A4 BAKER CITY HERALD • SATURDAY, JANUARY 8, 2022
BAKER CITY
Opinion
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Baker City, Oregon
EDITORIAL
Keeping kids
in class, and
on the court
T
he current school year has been
pretty normal for Baker School
District students.
Th ey’ve studied in their class-
rooms.
Th ey’ve played sports and en-
gaged in other extracurricular
activities that are such an integral
part of school.
And although the highly conta-
gious omicron variant of the coro-
navirus poses a potential threat to
the continuation of this refreshingly
typical school year, interruptions
are hardly inevitable.
Mark Witty, Baker Schools
superintendent, had an appropriate
take on the situation. In an inter-
view with the Herald this week,
Witty said that despite a call from
state offi cials for schools to consider
curtailing extracurricular activi-
ties, Baker schools will continue to
operate as they have been so long as
that’s feasible.
Omicron is boosting the number
of cases. But evidence is mounting
that it’s much less virulent than the
delta and earlier variants. And, as
has been true throughout the pan-
demic, the virus poses a minuscule
risk to healthy children.
Witty acknowledged that rising
infections among school staff could
challenge the district’s ability to
keep up a normal schedule. His
advice for reducing the chance of
that happening is wise for all of us
— wear masks in crowded indoor
settings, maintain distance if possi-
ble, and most important, if you feel
ill, stay home. Vaccines also reduce
the likelihood of severe illness.
— Jayson Jacoby,
Baker City Herald editor
OTHER VIEWS
With COVID and hospitalizations,
it’s important to get numbers right
Editorial from The New York Daily
News:
From the very beginning of
the pandemic, when we called
it coronavirus, political leaders
tasked with making moment to
moment decisions to protect pub-
lic health have relied on a steady
stream of data: new infections,
breakthrough cases, variant dom-
inance and tragically, deaths. But
COVID hospitalizations have the
most critical measure in deter-
mining the progress of the dis-
ease and if our health care system
would collapse or not.
Hospitalizations were reported
directly by medical centers and
assumed to imply a certain sever-
ity, making them a proper gauge
of the virus’ fluctuating intensity.
However, these numbers came
with a built-in problem that has
only gotten worse in light of omi-
cron’s staggering transmissibility
and what so far seem like gener-
ally milder infections, particularly
among the vaccinated: hospitals
test everyone who enters their
doors for COVID as a matter of
course, so many people who went
to the hospital for something else
— like a broken bone or a bacte-
rial infection — were tallied with
the COVID cases if they tested
positive after their arrival.
This confusion over what the
numbers really mean is ham-
pering our ability to respond.
Parents are disconcerted over in-
creasing COVID hospitalizations
of children, but a recent CDC
survey of six hospitals in several
states found that, even during
the much deadlier delta wave,
almost a fifth of children “had
incidental positive SARS-CoV-2
test results” that were “unrelated
to the reason for hospitalization.”
This proportion could be much
higher with omicron.
This week, Gov. Kathy Ho-
chul announced that New York
would become the first state to
collect better data by having hos-
pitals report specific numbers for
people admitted due to COVID
complications and for those who
test positive incidentally.
These statistics drive public
policy, and so they should be
carefully collected and shared:
each hospital must follow the
exact same rubric, and the state
should endeavor to make them
public as soon as possible. For
crucial decisions around man-
dates and restrictions, this pri-
mary hospitalization number
will be the clearest metric we
have. It should be weighted ac-
cordingly.
CONTACT YOUR PUBLIC OFFICIALS
President Joe Biden: The White House, 1600 Pennsylvania
Ave., Washington, D.C. 20500; 202-456-1111; to send
comments, go to www.whitehouse.gov.
6730; fax 202-225-5774. La Grande office: 1211 Washington
Ave., La Grande, OR 97850; 541-624-2400, fax, 541-624-
2402; walden.house.gov.
State Rep. Mark Owens (R-Crane): Salem office: 900 Court
St. N.E., H-475, Salem, OR 97301; 503-986-1460. Email: Rep.
MarkOwens@oregonlegislature.gov
U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley: D.C. office: 313 Hart Senate Office
Building, U.S. Senate, Washington, D.C., 20510; 202-224-
3753; fax 202-228-3997. Portland office: One World Trade
Center, 121 S.W. Salmon St. Suite 1250, Portland, OR 97204;
503-326-3386; fax 503-326-2900. Baker City office, 1705
Main St., Suite 504, 541-278-1129; merkley.senate.gov.
