TUESDAY, AUGUST 3, 2021
Baker City, Oregon
A4
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EDITORIAL
Governor
too hasty
on masks
The delta variant has temporarily inter-
rupted what had been a relatively tran-
quil period in the COVID-19 pandemic.
The variant is more contagious than
other strains, according to the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention.
And in the very rare instances when
a vaccinated person is infected with the
delta variant, that person is much more
likely to be infectious.
These troubling properties of the vari-
ant are refl ected in recent trends, both
nationally, in Oregon and locally.
Baker County, which reported 15 new
cases for the fi rst half of July, had 55 in
just four days — July 26 (3), July 27 (19),
July 28 (11) and July 29 (22) — and 80 for
the eight-day period ending Aug. 1.
Beyond the numbers, Nancy Staten,
director of the Baker County Health
Department, said some of the county
residents who were infected have become
very ill, with some needing treatment in a
hospital.
In response to the delta variant, Oregon
Gov. Kate Brown on Thursday, July 29
announced that all students and staff in
schools, whether they’re vaccinated or not,
will have to wear face masks when classes
start this fall.
The governor should have taken a more
measured approach to the situation rath-
er than imposing another mandate that
served only to widen the already yawning
divide in society over all aspects of the
pandemic, and in particular the issue of
masks.
Classes don’t start for a month, after all.
And it’s not as if parents need a lot of
advance notice about whether students
will need to wear masks. They wore them
for the whole of last year, after all, and
they’re readily available.
Brown should have said that she will be
monitoring the situation — as of course
she will — and that she might require
masks in schools depending on how the
current delta-driven surge plays out in
August.
Although the delta variant’s effects are
problematic, the governor ought to recog-
nize that the situation in Oregon is quite
different — and in a good way — than it
was, say, six months ago, and that these
differences mitigate to some extent the
risks posed by the delta variant.
Most notably, more than 2.3 million
Oregonians are vaccinated.
While it’s true that vaccination rates
are lower among students — those 12 and
younger aren’t even eligible yet — that
age group is also substantially less likely
to be infected or to have severe symptoms.
Ultimately, it’s vastly more important
that Baker students will be attending
in-person classes on a full, regular sched-
ule starting Aug. 30, than whether they
have to don face masks before they walk
through the doors.
But Brown overreacted by making that
decision more than a month in advance.
There is no excuse for failing to acknowl-
edge how rapidly conditions have changed
during the pandemic, or for acting as
though the vaccination campaign that has
been going on for more than half a year
has yielded little in the way of benefi ts.
Brown did both.
— Jayson Jacoby, Baker City Herald editor
Biden’s chance to ditch Iran nuclear talks
By Eli Lake
Since taking offi ce, President
Joe Biden and his top advisers
have made it clear that there
is almost nothing Iran can do
to get his administration to
rescind its offer to negotiate a
return to the 2015 nuclear deal
that Biden’s predecessor aban-
doned. Thankfully, that might
fi nally be changing.
On Wednesday, July 28,
Iranian Supreme Leader Aya-
tollah Ali Khamenei trashed
his government’s past nuclear
negotiations in front of the out-
going and incoming presidents.
He told the new president he
should learn from his prede-
cessor’s experience not to trust
the West.
In a statement responding
to those remarks, the State
Department repeated that it
was sincere in seeking a nego-
tiated settlement to return to
the deal — which would limit
Iran’s nuclear enrichment for
another nine years and remove
the most biting secondary
sanctions on Iran’s economy.
That has been boilerplate for
the Biden administration since
January. This time though, it
added a veiled threat: “That
opportunity will not last for-
ever.”
It may well be that the
change is motivated by a
fl awed understanding of Ira-
nian politics. As Axios reported
this week, the Biden adminis-
tration is worried that Iran’s
new president, Ebrahim Raisi,
a fanatic jurist responsible for
sentencing thousands of politi-
cal prisoners to the gallows in
1988, will take a hard line in
nuclear talks. The outgoing
administration of President
Hassan Rouhani negotiated
the nuclear deal in 2015.
But there has never been a
hard-line/moderate dichotomy.
Khamenei has the real power
in Iran, and he approved the
deal, just as he now appears to
be souring on the prospect of re-
turning to it. Raisi was elevated
to head the Justice Ministry
in 2019, remember, as part of
Rouhani’s allegedly moderate
government.
