SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, 2021
Baker City, Oregon
A4
Write a letter
news@bakercityherald.com
EDITORIAL
Just get the shot
The potential situation that
prompted Baker County Commis-
sioners on Wednesday, Sept. 22 to
declare a local emergency is indeed
a troubling one.
Imagine a multi-car crash on
Interstate 84 or Highway 7 or
Highway 86, with no paramedics or
ambulances available to respond to
help the injured.
The problem, according to the
commissioners’ declaration, stems
from Gov. Kate Brown’s mandate
that health care workers, including
paramedics and fi rst responders, be
vaccinated against COVID-19 by
Oct. 18.
The declaration contends that
this mandate could prompt enough
health care workers to quit that
there wouldn’t be enough remain-
ing in the county to “provide basic
public health and safety services.”
But this problem, as daunting as
it seems as you read the passages
of the county’s disaster declaration,
has a simple solution.
The affected workers should
get vaccinated.
It’s perplexing, and disappoint-
ing, that so many people who don’t
object to the battery of inoculations
that they — and for those who are
parents, their children — almost
certainly have received, have
declined to protect themselves
and potentially others by taking a
safe and largely effective vaccine
against a virus that has wreaked
havoc on society like no other in
the past century.
But here’s the thing: Although
the county’s emergency declara-
tion, and the wider societal debate,
focus on the vaccine “mandate” as
though it’s an absolute edict, that’s
a misnomer. This crisis atmosphere
is unnecessary because the affected
workers do not face a stark choice
between getting the shot or losing
their job.
The “mandate” gives employ-
ees the option of fi lling out a form
stating that they have a religious
objection. Workers don’t have to
get a note from their pastor; they
just complete the form and give it
to their employer. State guidelines
don’t require the governor or any
other state offi cial to decide wheth-
er exceptions are valid. Unvac-
cinated employees who opt for the
religious exception (or the medical
one, which does require corrobora-
tion from a medical provider) might
have to take additional precautions,
such as wearing an N95 mask at
work. But the vital point is that,
even if they, for specious reasons,
continue to eschew the vaccine, they
can continue to provide the essen-
tial service that the public depends
on, and for which we have great
respect for those who provide it.
Although it’s reasonable for
commissioners to express their
concern about the potential for a
severe shortage in health workers,
commissioners made a major error
by claiming, in their declaration,
that the vaccine mandate would
also leave Saint Alphonsus Medical
Center-Baker City understaffed.
Hospital offi cials said that’s not
accurate, and they asked the county
to delete that reference. Commis-
sioners should have checked with
the hospital before making a claim
that might have scared people un-
necessarily.
Commissioners should instead
emphasize how important it is for
everyone who’s eligible to be vac-
cinated. They note, in the declara-
tion, that the surge in COVID-19
cases is “fi lling our hospitals.” To
acknowledge that fact, but ignore
that vaccination is the best way to
ease the crisis, is irresponsible.
— Jayson Jacoby, Baker City
Herald editor
Your views
Editorial about county road
settlement left out rest of
the story
After reading your editorial
in Saturday’s paper, Sept. 18, I
am disappointed to see so much
disinformation going out to the
public as fact. Just because it
comes from a media source such
as a newspaper does not justify
making false and uninformed
statements such as, “Based
on the limited evidence the
county had that the road across
Longgood’s property was previ-
ously public.” This statement is
ridiculous. The newspaper did
not have any of our information
and they are not a court judge
or jury to make any judgment
call.
The County has an abun-
dance of the history of the
Lookout area that we have
researched and studied for
over 2½ years and the Com-
mission would not have taken
this course of action without
the facts to defend the public
right-of-way.
The County is required to
protect all public access for the
citizens. This is a part of our
jobs. This Commission, as well
as past Commissioners, have
done a good job to do just that.
Having a local paper give such
a one-sided view of a story with-
out all the facts is a disservice to
the public and the local govern-
ment servants, who are trying
the best they can to protect the
public’s rights.
It would be better if the
paper would do as Paul Harvey
always said, “get the rest of the
story.”
William ‘Bill’ Harvey
Baker County Commission
Chairman
Looking forward to a more
enlightened future for U.S.
As summer fades into fall I
see some things unchanged. No
one has taken your guns, no one
has forced you to wear a mask,
you can choose to get vaccinated
or not, history is history no
matter who wishes it untrue, no
voter fraud evidence, and pomp-
ous, rich white men still control
our federal government.
I watch as our local lead-
ers have tossed any thought of
embracing and benefi tting all
of their constituents, instead,
holding on to the hate and divi-
sion infecting their disgruntled
minority of likeminded. I
watch our mayor jump on the
alternative history bandwagon,
attempting to put God into our
Constitution. A sorry attempt
to remove our most important
safeguard, separation of church
and state? As a candidate for
governor I hear her say that
climate change is “not even
on her radar” as I breathe
smoke, watch our local farm-
ers struggle and our reservoirs
evaporate. I watch an angry
minority blame mandates for
failed businesses when they are
guilty (not just presently but
historically) with their denial of
science, Facebook research and
irresponsibility. Their maskless
anti-vax freedoms have spread
this virus so quickly and thickly
that businesses, once able to
survive through adaptation and
adherence to mandates, have
succumbed to the “freedom”
spreaders. Hospitals now choose
who lives and who dies because
of their “freedoms”! Whose
fault? “Who lives and who dies!”
I hear the screams “Medical
freedom!” ”My body my choice!”
and then watch efforts to deny
all women that right? I see
adults? ... endangering their
own children, other children,
all of us, forcing their maskless
freedom on the innocent as they
label the responsible “sheeple.”