Oregon Gov. Kate Brown: 254 State Capitol, Salem, OR
97310; 503-378-3111; www.governor.oregon.gov.
Baker City Hall: 1655 First Street, P.O. Box 650, Baker City,
OR 97814; 541-523-6541; fax 541-524-2049. City Council
meets the second and fourth Tuesdays at 7 p.m. in Council
Chambers. Councilors Lynette Perry, Jason Spriet, Kerry
McQuisten, Shane Alderson, Joanna Dixon, Heather Sells and
Johnny Waggoner Sr. and Dean Guyer.
U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden: D.C. office: 221 Dirksen Senate
Office Building, Washington, D.C., 20510; 202-224-5244;
fax 202-228-2717. La Grande office: 105 Fir St., No. 210,
La Grande, OR 97850; 541-962-7691; fax, 541-963-0885;
wyden.senate.gov.
U.S. Rep. Cliff Bentz (2nd District): D.C. office: 2182
Rayburn Office Building, Washington, D.C., 20515, 202-225-
Oregon State Treasurer Tobias Read: oregon.treasurer@
ost.state.or.us; 350 Winter St. NE, Suite 100, Salem OR 97301-
3896; 503-378-4000.
Oregon Attorney General Ellen F. Rosenblum: Justice
Building, Salem, OR 97301-4096; 503-378-4400.
Oregon Legislature: Legislative documents and
information are available online at www.leg.state.or.us.
State Sen. Lynn Findley (R-Ontario): Salem office: 900
Court St. N.E., S-403, Salem, OR 97301; 503-986-1730. Email:
Sen.LynnFindley@oregonlegislature.gov
Baker City administration: 541-523-6541. Jonathan
Cannon, city manager; Ty Duby, police chief; Sean Lee, fire
chief; Michelle Owen, public works director.
Baker County Commission: Baker County Courthouse
1995 3rd St., Baker City, OR 97814; 541-523-8200. Meets the
first and third Wednesdays at 9 a.m.; Bill Harvey (chair), Mark
Bennett, Bruce Nichols.
Clean energy discussion should include nuclear
O
regon touts itself as a leader in
the campaign to combat cli-
mate change, but I find it diffi-
cult to take the state seriously in what
is, to be sure, a matter of considerable
importance.
I happen to live at an elevation of
3,400 feet, so sea level rise poses little
risk of swamping my modest patch
of ground.
Hundreds of millions of people,
however, have much less dry land
to sacrifice before they must sink or
swim.
But even those of us who reside
at a comfortable altitude above the
sea are hardly immune from the po-
tential effects of a warming Earth.
Drought, for instance, which besides
the obvious dilemma of water short-
ages can also contribute to the prev-
alence of massive wildfires that de-
stroy valuable timber and foul our air
(and lungs) with pollutants.
When I read climate change com-
ments from politicians and agency
officials and the deadly earnest mem-
bers of environmental groups, whose
self-righteousness carries a whiff of
whatever chemical is added to nat-
ural gas, I am struck by their blithe
use of numbers. They generate a bliz-
zard of percentages and timelines for
revamping energy production that
seems to me the product of the end-
less meetings that bureaucrats revel
in rather than a sober recognition of
physical and economic realities.
The announcements are so en-
ticing in their smug certainty about
what the companies that actually
light and heat our homes and busi-
nesses can — indeed, must — do.
Last summer, for instance, the
Oregon Legislature voted to require
the state’s major electric providers,
Portland General Electric and Pacific
Powder, to cut their greenhouse gas
emissions by 80% below baseline lev-
els by 2030, by 90% by 2035 and by
100% by 2040.
Gov. Kate Brown signed the bill
into law in July.
Conspicuously absent in many
public pronouncements about this
sort of legislation is a word that ought
to be at least as prominent as favor-
ites such as solar and wind.
Nuclear.
Like those other sources of “green”
electricity, nuclear power plants do
not release greenhouse gases.
Quite unlike the others, nuclear
plants produce immense quanti-
ties of power reliably and constantly,
their output not subject to the vaga-
ries of weather.
Yet Oregon acts as though fission
doesn’t exist.
Far better, apparently, to deploy so-
lar panels across thousands of acres,
and erect tens of thousands of sky-
scraper height wind turbines, rather
than harness the energy produced by
interactions at the atomic level, col-
lisions so tiny we can never hope to
see them.
