TUESDAY, MAY 26, 2020
Baker City, Oregon
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EDITORIAL
Making
signs a new
tradition for
BHS grads
The Class of 2020 is special.
As the fi rst — and ideally the only — coronavirus
class, this year’s crop of graduates has seen their
milestone accomplishments affected in ways no class
has dealt with at least since the Spanish fl u pandemic
of 1918.
The graduates of 2020 have been deprived not only
of their fi nal term of classes at school but also of the
traditional commencement ceremony.
Undoubtedly Baker City residents will turn out
on June 7 to celebrate the Baker High School gradu-
ates as they ride in vehicles through downtown after
receiving their diplomas.
It will certainly be a uniquely memorable event.
But the pandemic has prompted another effort to
honor graduates, and it’s one that, unlike the drive-
thru graduation, should become a tradition.
Local businesses have displayed large photos of
BHS graduates in their windows, creating a vivid
showing of optimism during a period that has chal-
lenged society like nothing else in our lifetimes.
These window tributes are reminiscent of a longtime
tradition that won’t happen this summer, another
casualty of COVID-19 — window displays for play-
ers in the East-West Shrine All-Star Football Game.
That annual fundraiser for the Shriners Hospital for
Children in Portland, scheduled for Aug. 1 at the same
normal venue for the BHS graduation — Baker Bull-
dog Memorial Stadium — has been canceled.
This year’s graduations, in Baker City and at high
schools across the county, state and nation, will prob-
ably be more bittersweet than usual.
But by inaugurating a community tradition that en-
riches the magical time for graduates in years to come,
the window photos of the BHS Class of 2020 could
become another thing we remember, but with smiles
rather than grimaces, when we reminisce about the
strange days we experienced.
— Jayson Jacoby, Baker City Herald editor
OTHER VIEWS
Editorial from The Dallas Morning News:
During the long national struggle that is coronavirus,
the grinding wheels of Washington have moved that much
more slowly — something that in normal times we might
mark as a good thing under the old adage that the govern-
ment that acts least acts best.
But a few important things have happened beyond the
approval of the fi rst stimulus package.
Among these is the Senate’s confi rmation of Texas
congressman John Ratcliffe as director of national intel-
ligence.
In a 49-44 vote, Ratcliffe was confi rmed by the Senate on
Thursday along partisan lines.
Make no mistake, Ratcliffe is an imperfect nominee.
From his lack of experience in the intelligence community
to what is now a transparent case of resume infl ation and
an uncritical defense of the president in the impeachment
hearings, he is not ideal for the role.
But when it comes to presidential nominees before the
Senate, the question senators should ask is not whether
this is the nominee they would select, but whether the
president’s choice is acceptable. And given all we know
now, Ratcliffe, a former U.S. attorney with a strong back-
ground in cybersecurity, clears the bar for acceptable.
The bottom line is that elections have consequences.
And using presidential nominees to relitigate elections is
a key ingredient in the recipe for endless partisan warfare.
The struggles are served up by cable news and political
fundraisers as fodder for the us-versus-them battles they
constantly feed their audiences in a bid to grab eyeballs
and wallets. Meanwhile, opposing party leaders can grand-
stand about a nominee’s determination to — shocker —
support a president’s agenda.
Every nomination is not a Thermopylae. John Ratcliffe
may do a poor job as intelligence director. He may do a fi ne
job. The Senate’s job is to offer advice and consent to the
president, not impose its own will upon him.
Ratcliffe will owe the president his service, and he will
owe the intelligence community and the American people
his independence.
Beyond that, he is the president’s choice, and he should
be given the chance to serve.
The forgotten flu pandemic
My junior and senior years in high
school were 1968 and 1969; fi ve decades
later, I can still remember some of the
main events of that era: the assassina-
tions of Martin Luther King and Robert
F. Kennedy, the bombing of Cambodia,
the Apollo 8 spacefl ight that orbited the
moon, and Woodstock, which I pleaded
with my parents to let me attend. (They
said no.)
In my personal life, I remember
playing on the basketball team, buying
my fi rst car, working in my family’s
corner grocery store and wishing I had
the nerve to ask certain girls out on a
date. Here’s what I don’t remember: the
pandemic of 1968-1969.
And yet there was one. It was called
the H3N2 virus — less formally, the
Hong Kong fl u — and it took a sig-
nifi cant toll. The Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention has estimated
that 1 million people died worldwide,
100,000 in the U.S. Conditions in large
U.S. cities sound similar to what they’re
going through now, with overwhelmed
hospital workers, millions of people
getting sick and the elderly most likely
to die.
When I fi rst read about this pandem-
ic, I could scarcely believe I had missed
it. According to a recent article in the
Wall Street Journal, the virus wreaked
havoc in Europe, with French manu-
facturers suffering severe disruptions
and West German garbage collectors
burying the dead because there weren’t
enough undertakers. In the U.S., The
New York Times reported, the Citadel
had to suspend classes because 165
cadets came down with the virus. Ab-
senteeism in Los Angeles schools rose as
high as 25%. In Boston, where I would
soon be headed to college, university
infi rmaries were said to be fi lled with
ill students. Tallulah Bankhead was a
prominent victim of the virus.
