SATURDAY, JUNE 19, 2021
Baker City, Oregon
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EDITORIAL
Thanks,
Leo: now
and always
Leo Adler was not a large man but his legacy,
which was substantial even during his life, has
grown to massive proportions in the nearly three
decades since his death.
It seems passing strange to write that.
Probably for some it seems strange to read.
But it was that long ago, on Nov. 2, 1993, that Adler
died in Baker City. He was 98.
He was already the city’s biggest benefactor.
His reputation as “Mr. Baker” had been burnished
for decades.
But the true scope of Leo’s generosity became clear
with his death.
Although even that’s not quite accurate.
Certainly the $20 million Leo bequeathed to the
town he loved is an amount beyond the capacity of
most of us to comprehend.
But over the years since Leo’s death, even that
substantial fi gure has been surpassed, and by no
small margin.
Thanks to wise investments from the foundation
that bears his name, Leo’s contributions are nearly
double the amount he left in his will.
Leo’s philanthropy to date exceeds $36.2 million,
including more than 9,200 college scholarships and
grants to more than 1,400 nonprofi t community
projects.
In 2020 alone, the Leo Adler Foundation awarded
more than $1.21 million in scholarships and commu-
nity grants — $846,300 to 242 students for the 2020-
21 school year and $364,734 in grants to 41 nonprofi t
organizations.
But no amount of accounting, no tallying of fi gures,
can truly capture the essence of what Leo Adler did
for Baker County and its residents.
His generosity is in effect perpetual.
The sons and daughters of the fi rst group of recipi-
ents of Leo Adler scholarships are themselves now
benefi ting from his selfl essness.
And so it will continue through the generations.
Those of us who were fortunate enough to have
met Leo, perhaps even have called him a friend, have
our memories.
But all of us whose lives are better because of him
can still honor his memory on his birthday, June 21.
A celebration is planned that day, 126 years after
Leo’s birth, from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. at the Adler House
Museum, 2305 Main St., the historic home where he
lived for much of his life.
— Jayson Jacoby, Baker City Herald editor
Why kids should drop masks
By Mayssa Abuali and Amy Beck
We are living in a modern dystopia
when, in the name of science, adults enjoy
life unmasked while young children are
masked; adults freely go to restaurants
and gyms while children have attended
school mainly by remote learning. The U.S.
pandemic policies have firmly placed us in
this position.
The Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention released updated guidance for
youth camps in late May that used vague
wording that could be read as recommend-
ing continued outdoor masking of children.
“People who are not fully vaccinated,” it
said, “are encouraged to wear a mask in
crowded outdoor settings or during activi-
ties that involve sustained close contact
with other people who are not fully vac-
cinated.” Most group camp activities will
require “sustained close contact.”
Since the CDC has yet to specifically
address masking of children in other set-
tings, gaps in the guidance have led to con-
fusion. Some are using the camp guidance
to extrapolate to other settings. As of now,
the CDC recommends that unvaccinated
people should wear masks anywhere they
will be around other people.
As pediatricians, the two questions
we must ask are “what is the scientific
evidence to support the outdoor mask-
ing recommendation for children?” and
“how will the endpoint for the masking of
American children be determined?”
To answer the first question, the risk of
outdoor transmission to and from children
must be assessed. Many studies have
shown that few infections are transmitted
outdoors, regardless of age. A conservative
estimate published in February in the
Journal of Infectious Diseases found that
the odds of indoor transmission are 18.7
times higher than outdoors.
However, according to current scientific
evidence, masks are simply not necessary
in outdoor settings. As with many things
COVID-related, there is no one definitive
study on pediatric outdoor masking. Our
opinion is based on the fact that many
studies conclude that outdoor transmis-
sion is highly unlikely and that children
are less likely to transmit the virus than
adults.
Coupled with the low rates of communi-
ty transmission, it no longer makes sense
to require children to be masked outdoors,
despite being unvaccinated.
Children are regarded as vectors —
people who harbor infectious diseases and
infect others — for some respiratory and
gastrointestinal viruses. But many studies
examining the ability of children to spread
COVID-19 in household and daycare,
school or camp settings have determined
that they have not been the primary driv-
ers of transmission. Children are not the
main COVID-19 vectors. Adults are.
Children are asking “when can we
stop wearing masks?,” but we cannot give
them a definitive answer because there
is not one in sight. An endpoint based
on vaccination of children 2-11 years is
not acceptable. We don’t know when an
approved vaccine will be available for
this age group. The key to ending the
pandemic is the vaccination of adults. For
instance, Israeli COVID-19 rates plum-
meted after those 16 years old and above
were vaccinated.
The United States is an outlier in the
international community regarding mask-
ing of children. Recent guidance from the
CDC advises keeping children as young
as 2 masked when they are outdoors,
while the World Health Organization
recommends not masking children age
5 and under. England has never recom-
mended masking for children younger
than 11 and, based on low community
transmission, no longer requires second-
ary students to wear masks at school.
The U.S. should develop metrics that
allow our children to go maskless indoors
when community rates are low. Influenza
can lead to severe illness and hospitaliza-
tions in children ages 2 to 11, and the mor-
tality rates in children for influenza and
COVID are similar, yet mask mandates
surely won’t be imposed every influenza
season.
