SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 4, 2021
Baker City, Oregon
4A
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EDITORIAL
Your views
Fast work
foils a
scary fire
It was a very bad place for a wildﬁ re.
Granted, in this summer of drought and record-
breaking heat, there is no good place for a wildﬁ re to
start in Northeastern Oregon.
But the upper part of the Rock Creek canyon, in
the Elkhorn Mountains about 13 miles northwest of
Baker City, is a decidedly dangerous spot for a blaze.
Aerial photos illustrate the threat, showing the
nearly contiguous carpet of conifer trees. Worse still,
many of these trees are subalpine ﬁ rs, a species that
burns with unusual vigor due in part to the concentra-
tions of ﬂ ammable oil in its needles.
Then there is the issue of access for ﬁ reﬁ ghters.
Mainly, there isn’t any. Not the rapid access afford-
ed by roads, anyway. There isn’t a road within a mile
of the Rock Creek ﬁ re, which was reported Monday
afternoon, Aug. 30.
The ﬁ re was moving fast. Flames were engulﬁ ng
entire trees — “torching” — and spreading from crown
to crown. A cold front was moving through, spurring
wind gusts that worsened the situation.
Then the aircraft arrived.
In the several crucial hours Monday afternoon and
evening — when not a single ﬁ reﬁ ghter was on the
ground in the area; ﬁ re ofﬁ cials said it was too danger-
ous to have crews rappel from a helicopter — a ﬂ eet of
ﬁ ve tankers dropping retardant and two helicopters
dumping water kept the ﬁ re in check. There’s no way
to be sure, of course — wildﬁ re is nothing if not unpre-
dictable — but it’s reasonable to believe that without
that rapid and aggressive aerial campaign, the ﬁ re
would still be spreading today.
With massive blazes burning elsewhere in Oregon,
California, Idaho and other western states, it’s fortu-
nate that the aircraft were available so rapidly.
We don’t want to have rely on good fortune.
Not with tens of thousands of acres, in the Elkhorns
and across the region, vulnerable to ﬁ re until the ﬁ rst
widespread autumn rainstorm.
Lightning is still possible, but it’s much less likely
now than during August. The Forest Service initially
deemed the Rock Creek ﬁ re human-caused but later
changed it to “unknown” pending an investigation.
Regardless, campﬁ res are banned except in camp-
grounds and designated recreation areas. All of us who
use public forests should heed that and other precau-
tions. This has been a comparatively quiet ﬁ re season
around here. Let’s all strive to make sure it ends up
that way.
— Jayson Jacoby, Baker City Herald editor
Vaccine myths call into question
science education
It seems to me that the quality
of education in the ﬁ eld of science
has become wholly inadequate in
this country. Are we not aware that
science is not an alternative belief
system? That it is based on empiri-
cally derived hypotheses obtained
through long study of the data
based on experiment and observa-
tion, rather than theory or personal
beliefs. Again, scientiﬁ c data is NOT
the same as deeply held personal
beliefs.
People who know anything about
vaccinations and know of the long
history of working on vaccines for
viruses ever since the 1918 great
pandemic ﬂ u, and know that vac-
cines were NOT produced “too
quickly” to be safe. They will know
the difference between DNA and
mRNA and how these viruses work
at replicating themselves. People who
know about viruses would not be in-
gesting a horse parasitic medication
to ﬁ ght the virus. People who know
about metals and magnetism are not
going to be claiming that the COVID
vaccine “magnetized” them. It is not
necessary for all students to want
to be scientists when they graduate
and go on to study at a higher level,
but at the very least we should be
providing in our school system a solid
foundation of science to know enough
about how it works and then can
make informed decisions based on
facts ... NOT personal beliefs.
Christine Howard
Baker City
City Council needs to consider
responsibility as well as rights
The City Council’s idea of a law-
suit against Governor Brown’s man-
dates in her effort to stem the spread
of a deadly virus is very disturbing.
