A4 BAKER CITY HERALD • THURSDAY, APRIL 21, 2022
BAKER CITY
Opinion
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Baker City, Oregon
EDITORIAL
Poaching wolves
not helping
I
f anyone wanted to help out the animal
rights crowd in its efforts to reinstate fed-
eral Endangered Species Act protection to
all wolves, all he would have to do is randomly
kill the predators.
Since wolves were reintroduced into parts of
the West, animal rights activists have been holler-
ing that, unless wolves are fully protected under
the ESA, they could be indiscriminately killed.
In a few parts of Eastern Oregon, that ap-
pears to be happening. In the past two years,
eight wolves were poisoned and seven were
shot and killed.
This was not someone protecting himself or
his livestock. This was someone poaching and
breaking the law.
Animal rights and environmental groups are
pushing right now trying to convince the fed-
eral government to reinstate ESA protections
for wolves in the Northern Rockies. Just last
week, we published a column by two mem-
bers of the U.S. Senate making the case for state
management of wolves in Idaho and Montana.
The senators are 100% correct. Idaho, Mon-
tana and other states where wolves have been
imposed on ranchers and others have done
their best. Reinstating federal protections
would take management decisions out of the
states’ hands.
If you think there are problems with wolves
now, wait until management decisions are re-
turned to the hands of federal bureaucrats in
Washington, D.C.
No one has been more vociferous than the
Baker City Herald’s sister paper, Capital Press,
in criticizing how the reintroduction of wolves
has been managed. Time and again, we have
stood up and pointed out the shortcomings of
federal wildlife managers and the unfairness
their actions have inflicted on ranchers, whose
livelihoods depend on their ability to raise cattle
and sheep.
The basis of those criticisms was that wolves
have been allowed to run roughshod through
portions of the rural West, attacking cattle,
sheep, wildlife and other animals such as work-
ing dogs. Capital Press argued that ranchers
also were the victims but were willing to follow
the law.
Ranchers have worked hard to use non-le-
thal means of separating wolves from cattle
and sheep.
But all of that is for naught when irresponsi-
ble parties take the law into their own hands.
It accomplishes nothing — except to put
law-abiding ranchers on the defensive.
We are unimpressed by how federal wild-
life managers have done their jobs managing
wolves. From the beginning, they needed to do
more to keep wolves away from livestock.
But we are 100% opposed to illegally poach-
ing wolves.
Doing that only gives the animal rights ac-
tivists more ammunition in the court of law
— and the court of public opinion — to criti-
cize ranchers.
Stop the poaching. It only makes matters
worse.
Unsigned editorials are the opinion of the
Baker City Herald. Columns, letters and cartoons
on this page express the opinions of the authors
and not necessarily that of the Baker City Herald.
COLUMN
China and the folly of zero-COVID
BY DRS. CORY FRANKLIN AND
ROBERT A. WEINSTEIN
From the outset, mystery has shrouded
the COVID-19 pandemic in China. The
origin of the virus remains unknown, im-
portant Chinese journalists and key scien-
tists have been muted, and case and death
totals reported by China’s government have
been unbelievably low — the United States
and most of Western Europe have reported
500 to 1,000 times as many per capita
deaths as China.
There are several theories on the reason
for the low numbers coming out of China:
poor reporting, deliberate or otherwise; a
population with immunity, either natural
or acquired through previous coronavirus
infections; or the Chinese government’s
efforts to reach zero COVID-19 infections
through mass testing, lockdowns, quar-
antine and contact tracing. China is the
last major country attempting to eliminate
COVID-19; other countries have tried
with disappointing, and in some cases di-
sastrous, results.
But now the Chinese zero-COVID-19
policy has been put to the test by the highly
infectious omicron variant and subvariant.
The focal point is the tight government
lockdown in China’s largest city, Shanghai.
Reports emanating from Shanghai are har-
rowing. People are prevented from leav-
ing their homes for any reason — they are
dependent on the government to deliver
medications, food and water. Parents who
test positive are sent to isolation centers,
separated from their children. Cats and
dogs left homeless when their owners are
sent away are being killed by public health
authorities. Businesses are closing, and
there are reports of people scavenging food
and committing suicide.
According to the BBC, centralized “iso-
lation facilities — many using only camp
beds, with no showers or other facilities —
are bursting with infected people squashed
in next to one another. One of China’s few
reliable media outlets, Caixin, has reported
that close contacts of infected people will
be moved to neighbouring provinces.
This could potentially involve hundreds of
thousands of Shanghai residents.”
Even with these measures, Shanghai is
reporting more than 10,000 new cases per
day, and things may worsen because Chi-
na’s vaccine, a non-mRNA one, appears to
be less effective than Western vaccines.
While China clings to its zero-COVID-19
approach, other countries have aban-
doned it in the face of the omicron surge.
South Korea, which was praised interna-
tionally for its control measures after an
initial surge, was overwhelmed by omi-
cron and now ranks eighth in worldwide
cases, a higher per capita case rate than
the U.S. New Zealand, an island country,
that as of February had recorded fewer
than 30,000 cases over the first two years
of the pandemic, now has seen 800,000
cases total. Hong Kong, with only 200 to-
tal deaths during the pandemic at the be-
ginning of the year, had the highest per
capita death rate in the world in March.
Why has a zero-COVID-19 policy proved
unattainable? Control of COVID-19 poses
different problems from previous epidem-
ics. The virus is evolving and mutating
at a surprisingly rapid rate, and the cur-
rent variants present a greater risk of per-
son-to-person transmission. But the real
sticking point has been extensive trans-
mission in the community by infected
people who are asymptomatic.
This feature of COVID-19 has compli-
cated the pandemic from the beginning.