A quick search confi rms that the
Times(1) had covered the pandemic at
the time. But I didn’t read the Times
when I was in high school, and even if I
had, I might well have missed the cover-
age. Every article was buried well inside
the paper.
I did read the Boston Globe, but it
wasn’t exactly trumpeting the news
either. I found a humor piece by Art
Buchwald (“For pretty young ladies,
the HKF can be your protection from
drunken bosses at Christmas parties”).
The news that the virus was offi cially
an epidemic ran in a short wire-service
article on Page 5. On New Year’s Eve,
the Globe predicted that the fl u might
keep people indoors. Or maybe not: “Flu
or not, there are many who won’t let
anything stand in the way of celebrating
the holiday.”
From our current perspective, with
shelter-in-place rules in much of the
country, the most striking thing about
the contemporaneous accounts was the
absence of any discussion of lockdowns
JOE NOCERA
or even social distancing. I saw a few
photos of nurses and offi ce workers
wearing masks, but that apparently
wasn’t mandated either.
Even the occasional school closings
were one-offs; not a single state ordered
that schools or businesses be closed
en masse. The virus swept across the
world, causing tens of millions of people
to become sick — and killing nearly
three times the number of people who
have died so far of COVID-19 — and
the world’s chief mitigation effort was
to race to make a vaccine. By the time
one was ready, the pandemic had largely
fi zzled out.
This pandemic, of course, will be
indelibly seared in the memory of those
who lived through it. It is the biggest
story since 9/11, with the ever-rising
number of cases and deaths dominating
the news. Children who are now wear-
ing masks, doing schoolwork online and
staying indoors will never forget it.
They’ll also no doubt remember the
economic aftermath, which is likely to
be horrifi c, with defl ation and even a
depression a possibility. On Tuesday,
testifying before the Senate Banking
Committee, Treasury Secretary Steven
Mnuchin said that “there is a risk of
permanent damage” to the economy
if the country remained locked down
much longer.
All of which raises a question that has
so far been relegated to a small handful
of coronavirus contrarians: with all the
businesses that are going to fail, and
the tens of millions of people who will be
unemployed — and the other negative
consequences that come with forc-
ing people to stay at home — will the
lockdown have been worth it? Or would
we have been better off doing something
closer to what the country did in 1968
— yes, taking precautions like wearing
masks, washing hands and protecting
the elderly, but allowing businesses and
schools to stay open while people went
about their lives?
There are two issues here. The fi rst is
that quarantining an entire population
is not some set-in-stone technique that
has been used for decades to stem the
spread of a virus. It was fi rst proposed in
2006 by two government doctors — nei-
ther of them infectious disease special-
ists — after President George W. Bush
asked for a plan to combat pandemics.
Soon afterward, a paper was pub-
lished calling for a national policy of
sheltering-in-place. It swayed Bush.
But four scientists who were infectious
disease specialists also wrote a paper
about the idea — a devastating critique.
There was no science to support the
notion that a national quarantine would
halt the spread of infection, they wrote.
It could increase the risk of infection for
people living in close quarters. Closing
theaters, malls, restaurants, stores and
bars — not to mention church services
and athletic events — would have “seri-
ous disruptive consequences.” Closing
schools was not only impractical “but
carries the possibility of a seriously
adverse outcome.” And so on.
The scientists concluded:
Experience has shown that com-
munities faced with epidemics or other
adverse events respond best and with
the least anxiety when the normal social
functioning of the community is least
disrupted. Strong political and public
health leadership to provide reassur-
ance and to ensure that needed medical
care services are provided are critical
elements. If either is seen to be less than
optimal, a manageable epidemic could
move toward catastrophe.
The second issue is that there is sur-
prisingly little evidence that lockdowns
work. Last week, a statistician named
William M. Briggs, who is solidly in the
anti-lockdown camp, wrote a blog post
comparing countries that locked down
with countries that didn’t. As of May
12, the U.S. had 237 deaths per million
people. Taiwan, a no-lockdown country,
had 0.3 deaths per million. (The country
has had a total of seven deaths.)
No-lockdown Sweden has had 347
deaths per million; lockdown Belgium,
with a similar population, has had
763 deaths per million. Ethiopia, with
a population of 109 million, had no
lockdown — and a death rate of 0.04 per
million.
“Death rates were more than highly
variable; they were all over the place,”
Briggs wrote of the data he had col-
lected. “If lockdowns worked as adver-
tised, we would not see such enormous
variability in the death rates.”
“What should we conclude?” he added.
“Strike that. What can we conclude?
Only one thing: We cannot conclude that
lockdowns worked.”
Let me point out one other fact about
the pandemic of the late 1960s. Like
many coronaviruses, the H3N2 virus
came in waves. The last one began in
the fall of 1969 and ended in early 1970.
Assuming this coronavirus fades in the
summer, there is a high likelihood that
it will return with a vengeance in the
fall and winter. If that happens, are you
truly ready to lockdown again?
I didn’t think so.
(1) “The Hong Kong Flu Began in Red
China,” was the headline of an AP story
The New York Times ran in mid-Decem-
ber 1968.
Joe Nocera is a Bloomberg Opinion
columnist covering business. He has written
business columns for Esquire, GQ and The
New York Times, and is the former editorial
director of Fortune. His latest project is the
Bloomberg-Wondery podcast “The Shrink
Next Door.”
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