THURSDAY, JULY 29, 2021
Baker City, Oregon
A4
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EDITORIAL
COVID-19
is surging
The demise of the COVID-19 pandemic has been
greatly exaggerated.
Driven by the delta variant, which is about twice as
infectious as earlier strains of the virus, case numbers
have been rising recently in much of Oregon and the
nation after a dramatic drop during much of June and
early July. Oregon’s cases are up 53% over the past
week, with the number of people hospitalized for treat-
ment increasing by 40%.
On the positive side of the ledger, the state’s weekly
average number of new cases is less than one-third
what it was during the peak of the pandemic in Decem-
ber 2020. This is to be expected — hardly anyone was
vaccinated then. Today, about 68.4% of Oregonians 18
and older have been vaccinated.
The situation is both better — and worse — in Baker
County.
The county is faring better than many in terms of cas-
es. Umatilla County, for instance, has averaged 32 new
cases per day over the past two weeks. Baker County
(which has about 16,800 residents, Umatilla County
about 80,000) had about 30 cases for July through the
25th. But the situation turned for the worse earlier
this week, when the Baker County Health Department
reported 19 new cases on Tuesday, July 27.
Umatilla County’s experience shows what can happen
in a county with a relatively low vaccination rate. Uma-
tilla County has the fi fth-lowest rate among Oregon’s 36
counties, at 43% of residents 18 and older. Baker County
is just three spots above Umatilla County, with a rate of
46.1%.
This summer has been a welcome return to some-
thing resembling normality after the aberration of 2020.
But Baker County, as this week’s numbers show, is
hardly immune to the recent troubling trends. And with
students scheduled to return to classrooms Aug. 30, it
would be a pity if a big outbreak locally interfered, in
any way, with that important milestone, not to mention
the illness and potentially the deaths that will result.
Vaccines can’t completely eliminate the risk. But
they are beyond any doubt the best way to dramatically
reduce that risk — and without resorting to shutdowns,
quarantines and other steps that cause long-term dam-
age, both mental and economic.
— Jayson Jacoby, Baker City Herald editor
OTHER VIEWS
Editorial from St. Louis Post-Dispatch:
The thing about standards is, they’re worthless unless they
are applied uniformly. A standard that applies to politicians on
the right should apply equally to those on the left. After year
upon year of Democrats ranting and railing about President
Donald Trump’s penchant for lying and fomenting divisiveness
— with The Washington Post keeping a daily count of how
many lies Trump told — the same rules should apply when
politicians on the left lower themselves to Trump’s level. St.
Louis’ own Rep. Cori Bush deserves to be held to an equal if not
higher standard by her Democratic colleagues.
Last week, the billionaire founder of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, flew
into space in his own rocket, developed by his company Blue
Origin. Bush used the blatant extravagance of Bezos’ space
travel to make a false and incendiary statement, tweeting: “Jeff
Bezos going to space is a good time to remember that Amazon
used police violence to harass Black workers in Bessemer,
Alabama to stop them from unionizing.”
Bush was referring to the campaign earlier this year to
unionize Amazon warehouse employees in Bessemer. Bush
had joined other lawmakers in traveling to Bessemer to show
solidarity with pro-union activists. Ultimately, the Amazon
employees voted overwhelmingly not to unionize by a vote of
1,798 to 738.
There was, in fact, a police presence during the unionization
vote, but there is no documented police violence of any kind.
Specifically, there were no reports of police efforts to harass
Black workers. The police presence, which reportedly included
off-duty cops hired by Amazon, was tasked with security. The
unionization effort was not race-specific. Bush’s accusations of
police violence toward Black workers seemed a thinly disguised
bid to inflame tensions with police and introduce a racial ele-
ment where none existed.
Trump deserved to be called out for his constant lying via
social media. The effect of his antics was to divide Americans
and blur the line between fact and fiction. Trump also nurtured
the anti-mask and vaccine-skepticism movements that now
are causing a resurgence of coronavirus infections. Trump was
banned, and deservedly so, from major social media for his
behavior.
Bush deserves to be held to the same standard, or at least be
warned officially that she’s skating too close to the edge. When
Bush allows herself to play this game of distortion, she only
mirrors Trump’s antics rather than rises above them. And she
deepens the divide that Trump helped create.
Democratic colleagues who were so quick to denounce
Trump also need to apply the same rules to their own side of
the aisle. If Trump’s needlessly polarizing behavior was not
acceptable, then it should be just as unacceptable when the lies
emanate from far-left politicians like Bush.
‘Pandemic of the unvaccinated’
oversimplifies the challenges
Naomi Ishisaka
The Seattle Times
“A pandemic of the unvaccinated.”
That’s the misguided and danger-
ous statement that took hold last week
nationwide as President Joe Biden and
CDC Director Rochelle Walensky used
it to describe the latest phase of the
pandemic, with Biden going so far as to
say, “Look, the only pandemic we have
is among the unvaccinated.”
Suddenly, headlines and cable TV
news chyrons all screamed the pithy
sound bite.
On its face it seems logical. Cases
among unvaccinated people are soar-
ing, and more than 99% of deaths are
now among the unvaccinated. CO-
VID-19 cases overall nearly tripled in
the past few weeks.
It’s tempting for a weary and frus-
trated vaccinated public to say “well,
those people are getting what they de-
serve.” Vaccines are plentiful in the U.S.
and it might seem like unvaccinated
people are making their own beds with
their refusal to accept science.
But it’s not that simple and to
oversimplify by calling it a “pandemic
of the unvaccinated” will only make the
problem worse.