If it is done for political purposes, it
is inexcusable, aside from also being
a misuse of taxpayers’ money, both
the City’s cost to ﬁ le and the State’s
to defend. If done out of ignorance,
it shows that the councilors are in
urgent need of a science-based (not
Facebook-based) crash course in epi-
demiology and viral mutation.
One currently hears a lot about
“individual rights,” but very rarely
about “individual responsibility,” the
latter supposed to be an integral part
of and basis for the former.
The vaccines have been proven
safe and very effective, and masks
are primarily to keep those who do
get infected from spreading the virus
to others. Is there any thought about
those who will get sick or maybe
even die because they follow the
councilors’ lead? Or those who work
to exhaustion and at personal risk to
take care of them?
Kirsten Badger
Baker City
Vaccine better than horse dewormer
Editorial from St. Louis Post-
Dispatch:
For months after the coronavi-
rus vaccines were released, many
Americans who refused to take them
cited the fact that they were initially
approved by federal regulators on an
emergency fast-track basis rather
than under the normal drug-approval
process. That fear, never fully valid to
begin with, should have ﬁ nally been
laid to rest by the recent full, formal
approval of the ﬁ rst of the vaccines.
Yet even now, signiﬁ cant numbers
of vaccine-skeptical people are instead
turning to a drug meant to deworm
horses, which has repeatedly failed
to protect against the coronavirus in
clinical trials and in some cases has
proven dangerous. This should stand
as further evidence (if any was still
needed) that the anti-vaccination
movement lacks any credibility what-
soever and should have no sway over
public policy.
Ivermectin has been effectively
used in small doses in humans to treat
parasites, but human trials haven’t
produced evidence it’s effective on
the coronavirus. That hasn’t stopped
people from buying up the human
version to the point that pharmacies
are running out. Worse, some are turn-
ing to veterinary supply sources for
the livestock version — which is not
merely ineffective against the corona-
virus but dangerous. Ivermectin-relat-
ed calls to poison control centers have
risen ﬁ vefold in recent months.
It’s reminiscent of the controversy
over hydroxychloroquine, a malaria
medication that, like ivermectin, has
shown scant actual evidence of effec-
tiveness against the coronavirus and
has potentially dangerous side effects.
But with backing and misinforma-
tion from right-wing media and some
Republican politicians (including, in
the case of hydroxychloroquine, former
President Donald Trump), too many
Americans are viewing these unprov-
en, unlikely remedies as silver bullets,
while continuing to reject vaccines that
have been proven for months to be
both highly effective and safe.
It’s not putting it too strongly to
suggest that this is madness. What
social, political or psychological factors
would cause large numbers of other-
wise rational Americans to reject vac-
cines that have earned provisional and
now formal approval by the Food and
Drug Administration, while embracing
drugs that the FDA and other experts
warn are ineffective and dangerous?
It’s almost as if, having staked out the
bizarre position that vaccine accep-
tance is a violation of conservatism,
those adherents are suddenly recogniz-
ing that the crisis is real and lunging
for whatever vaccine alternative they
can ﬁ nd.
Declaring an entire segment of
society to be so outside the pale that
their voices should be deliberately
ignored isn’t something that should
be done lightly — but on the issue of
these snake-oil alternatives, the time
has come. Vaccine mandates, vaccine
passports and other proposed policies
are centered on the simple scientiﬁ c
fact that vaccines work. Like all public
policies, these ideas must be open to
debate. But there should be no seat at
that table for those who pass up medi-
cally approved vaccines in favor of a
horse dewormer.
Remembering the man who tried to save my brain
I read “obituary” in the email
and as always when I come across
that lonely word, unattached to
any name, I winced slightly, as if
anticipating a possible blow.
With trepidation, I clicked to
open the message.
I wondered, in that instant while
the computer worked its digital
magic, whose name I would see
— whether it was a person I had
known, whether I would be shocked
to learn of the death.
It was.
And I was.
The name was David Coughlin.