To experience such things,
that my sympathy for the
sick and dying anti-vaxers is
strained, leaves me heartbro-
ken.
I saw good things. I watched
a local, anti-everything, free-
dom rally fi zzle into nothing. A
rally in D.C calling to free the
(Trump/Republican encour-
aged) insurrectionists saw
police and press outnumber
the idiots.
I watch the increasing legal
troubles and horrifi c criminal
revelations mount concerning
our former president and dream
of 2045, when the American
white man becomes a minority.
Mike Meyer
Baker City
Putting the forest health problem in perspective
I never realized how big one
acre is until I tried to get across one
that was determined to stop me.
The stubbornness this patch
of ground exhibited might have
impressed me if it hadn’t been so
infuriating.
Even so, I couldn’t suppress a
certain grudging admiration.
I have felt something like this
while watching a toddler in the
throes of a tantrum, a sort of full
body spasm that exudes energy,
wasted though it is.
This particular acre, in the forest
near Blue Canyon, about 10 miles
southwest of Baker City, might be
rather less or more than that stan-
dard unit of measurement.
One acre equates to precisely
43,560 square feet. But I don’t as
a rule bring along a tape measure
when I’m hiking. And the woods are
conspicuously lacking in rulers or
other means of accurate surveying.
But it was a modest piece of
ground, in any case. Yet small
though it is, the place has become
for me the scale by which I mea-
sure a problem that has gotten a
lot of publicity this summer.
The problem is our forests.
They’re ailing.
And they’re burning, which is
not coincidental.
“Our” in this case is appropriate
because I’m referring specifi cally
to publicly owned forests, which
JAYSON
JACOBY
belong to all of us.
That public forests in Oregon
and much of the West are sick, and
often on fi re, is hardly a revelation,
of course.
But in an era of blazes such as
the Bootleg fi re, which was started
by lightning July 6 in Klamath
County and has burned more than
400,000 acres, people naturally
wonder why such expanses are be-
ing charred.
There is no single answer.
But in very many cases one
contributing cause is the condition
of the forests. Their most common
affl iction — one that proves the
aphorism that it’s possible to have
too much of a good thing — is that
there are simply too many trees
growing.
Even rich soil can support only
so many trees before the compe-
tition for nutrients, water and
sunlight is so great that all the
trees grow more slowly than they
would in less crowded circum-
stances. These dense forests are also
vulnerable to insects, diseases and
— almost always the most dramatic
and acute threat — fi re.
There is a considerable degree
of agreement, even among groups
with diverse interests, about the
basic prescription for this predica-
ment.
(There is, however, quite a lot of
divergence, and no small amount of
rancor, when it comes to debating
the details of administering this
remedy.)
Loggers and environmentalists
concur that a combination of cutting
trees, and reintroducing controlled
fi re to limit the amount of combus-
tible stuff on the ground, is key to
restoring forests.
Western forests will remain sus-
ceptible to fi re regardless — particu-
larly as climate change lengthens
the period of highest fi re danger —
but this kind of work has proved to
be effective.
Including, most recently, with
the aforementioned Bootleg fi re, the
biggest blaze in the nation.
Offi cials from the Fremont-
Winema National Forest, through
which the fi re burned, reported
that areas where some trees had
been cut, and prescribed fi res had
been lit — as recently as this spring
— weren’t burned as severely as
adjacent but untreated forests.
Photographs demonstrate the
distinct difference.
This is encouraging.
And yet, as I ponder the tan-
gible benefi ts that the Bootleg fi re
proved, I can’t help but think of that
aforementioned acre.
I’m no forester. But I’ve talked
to many of them over the past 30
years or so, often about this very
topic, and I believe the acre I blun-
dered through fairly represents the
affl iction affecting our forests.
If anything, the condition of that
acre understates the scale of the
task ahead. The forest there isn’t as
dense as areas I’ve walked through
at higher elevations elsewhere on
the Wallowa-Whitman National
Forest. But the young fi rs — either
white or grand, or possibly the
hybrid of the two — were numer-
ous enough to impede my progress
and leave my forearms striped with
white scratches.
Those fi rs pose a two-sided
threat to the ponderosa pines that
also grow there and are, indeed, the
traditional predominant species
on the relatively low-elevation site.
The thickets of fi rs compete with
the pines for sunlight and for water
and nutrients in the soil. They also
can serve as “ladder fuels” — the
combustible path that fl ames can
climb from the ground to the crowns
of the ponderosas.
I have enough experience run-
ning a chain saw to appreciate how
much time, and effort, it would take,
on that single acre, to thin the fi rs,
a necessary step before prescribed
fi res can be ignited to further pare
the fuel load and better protect
those pines.
And then I contemplate what
that acre represents.
The three national forests of
the Blue Mountains — Wallowa-
Whitman, Umatilla and Malheur —
comprise 5.5 million acres.
This is a lot of country.
(And a lot of scratches on my
arms, potentially.)
Not all of those acres either need,
or are open to, the kinds of restora-
tion projects that slowed the Bootleg
fi re.
There is among the three
national forests more than 800,000
acres of wilderness, which is off
limits to logging (prescribed burning
is allowed but is diffi cult due to
limited access).
Nor is sheer acreage the only
way in which this job is monumen-
tal.
The work will cost tens of mil-
lions of dollars.
Some projects likely will be
delayed by legal challenges.
It is in multiple respects a daunt-
ing challenge, the work of many
decades of patience and persistence.
A lot of acres will undoubtedly
burn while we’re at it.
Maybe even that one acre that’s
my nemesis.
Jayson Jacoby is editor of the
Baker City Herald.