A better rationale for not
returning to the Iran talks are
the growing signs that Khame-
nei’s regime is wobbly. It is
failing to meet the basic needs
of its people. Earlier this month,
protests broke out in Khuzestan
province over the failure to
provide drinking water. This
week, demonstrations spread
to Tehran. Some videos of those
protests showed Iranians call-
ing for Khamenei to resign,
just as the protests in 2018 and
2019 called for his ouster.
Some protesters are angry
because Iran’s electricity grid
can’t keep the power on. This
round of demonstrations began
because of water shortages.
But in the last four years, other
state failures have brought
Iranians out to the street. In
2017 and 2018 it was failed
banks, which wiped out the sav-
ings of average Iranians, that
prompted national protests. In
2019, it was the fact that state
security services shot unarmed
demonstrators. In 2009, it was a
stolen election.
It’s tempting to posit that
U.S. sanctions are what’s keep-
ing Iran’s regime from provid-
ing basic services to its people.
But this is too simplistic. The
banking crisis of 2017 and 2018
occurred while Iran was enjoy-
ing the benefi ts of the 2015
nuclear deal. Sanctions didn’t
force the state security services
to shoot peaceful protesters,
nor did they force developers
in Khuzestan to divert drink-
ing water from the population
to drill for more oil. These were
the choices of a corrupt and
cruel regime.
So Biden now has an op-
portunity. He should follow
up on the State Department
statement this week support-
ing Iranian protesters and
offer U.S. technical support to
help activists get around the
country’s Internet blackout and
slowdown. He should rally Eu-
ropean governments to join in
his solidarity campaign for the
Iranian people. He should con-
sider creating a modest fund for
the families of Iranian workers
going on strike. He should build
on the last administration’s
work to reach out to Iranians on
social media.
The overriding goal of all
this outreach, and the main
objective of the president’s Iran
policy, should be to support
the efforts of Iran’s people to
achieve a democratic transition.
The alternative to this approach
is to patiently cajole an ailing
supreme leader to limit his nu-
clear program while his ailing
country collapses around him.
Eli Lake is a Bloomberg
Opinion columnist covering
national security and foreign
policy. He was the senior nation-
al security correspondent for the
Daily Beast and covered nation-
al security and intelligence for
the Washington Times, the New
York Sun and UPI.
OTHER VIEWS
Sadly, face masks are back in fashion
Editorial from Baltimore
Sun:
As effective as the COVID-19
vaccines have been, the pan-
demic has taken an unfortu-
nate turn in recent weeks. New
cases and hospitalizations are
no longer in decline across the
United States, they’re on the
upswing; the highly contagious
delta variant accounts for
most. Doses of the vaccines are
plentiful, but the arms willing
to accept them are not; vac-
cine hesitancy has become a
serious obstacle to conquering
the disease. And to top it off,
it’s become increasingly clear
that those masks people were
so delighted to take off just
weeks ago are coming back into
fashion. This week’s guidance
from the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention that
vaccinated people ought to
wear masks indoors in areas of
signifi cant transmission proved
a milestone — raising the hack-
les of right-wing politicos and
the usual conspiracy theorists
while reminding average Amer-
icans that the fi ght against the
virus isn’t over yet.
The CDC has also advised
that K-12 schools embrace
universal masking among
teachers, staff, visitors and
students whether vaccinated
or not, amid new data that
show vaccinated people can still
carry — and spread — large
amounts of the virus. Kudos to
systems like Baltimore County
Public Schools for quickly
adopting that standard for the
fall, and Baltimore City Public
School System for making the
call before the CDC released its
guidance. Given that children
under age 12 aren’t yet eligible
for vaccination, this precaution
seems prudent.
Americans can quibble
about some of the fi ne print as
much as they like. President
Joe Biden’s choice Thursday to
mandate vaccination or regu-
lar testing, mask-wearing and
social distancing for federal
employees — a reversal of his
previous position that vacci-
nation ought to be voluntary
— makes a lot of sense under
these changing circumstances.
This won’t be the fi rst time that
federal employees have been
asked to model good behavior.
Some private employers are fol-
lowing suit. We would encour-
age others to do so as well. The
stakes are too high for Ameri-
cans to be satisfi ed with a “you
do you” approach to public
health, anymore than we ought
to accept traffi c signals or speed
limits as mere suggestions.
Yet resistance to mask wear-
ing continues. At least nine
states have banned local mask
mandates. This is unconscio-
nable. It’s one thing to question
the CDC about data regarding
how often vaccinated individu-
als have tested positive for the
delta variant, it’s quite another
to reject mask wearing out of
hand as if the prospect of cloth
or paper covering mouth and
nose was an imposition be-
yond reason.