SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 2021
Baker City, Oregon
4A
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EDITORIAL
Your views
Access
Restored
B
aker County prevailed in the lawsuit it fi led more
than two years ago to restore public access to a gated
road near Lookout Mountain.
But it wasn’t an inexpensive victory.
The settlement approved Wednesday, Sept. 15 requires
the county to pay $125,000 to Todd Longgood, who owns the
property through which the upper Connor Creek Road runs.
In exchange, the county gained a “permanent undisputed
right of way” for that section of road, which has been blocked
by a gate for about four years.
The county certainly doesn’t want to set a precedent that
encourages landowners to block roads in hopes of getting a
publicly funded windfall.
But based on the limited evidence the county had that
the road across Longgood’s property was previously pub-
lic — and the ample evidence that Longgood’s attorney
amassed showing that the road was built after the property
was transferred from public to private ownership — the
county was not likely to win had the lawsuit gone to trial
this October, as scheduled.
In this case it seems that the only way commissioners
could regain public access on the road was to pay.
This lawsuit — and the pending suit regarding the Pine
Creek Road in the Elkhorns, in which the county is the
defendant rather than the plaintiff — illustrates the need
for the county to have documents and other convincing proof
that roads the public uses are, legally speaking, public.
— Jayson Jacoby, Baker City Herald editor
Release of sewage into
neighborhood an outrage
The Sept. 14 front page of this
newspaper shows the massive
release of sewage on our citizens.
The property owners that caused
this unsanitary, gooey and expen-
sive disaster should be made to
pay for the cleanup and forced to
fi x their property so this never
happens again. The City should
explore all avenues to force these
landowners to stop this mad-
ness; from DEQ complaints, fi nes
and if needed initiating a civil
lawsuit. City taxpayers have
already subsidized this prob-
lem by installing a 2,300-gallon
sewage catch basin. In 2003, this
neighborhood suffered through
the Smith Ditch fl ood which
caused hundreds of thousands
of dollars in damage which was
totally preventable but the local
farmers that benefi ted from this
ditch wouldn’t pay for the neces-
sary upkeep nor police their own
ditch for problems. I ask the city
manager and Council to protect
our citizens from this type of
negligent behavior. No one should
be allowed to spread their sewage
on their neighbors.
Enough is enough.
Jeff Petry
Baker City
How far can government go
to require citizens to act?
There has been a lot of discus-
sion lately about rights. This
discussion has centered mainly
around the COVID virus and
efforts to stem its spread. Rights
have been referred to as political
rights, constitutional rights, God-
given rights or just plain rights.
The most heated rights discus-
sion seems to be concerned with
mandated vaccinations.
To better participate in these
discussions it is helpful to have
a clear understanding of rights,
what they are and how they come
about. If a person lives in com-
plete isolation he (I’m using the
masculine to include all genders
known and yet to be invented)
can do anything he wants to do.
No one is there to object. That
person has an absolute right.
Introduce a neighbor and our
person’s absolute right is no lon-
ger absolute. He has to take into
account his new neighbor’s rights.
Extend this scenario to large cit-
ies and the need for government
with its laws and regulations
becomes readily apparent.
When our founding fathers
enacted and adopted our Con-
stitution, they very quickly also
adopted 10 amendments. These
10 amendments prohibit the
federal government from inter-
fering with certain basic rights of
its citizens. The 14th amendment
extends this prohibition to the
states and the governing entities
within the states. The Supreme
Court is charged with the duty to
decide if a governmental entity
is attempting to do something
which the Constitution prohib-
its it from doing. I believe that
the Supreme Court will soon be
called upon to decide if a gov-
ernmental entity can require
a citizen to allow that entity to
inject a foreign substance into his
body under threat of punishment.
We shall see!
Sig Siefkes
Baker City
Vaccines, freedom, and choosing to be healthy
I
understand why many people
bristle at the notion of the
government telling them to get
a COVID-19 vaccine.
What I don’t understand is
why so many people, for whom
the decision to this point has been
strictly personal, refuse to get the
shot.
These two issues have gotten
mixed up recently into a single —
and singularly nasty — political
debate.
But they’re dramatically dif-
ferent propositions, and it seems
to me that their melding has
obscured the reality of the current
situation, which is that a lot of our
friends and neighbors are getting
sick when they didn’t need to.
The issue of government of-
fi cials requiring inoculations is for
many of us theoretical. These im-
pending “mandates” hardly meet
the defi nition for that word. They
don’t apply to a lot of people. And
many who are ostensibly affected
have either been vaccinated, or
likely will be able to opt out by
claiming a medical or religious
exemption.
I see quite a lot of claims these
days about elected offi cials evis-
cerating some of our fundamental
freedoms, but as regards CO-
VID-19 vaccinations they’re doing
an awfully poor job of cutting.
In Baker County, more than
nine months after vaccines
became available, slightly more
than half of the residents 18 and
older are vaccinated.
The vaccination mandates
that Oregon Gov. Kate Brown and
President Joe Biden announced
might boost that fi gure, but given
their limited range and the ex-
emptions, I don’t expect that the
increase will be signifi cant.
Freedom, of course, is the foun-
dation for America.
Our country is based on the
idea that the rights of the indi-
vidual supersede the regulatory
authority of the government.
How fortunate we are to live in
such a place.
Few people in history, and per-
haps no others, have been given a
greater gift by their forebears.
JAYSON
JACOBY
Americans’ disdain for intru-
sive government — particularly
when the intrusion involves some-
thing as personal as our bodies at
the cellular level — is among our
more distinctive traits.
And an admirable one.
I oppose the state and federal
vaccination mandates not because
I disagree with their goal — in
fact I wholeheartedly support the
effort to get everyone vaccinated
who is eligible and for whom it is
medically safe.