It makes it problematic to know whom to
test and whom to isolate.
Contact tracing, a basic public health
tool used successfully for previous com-
municable diseases — especially those
sexually transmitted — is basically impos-
sible. Contact tracing works when symp-
tomatic patients seek care, enter the pub-
lic health surveillance tracking system and
identify their contacts. Those exposed to
contagious individuals are then located
and advised about quarantine, testing
and treatment options. But millions of
dollars and a lot of personnel have been
ineffective in tracing COVID-19 when
asymptomatic patients are unaware they
should be tested or fail to report a positive
if they test at home. The contacts of those
infected are often unknown, especially
when the virus is spread in crowded in-
door locations.
South Korea employed the most exten-
sive contact tracing system in the world
but abandoned it recently in the face of
the omicron surge. Jang Young-ook, a re-
searcher at the Korea Institute for Inter-
national Economic Policy studying pan-
demic response policies around the world,
said, “The size of the surge Korea is seeing
now renders contact tracing almost point-
less. That makes collecting personal infor-
mation with QR (computerized personal)
codes kind of unjustified.”
This is basically an admission that zero
COVID-19 is a pipe dream, a lesson the
residents of Shanghai are learning the
hard way.
When the definitive history is written
about the COVID-19 pandemic of the
early 2020s, an essential chapter will be
the futile quest for zero COVID-19. It will
be symbolized by a drone hovering over
deserted Shanghai streets, blaring the dis-
heartening epitaph for zero COVID-19
that China has been broadcasting to its
people: “Please comply with COVID re-
strictions. Control your soul’s desire for
freedom. Do not open the window or sing.”
do this project, no tax dollars will be in-
volved. This project can make it safer for
our schoolchildren, that’s why the school
district has donated $25,000. It will also
help with property values. There have been
plenty of “small interest groups” that have
done wonderful things in our little city.
Look at the Sports Complex, Wade Wil-
liams Field and the parkway beside the
river. All of these were done without a vote
of the people.
If my letter hasn’t changed anyone’s
mind, I invite you to go to the south end of
4th Street, get out of your car, and hear for
yourself how loud these whistles are. You
won’t have to wait long for a train to be by.
The city council already has plenty to
do; the ambulance problem, changing 10th
Street, Cedar Street, and Hughes Lane
are just a few of the items already before
the council.
The fact that our mayor is running for
governor with Joanna Dixon as her trea-
surer sounds to me like a conflict of inter-
est. They have been to “every county in Or-
egon,” and been present at many meetings,
all while running the business of Baker City.
They even had a meeting at the Elks Club
where they had to call the police to escort
some people out who were not abiding by
Mayor McQuisten’s rules.
I am not a member of the group of in-
dividuals working on this project, but I do
live by the railroad tracks and a crossing.
I can tell you how many trains go by, day
and night.
Larry Smith
Baker City
Dr. Cory Franklin is a retired intensive
care physician. Dr. Robert A. Weinstein
is an infectious disease specialist at Rush
University Medical Center.
YOUR VIEWS
Why is the Baker City Council
reversing course on whistles?
How can the “City Council” change a
previous vote, just because they have a
new council member? If that is the case,
the council should be able to go back and
change all the decisions the council has
made, after getting a new member. How
can the “City” attorney change the city
charter for such a small motion as the one
to stop the train whistles? Why Joanna
Dixon and Mayor McQuisten think they
need to change the City Charter is beyond
me! It reeks of an ethics violation to me!
If the rules don’t favor the way the mayor
thinks, why not change the rules? The
“stop the train whistles” group has already
come up with almost half of the funds to
OTHER VIEWS
World must continue to support Ukraine
Editorial from The New York
Daily News:
If a shrewd Kremlin military ana-
lyst had drawn up a list of objectives
for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the
reality of this horrific misadventure
is more or less the photo negative of
that. Rather than a quick and decisive
march to Kyiv, the Russian military
has alternately been bogged down
and repelled, received nothing but
anger and derision from the locals,
sustained heavy losses and lost a crop
of high-ranking officers. Meantime,
the West’s tightening vise around the
Russian economy has made things
increasingly hard on Vladimir Putin’s
regime domestically.
In the latest incredible turn of
events, last week the Russian flagship
Moskva was sunk by Ukrainian mis-
siles. The ship was not only a warship
but a symbol of its naval strength,
featuring prominently in 2014’s an-
nexation of Crimea. It won’t be par-
ticipating in any more unprovoked
invasions from the bottom of the
Black Sea.
Unfortunately, rather than tak-
ing their massive setbacks and ca-
sualties as a sign that his campaign
is doomed to fail, Putin’s forces re-
sponded with heavy-handed retali-
ation. Evidence of war crimes con-
tinues to mount as international
investigators find proof of abduc-
tions, rapes, strikes on civilian in-
frastructure and the use of banned
munitions. Following Russia’s with-
drawal from the area around Kyiv,
more than 900 civilians have been
found dead.
At this pivotal juncture, the inter-
national community must continue
supporting the Ukrainian defense,
including with robust weapons and
supply shipments. Russia’s dark and
indistinct warnings about the con-
sequences — the CIA director, while
cautioning that he’s seen no “practi-
cal evidence” suggesting such an at-
tack is imminent, says America can’t
take lightly the possibility of Putin
using “tactical” or “low-yield” nu-
clear weapons in Ukraine — should
only stiffen our spines.
Putin’s attack had the base objec-
tive of weakening NATO. On that
front, like all others, he has failed
miserably, as Sweden and Finland
are moving to join the defense pact.
The despot can make all the noise he
wants about his nuclear weapons ar-
senal. The rest of the world sees that
he must be contained.