Our state’s disdain for this plenti-
ful, safe and climate-friendly source
of power is as archaic as a horse
owner railing about newfangled au-
tomobiles causing stampedes and
buggy pile-ups across the nation.
In 1980 Oregon voters enacted a
moratorium on the construction of
new nuclear plants. There was only
one such plant in the state then —
Portland General Electric’s Trojan
plant, which opened in 1975 near
Rainier. It closed in 1993, despite
producing as much electricity as a
pair of coal-fired plants similar to the
Jayson
Jacoby
one at Boardman, which itself shut
down for good in 2020.
Oregon’s moratorium bans financ-
ing and construction of a new nu-
clear plant until the nation has a per-
manent repository for spent fuel and
voters approve such a plant.
This onerous restriction is not so
much outdated as it is an irrational
overreaction, almost as much today
as it was 42 years ago.
The moratorium was, like so
much else about America’s attitude
toward nuclear power, influenced by
the 1979 partial meltdown of a reac-
tor at the Three Mile Island plant in
Pennsylvania.
Yet that accident — universally ac-
knowledged as the worst for the U.S.
nuclear power industry — is far more
compelling evidence for those who
advocate for nuclear power than for
those who object to it.
The death toll from this “worst”
accident?
Zero.
To suggest that nuclear power is
without risk is, of course, silly.
A nuclear reaction is an incredibly
powerful event — hence its great util-
ity in producing electricity — and its
radioactive byproducts are inimical
to human life.
But humans aren’t well-equipped
to hurtle through the air at 600 mph,
40,000 feet above the ground, either.
And millions of us do so every day,
with a brief bout of jet lag the only
physical malady resulting from the
experience.
The reason is technology.
The analogy is imperfect, certainly,
but it’s indisputable that, just as com-
mercial air travel is notably safer to-
day than it was in 1979, the year of
Three Mile Island, a modern nuclear
reactor is better, which is to say safer,
than those of earlier generations, in-
cluding the one at Three Mile Island.
Although it’s difficult for a technol-
ogy to be much safer when its great-
est disaster killed no one.
The irrational fear of nuclear
power is hardly limited to Oregon.
Just last month an editorial in the
Los Angeles Times supporting the
planned closure of California’s only
operating nuclear plant, while ac-
knowledging the environmental ben-
efits of nuclear power, also employed
illogical comparisons to the 1986
Chernobyl and 2011 Fukushima
nuclear disasters to explain why,
to quote the newspaper’s editorial
board, “there are good reasons to es-
chew nuclear power as a solution.”
Although those two accidents, un-
like Three Mile Island, actually killed
people and released large quantities
of radioactive material, the Times
editorial indulges in noxious exag-
gerations such as claiming that both
Chernobyl and Fukushima “rendered
huge zones uninhabitable and spread
radioactive isotopes across the globe.”
The areas affected by those acci-
dents hardly qualify as “huge” even in
the countries where they happened,
much less the world in general.
And the reference to radioactive
isotopes spreading globally is even
more misleading. The implication,
which is wholly wrong, is that peo-
ple in, say, Oregon are at a higher
risk for cancer due solely to those
two incidents.
Any reference to Chernobyl, in
particular, in a discussion about nu-
clear power in the U.S. is pure pro-
paganda. The crucial differences
between Chernobyl and any nuclear
plant that has ever operated in this
country, or ever would be allowed
to operate, are so numerous and so
blatant that they ought not have es-
caped the attention of, or been ig-
nored by, the editorialists at such
a fine newspaper as the Los Ange-
les Times. But chief among them
is that the Soviet-designed reactor
that exploded at Chernobyl, unlike
all U.S. plants, didn’t have a con-
crete containment structure. This is
roughly akin to building a car with-
out functioning brakes.
Although the hysterical anti-nu-
clear attitude that culminated with
Oregon’s 1980 moratorium contin-
ues, it has not gone completely un-
challenged.
During the past five years, legis-
lators have introduced bills to either
exempt from the moratorium certain
types of small reactors, or to do away
with the moratorium altogether.
None of these efforts has made it
through the Democrat-controlled
Legislature.
Instead, lawmakers should take
the matter back to voters.
I’m loath to predict what Ore-
gonians might do with a subject so
easily infected by claims based on
emotion rather than on science —
the Times editorial being only a re-
cent example.
But such a ballot measure would
at least force voters to confront their
own commitment to fighting cli-
mate change.
Jayson Jacoby is editor of the
Baker City Herald.