Dave was such a vital man — a
man whose hands and feet were the
ﬁ rst to touch some of the most pre-
cipitous mountain faces in North-
eastern Oregon — that it had never
occurred to me to think that he
might die at the modest age of 77.
I think I was surprised too —
and, of course, saddened — because
Dave and his wife, Lisa, had so
recently started anew.
After living in Baker City for
almost 50 years, the couple moved
in March of this year to Bend,
where their daughter, Jennifer, and
grandson, Jackson, live.
JAYSON
JACOBY
The Coughlins sent me a let-
ter that month, one they wanted
published in the Herald. They an-
nounced in the letter that they were
moving. They thanked the com-
munity “for all your kindness and
friendships over the years” and they
wrote that they hoped “we have con-
tributed as much to the community
as it has given to us.”
I have no doubt that they did.
Lisa taught at Baker High
School.
Dave was an attorney here for 46
years. He was an integral member
of the Baker County Community
Literacy Coalition, and a board
member for many years.
I had a brief phone conversation
with Dave at the time. I told him I
thought it was a ﬁ ne gesture, writ-
ing that letter. I told him I hoped
he and Lisa would enjoy spending
more time with their daughter and
their grandson.
I’m sorry for them all that their
time together was so short.
I spent an hour or so in Dave’s
ofﬁ ce in 2017, interviewing him for
a proﬁ le story on his retirement.
It was the sort of interview that
makes this job scarcely seem like
work.
Dave told me about his moun-
tain climbing exploits, a topic that I
ﬁ nd endlessly fascinating. I did not
until that day know that he had
played football at Dartmouth. He
told me that when he ﬁ rst saw the
Elkhorn Mountains he knew, in the
way that people sometimes do, that
he was destined to live here, in the
lee of those great peaks. I under-
stood what he meant.
But the memory that will, I sus-
pect, always be the most vivid, when
I think of Dave Coughlin, was quite
a different encounter.
And it was one that Dave himself
didn’t even know about — which is
to say, he didn’t know it was me —
until I told him some time after.
It was many years ago, perhaps
as long as a decade although I can’t
be sure, so slippery is time. I was
riding my bike on Highway 7, just
south of town and headed toward
Sumpter (not that I intended to ride
so far; my destination was Salis-
bury Junction). I was rounding the
corner where the highway enters
Bowen Valley when I saw the ﬁ gure
standing on Beaver Creek Loop, the
gravel road that meets the highway
there. He was standing beside his
car, gesticulating.
I couldn’t at ﬁ rst make out what
he was getting at.
But as I pedaled closer I under-
stood. I also recognized Dave. He
was pointing to his head, but his
goal was to make me think about
my own.
Which was not, I realized sud-
denly, protected by a helmet.
A champion triathlete who un-
doubtedly has covered more miles
on two wheels than I ever will do,
in addition to his achievements
in the mountains, Dave certainly
understood the importance of a
helmet.
As I rolled past I gave Dave
a thumb’s up, my face crinkled
into what I hoped was the appro-
priately sheepish grin of a person
who knows he’s been caught out in
public doing something conspicu-
ously stupid.
Sometime later, probably a cou-
ple days but certainly not so much
as a week, I phoned Dave to make
sure he knew who the foolish rider
was. I thanked him for reminding
me that brains generally do not fare
well in collisions with asphalt, par-
ticularly from the elevated perch,
and speed, of a bicycle.
Mostly I wanted to be sure he
didn’t regret his action, didn’t won-
der whether he had been presump-
tuous in trying to persuade someone
to protect the only brain he’s ever
going to have.
Even now, years later, I still
think of Dave every time I strap on
my helmet, which I do even when
I’m going for a short ride in town
with my kids.
I ﬁ gured someday I would have a
chance to tell him that story again,
to remind him that he had inspired
me to stop acting like an idiot in at
least one way.
A tiny part of Dave’s legacy, to be
sure.
But it meant something to me.
Still does.
Jayson Jacoby is editor of the
Baker City Herald.