I think for many — especially in
liberal, well-vaccinated Seattle — un-
vaccinated people are perceived to be
white MAGA supporters who listen to
conservative media telling them that
vaccines are dangerous and that CO-
VID-19 is a hoax. Yet that perception
does not include the Black and Latino
people who lag in vaccination rates; it
also fails to consider the wider range of
people who are unvaccinated or unable
to get protection from vaccines.
If we accept the idea that it’s now
just a “pandemic of the unvaccinated”
and those smart enough to get vacci-
nated should be able to go back to pre-
pandemic life and too bad for everyone
else, we are also leaving behind groups
like all children under 12 who do not
yet have access to vaccines; teens who
remain unvaccinated (only 34% of
12- to 15-year-olds are fully vaccinated
in Washington state); immunocompro-
mised people who are not seeing im-
mune response from vaccines; as well
as communities of color who are hit
hardest by the virus. In Washington, for
example, Hispanics account for 29% of
COVID-19 cases, 13% of the population
and only 9% of people fully vaccinated.
Calling it a “pandemic of the unvac-
cinated” also ignores the fact that the
unvaccinated groups are intrinsically
connected to the rest of the vaccinated
population. A vaccinated parent’s level
of COVID-19 mitigation has a direct
impact on their child’s ability to stay
safe, for example. An unvaccinated
health care worker can have a direct
impact on an immunocompromised
patient.
By ending almost all mitigation ef-
forts — such as masking and distanc-
ing — when Washington state offi cially
reopened a few weeks ago, we effective-
ly hung up the “mission accomplished”
banner before the mission was close to
accomplished.
Now the delta variant is running
rampant and cities like Los Angeles
are reinstituting mask mandates to try
to combat the surge. On Friday, King
County’s top public health offi cial, Dr.
Jeff Duchin, recommended everyone
— including vaccinated people — wear
masks again indoors.
Early evidence is suggesting that
people infected with the delta vari-
ant may carry 1,000 times more virus
than the original virus. Even more
concerning, in Los Angeles County, 20%
of COVID-19 cases in June were in
vaccinated people, though it’s critical to
note, the vaccine still protects against
serious illness and death.
Pediatrician and public health ad-
vocate Dr. Rhea Boyd said in a July 17
tweet that we need to resist the urge to
fl atten the motivations of the unvacci-
nated, writing: “’The unvaccinated’ are
not a monolith of defectors. They are
people our health care system has long
underserved — Black folks, rural folks,
un and under insured folks and young
folks.” Further, the narrative around
“vaccine hesitancy” in communities of
color is overstated, Boyd said in a New
York Times op-ed earlier this year, and
“implicitly blames Black communi-
ties for their undervaccination, and it
obscures opportunities to address the
primary barrier to COVID-19 vaccina-
tion: access.”
In an interview with journalist Ed
Yong in The Atlantic last week, Boyd
expanded on her point. She said, “avail-
ability and access are not the same
thing.” There are many reasons why
structural barriers might make vac-
cines not as accessible as we may think
for marginalized communities. Barri-
ers can include lacking transportation;
no paid sick time to take off work to
deal with side effects; lack of credible
information; and lack of basic preven-
tive health care.
Boyd’s advice? Everyone should wear
a mask indoors and in public spaces
regardless of vaccination status.
This crisis is not over and it’s not just
half the population’s problem. We are
in it together and must fi ght it together,
if we hope to ever see the end of this
long, terrible nightmare.
Your views
America’s ‘war on drugs’
needs to focus on supply
America has a drug problem. That’s
not news. For some reason the demand
for drugs is a pandemic that has been
around much longer than COVID. Nixon
even declared a so-called war on drugs.
We locked up some drug dealers and
addicts but decades later the problem is
worse than before. We have hundreds
of thousands of overdose deaths with
the resulting misery that comes from
that. I will leave it to the psychologists
and sociologists to try and understand
why people would rather be stoned
than sober, why there is such a demand
for drugs. I have an opinion on what
to do about the supply side of the drug
pandemic.
We need a real war on drugs. We need
some leadership. I can’t understand why
my country thought I should go thou-
sands of miles away to shoot some guy
in black pajamas with an AK 47 who
just wanted to see the invader gone but
he was an enemy of our state and those
who are killing my country enjoy legal
protection. I lost a fi reteam partner over
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there, a cousin, and some classmates. I
lost a son to the drug pandemic.
Japan bombed Pearl Harbor on Dec.
7, 1941, and we decided that within the
hundreds of thousands of American
citizens a few might be a threat so we
interned thousands of good American
citizens. I can’t understand why we sit
by and watch China and Mexico supply
the cartels with literally tons of drugs
and bring them across our open borders,
supply the gangs with them for distribu-
tion and then fi ght over drug distribu-
tion territory, shoot up the inner cities
then call it gun violence.
I had a little experience in war and
my idea is that we should really fi ght a
war on drugs. The fi rst phase should be
that Congress exercise its constitutional
authority and declare war. A war on
drugs that designates the suppliers as
enemies of the state. If you are MS13 or
in another gang, you are headed to an
internment camp complete with barbed
wire and machine gun towers. Like Lin-
coln did in the Civil War, habeas corpus
should be suspended until the war is
won. You might get out if you supply
good information on the suppliers.
The new idea of treating addicts who
want something different is the right
approach, but it is going to take time to
set up programs. In the meantime, it is
past time for a real war on the supply
side. It is time to rid our nation of this
threat. It is time to eliminate the enemy.
We have that capability, what is lacking
is the will. Our “leadership” has had
decades to act. It’s time to demand that
they support America with the same
enthusiasm they show to their big politi-
cal donors. If they won’t act it is time for
new leadership, a new congress, a real
president.
Steve Culley
La Grande