Top public health officials must
establish an approach to masking based
on the science and pair it with strong
messaging that clearly relays children
can safely attend school, summer camps
and recreational programs — and neither
parents nor youngsters need to worry
about whether they should be wearing a
mask outdoors.
The prolonged school closures of the last
year have led to loss of learning mile-
stones, along with a rise in obesity and
declining mental health for children and
parents. In order to make informed deci-
sions, parents, teachers and pediatricians
need evidence-based risk assessments
that do not inflate risk of infection, trans-
mission or severity of COVID in children.
It is the responsibility of the CDC to
counter fear about COVID with a data-
driven approach. Making children wear
masks outdoors during physical activity is
uncomfortable and may keep them from
being physically active, particularly during
hot summer months. It is also unnecessary.
Dr. Mayssa Abuali is a pediatric infectious
diseases specialist at Einstein Medical
Center in Philadelphia. Dr. Amy Beck is an
associate professor of pediatrics at UC San
Francisco. Also contributing to this article
are Dr. Neeti Doshi, assistant professor of
pediatrics at UCSF; Dr. Roshni Mathew,
clinical associate professor of pediatric
infectious disease at Stanford University;
and Dr. Shawn Ralston, editor in chief of
Hospital Pediatrics.
The simple joy of throwing a stick for a dog
The boy and his dog, that classic
pair of pals, made for the sort of
scene that I suspect would have
pleased Norman Rockwell’s eye
and perhaps prompted him to daub
at his palette.
I saw them while I was walk-
ing along the Leo Adler Memorial
Parkway.
It was the fi rst day of June, but
the air had the sullen, oppressive
weight of August. We have nothing
like the humidity of the South, of
course, but when the temperature
nears 90, even the driest air feels to
my limbs a trifl e thicker, as though
it’s actively trying to impede my
progress.
The Powder River was running
a bit murky from snowmelt and
I’m sure the water was chilly, but I
could smell the river and already it
bore the slightly dank and swampy
scent of water in high summer.
Only the distant Wallowas, still
predominantly white, betrayed the
season.
I saw the dog fi rst.
I couldn’t name the breed — I
JAYSON
JACOBY
am not now, nor have I ever been,
a member of the American Kennel
Club — but it was a big and sturdy
dog. I had a sense of a retriever,
anyway, the kind of dog that
plunges into ice-fringed ponds to
bring back a mallard or a goose.
Its fur was either dark brown or
black — I don’t know for certain be-
cause the dog was paddling in the
river and the water, as it does, had
turned the dog’s coat into a uniform
and sodden shade.
The dog seemed to be enjoying
its swim in the way peculiar to the
species, although of course certain
dogs seem to enjoy pretty much
every activity. Which is a fi ne way
for anything to be, regardless of
species.
A few seconds later I noticed the
boy standing on the river bank,
near where the dog was swimming.
I didn’t pause — I always as-
sume that people don’t appreciate
being stared at by strangers — but
I suspect the boy was tossing a
stick and the dog was retrieving it.
This is the greatest of games,
elegant in its simplicity, requiring
no expensive accoutrements.
Nothing else, it seems to me,
better captures the essence of the
relationship between child and
dog, the eternal desire that all good
dogs have to please people.
The one other detail I gleaned
from my glance marred the
nostalgia, but it was the slightest
smudge, indeed more interesting
than disappointing.
The boy was clutching an object
that you won’t fi nd in any Rockwell
painting.
A smartphone.
This is hardly surprising, of
course.
Phones are ubiquitous among
pretty much every age group save
toddlers and newborns.
As I continued my walk, leav-
ing the river and plodding toward
the westering sun, I pondered the
scene.
And it struck me that what I had
seen was merely the modern incar-
nation of a situation familiar over
the span of many generations. The
only difference was the sophistica-
tion of the technology involved.
If I had come across a boy and
his dog beside the Powder a cen-
tury ago all might have been the
same except the boy would have
a Kodak Brownie to preserve the
occasion — a camera that, with its
fi lm requiring developing, demands
a level of patience that has all but
disappeared in our era of instanta-
neous views on a color, high-defi ni-
tion screen.
(I omit here such obvious
changes as clothing. Boys didn’t
wear sneakers in 1921. At least not
sneakers which are festooned with
eye-watering garish colors and
were assembled in a factory several
thousand miles away.)
Had I made my walk during the
1970s the boy might have carried a
Polaroid — rudimentary by smart-
phone standards, certainly, but
capable of delivering nearly instant
gratifi cation.
He might have run home to hand
his parents a couple of glossy prints
rather than scroll through a series
of digital images, but the essence is
the same.
I fi nd this rather comforting.
It is easy — indeed, it can seem
unavoidable — to be overwhelmed
by the pace of events nowadays, to
feel a trifl e queasy, as though you
had just fi nished a carnival ride
that was a bit more boisterous than
you, and your stomach, expected.
I enjoy coming across a situation
that defi es this notion.
It is good to remember that a boy
can still be content to hang around
with his dog, to throw a stick and
to know that it will be returned,
slippery with slobber but as real as
rivers and other things which are
not made of pixels.
Jayson Jacoby is editor
of the Baker City Herald.