I oppose the mandates because
I think they will, for the most
part, fail.
Moreover, the mandates are
deepening the already chasm-like
divide that the pandemic, and
specifi cally the vaccines, have
gouged into American society.
This, I fear, is a corrosive effect
that, even after the pandemic has
passed into history, will continue
to erode the spirit of selfl essness
and community that is such a
noble aspect of America.
The alternative — truly
compulsory vaccination, forcibly
conducted by the government —
is so antithetical to our country,
and its Constitution, that it’s not
a legitimate option.
But there’s something that
disturbs me quite a lot more than
a governor and a president fl exing
regulatory muscles that might
well turn out to be much more
fl abby than these elected offi cials
seem to believe.
Which is that so many people,
who are and have been utterly
free to decide for ourselves about
being vaccinated, choose to
eschew the option that very likely
would protect them, and perhaps
people they love, from getting
sick.
This has nothing to do with
government.
It has nothing to do with free-
dom, or with mandates.
I didn’t need Brown or Biden
to explain to me why it’s bet-
ter to be healthy than ill. I was
vaccinated as soon as the doses
were offered — the fi rst in March,
the second in April — because I
understand that vaccines are one
of the greater achievements in hu-
man history.
I’m not now, and never have
been, especially worried about
what COVID-19 could do to me.
We know quite a bit about this
illness, including which groups
of people are most likely to get
severely sick or die if they’re
infected.
I’m not in any of those groups.
But I still don’t like to be ill,
even if the symptoms are no
worse than a common cold. I hap-
pen to subscribe to the notion that
the less snot I produce, the better.
Much more important, I don’t
want to be a host for this or any
other virus, don’t want to be the
vector that spreads it to other
people, some of whom, inevitably,
will be much more vulnerable to
its effects than I am.
As I mentioned, I think the
debate about vaccine mandates,
and the facts about the vaccines
themselves and about the virus,
have become intertwined. This is
unfortunate, and confusing.
There is nothing inconsistent
about simultaneously opposing
vaccine mandates and urging
everyone to be vaccinated.
But to focus on the former and
in effect ignore the latter, which
seems to me the situation now, is
largely responsible for the harm-
ful circumstances in which we’re
mired.
The debates about mandates
and freedom and government
overreach are interesting, to be
sure.
Yet even as we kick these
around in a rhetorical sense with
letters and rallies and lawsuits,
it’s the paltry vaccination rates, in
Baker County and elsewhere, that
are mostly responsible for the
crowded hospitals and the pros-
pect that Baker County residents
— those who are sick with CO-
VID-19 and those who have other
medical emergencies — might be
deprived of the level of care they
would otherwise have.
The pandemic and the myriad
topics associated with it can seem
confounding in their complexity.
But there are key questions to
which we have defi nitive answers.
The vaccines, by any reason-
able measure, are effective and
safe. They are not perfect in either
way, of course. No reputable per-
son ever claimed otherwise.
During the current unprec-
edented surge in COVID-19 cases
in Baker County, which started
in late July, only about one in 10
of the people infected was vac-
cinated.
Doctors at Saint Alphonsus
Medical Center-Baker City said
that all of the COVID-19 patients
they’ve treated who had severe
symptoms were unvaccinated.
Statewide, of vaccinated
people who were infected with
COVID-19, just 4.9% have been
hospitalized, and just 0.9% died.
The benefi ts of the vaccines are
beyond dispute.
About 180 million Americans
are fully vaccinated. About 382
million doses have been given.
If the vaccines were causing
severe and widespread health
problems, we would know. Vaccine
experts say — and history shows
— that the rare instances when
a vaccine is actually harmful
are confi rmed quickly, since the
effects typically arise within days,
or even hours, of the inoculation.
Skeptics cite VAERS — the
Vaccine Adverse Effect Report-
ing System, a database started in
1990 by the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention and the
Food and Drug Administration
to help identify problems with
vaccines.
VAERS can be useful. It helped
offi cials confi rm that the Johnson
& Johnson COVID-19 vaccine, in
a tiny fraction of instances, can
cause blood clots. The six cases
that prompted a brief pause in
the use of the vaccine this spring
all occurred within two weeks of
the vaccination; again, there is no
credible evidence that any CO-
VID-19 vaccine is harming people
months after it’s administered.
Those who claim VAERS
proves that COVID-19 vaccines
have severely harmed, or even
killed, thousands of people, are
simply wrong.
VAERS, notwithstanding its
virtues, is in some respects no
more credible than a social media
post.
The main reason is that
anyone can submit a report to the
database; it’s not the exclusive
province of doctors. More to the
point, no expert investigates every
VAERS report, before they’re add-
ed to the database, to determine
whether the “adverse event” was
actually caused by the vaccine, or
even whether it happened at all.
The VAERS website concedes
as much.
“One of the main limitations
of VAERS data is that it cannot
determine if the vaccine caused
the reported adverse event,”
the website states. “This limita-
tion has caused confusion in the
publicly available data from
VAERS WONDER, specifi cally
regarding the number of reported
deaths. There have been instances
where people have misinterpreted
reports of deaths following vac-
cination as deaths caused by the
vaccines; that is not accurate.”
While some people are prof-
fering unproven, and almost
certainly farcical, claims about
vaccines hurting and killing
Americans, others, most of them
unvaccinated, are struggling for
each breath in a hospital. Some
are dying. And these tragedies,
unlike a list of specious reports on
a database, are tangible. We can
see the tears of their loved ones
during interviews, and read their
words of despair and regret.
I dislike the government tell-
ing people to get vaccinated.
But the anger that the vaccine
mandates has provoked would
seem to me much more righteous
if it weren’t being expressed
at the same time that so many
people are suffering needlessly.
Jayson Jacoby is editor of the
Baker City Herald.