about the Council’s
actions, because councilors are our
elected representatives, and their
decisions directly affect how our
property tax dollars are spent.
We usually publish stories about
Tuesday night Council meetings in
the Wednesday issue. Most of you
get that issue in late afternoon or
early evening.
With the new publication sched-
ule, stories about the City Council’s
Tuesday meetings will be included
in the Thursday issue. That issue
will arrive earlier in the day than
you’re used to, however, due to the
other change that starts Feb. 4.
That’s when we start delivering the
Herald through U.S. Postal Service.
And depending on where you live
in town, your mail is delivered as
many as several hours earlier than
the paper is distributed now.
The situation is opposite when
it comes to another public entity
we cover diligently — the Baker
County Board of Commissioners.
They meet on Wednesday morn-
ings, so the meeting stories aren’t
in the paper until Friday. Starting
in February we’ll be able to get
those stories to you a day earlier.
Moreover, technology allows us to
deliver news all but instantaneous-
ly, and we’ll be continue to take
advantage of that utility to keep
the Herald’s news from becoming
stale.
As a subscriber you have unlim-
ited access to our website — www.
bakercityherald.com. As we have
for almost two decades, we’ll use
the immediacy of the website to let
you know what’s happening in our
community. That includes posting
stories about City Council meet-
ings before the paper copy lands in
your box.
We’ll also continue to use both
our website and our social media
sites — Facebook being the most
popular among our readers — to
bring you the latest local high
school sports results, regardless of
what day they take place.
In many other respects, and
particularly events that unlike
meetings don’t heed any schedule,
the impending change to Tuesday,
Thursday and Saturday issues will
allow us to pack fresher news into
those papers than we can do now.
Here’s why: The Herald, which
is printed at the EO Media Group’s
plant in Pendleton, will come off
the presses at night rather than in
the morning, as is the case now.
Under the current schedule, we
have to fi nish the paper by 9:30
a.m. on Mondays, Wednesdays and
Fridays.
That morning deadline frequent-
ly makes it diffi cult, and some-
times impossible, for us to gather
information from law enforcement
and other sources about events
that happened the previous day
or overnight in time to publish a
thorough story — or even any story
at all.
But our new evening deadline
will largely do away with that
dilemma.
Let’s say, for instance, that a
snowstorm slickens the freeway
and causes a rash of accidents on
a Monday, Wednesday or Friday
morning.
With our current morning
deadline we would struggle to put
together a story and photo package
for that day’s issue.
But after we switch to the
evening deadline the fi rst week of
February, we would have time to
assemble a comprehensive report
about that storm and get it into
an issue that you will be reading
before the ice has turned to slush.
Storms also happen on Tuesdays
and Thursdays, of course.
But for events that happen on
days when we don’t publish, we’ll
do just as we do now, and use our
digital sites to deliver fresh news.
I’m sure some of you are so ac-
customed to reading the Herald
on Mondays, Wednesdays and
Fridays that it’s become part of
your routine, as ingrained as your
favorite time and place to sip a mug
of coffee.
Indeed, I hope most of you belong
to that group. I hope so because
it means you value the Herald —
we don’t, after all, willingly make
unpleasant things part of our
routines.
And although I understand that
even minor shifts in routine can be
unsettling, I think the advantages
of the coming changes — bring-
ing you mostly fresher news and
getting it into your hands before
darkness falls regardless of the sea-
son — will enrich that part of your
day when you settle down with the
Herald.
Jayson Jacoby is editor
of the Baker City Herald.