A4
BAKER CITY
Opinion
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news@bakercityherald.com
Tuesday, October 25, 2022 • Baker City, Oregon
EDITORIAL
Should the
state make a
road user fee
mandatory?
O
regon was the first state with a
gas tax to pay for roads. It was
1 cent a gallon in 1919.
And now the Oregon Department of
Transportation wants Oregon to be one
of the first states to move to a road-user
fee to pay for roads. You would pay for
how many miles you drive.
Gas tax revenue is dropping as cars
and trucks are becoming more fuel effi-
cient and many are electric. Kris Strick-
ler, ODOT’s director, told The Bulletin’s
editorial board recently that by 2029
money to maintain roads and to staff
DMV offices is predicted to fall off a fi-
nancial cliff. ODOT could face a short-
fall in the hundreds of millions.
Strickler says there will be a bill in
the 2023 legislative session to make
the road-user fee program mandatory.
The start date might be put off to build
public awareness and allow the state to
ramp up its program.
This issue has come up in recent leg-
islative sessions with bills that would
have made the program mandatory
for vehicles that average more than 30
miles per gallon.
ODOT’s argument is that they do the
same amount of wear and tear on the
roads as other similar vehicles.
ODOT has an existing voluntary pro-
gram called OReGO.
Participants pay 1.9 cents per mile
that they drive on Oregon roads. One
big concern has been privacy.
A vehicle’s “location information is
never disclosed to anyone but you,”
ODOT says.
It is only used to determine the num-
ber of miles driven on public Oregon
roads.
And participants get a fuel tax credit
for fuel taxes they pay.
More details about the program are
available here, myorego.org.
Tell your legislator what you think
about this possible change.
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.
YOUR VIEWS
Alderson would bring
fresh perspective to the county
We support Shane Alderson for the County
Commissioner position. We’ve had several
meetings with Shane over the past two months.
He is honest about what he doesn’t know, ea-
ger to seek advice from various sources, does
not carry a tired agenda from the past and is
sincerely concerned about the best interests of
Baker County. His time on the City Council
has seasoned him and shown the public that
he is willing to go against the status quo when
it’s smart, necessary, and in the best interests of
those he represents. I’ve thoroughly vetted him
on agriculture, public lands and water issues and
I know that he will represent the local ranching,
mining, and recreation communities strongly.
Don’t throw away a vote for narrowly fo-
cused candidates carrying someone else’s tired,
old agenda. Give your vote to Shane Alderson
and bring some fresh, honest, and independent
solutions to Baker County.
John and Molly Wilson
Baker City
Alderson will work on
behalf of all county residents
I’m writing in support of Shane Alderson for
the position of county commissioner. I first met
Shane more than 25 years ago when I was the
Criminal Investigations Division Sergeant for
the Oregon State Police here in Baker (now re-
tired). One day a young man came in to our of-
fice wanting information about the State Police.
Turns out it was Shane. He introduced himself
and said he wanted to get more information
about law enforcement in Eastern Oregon.
Particularly city, county, state responsibilities
related to jurisdictions. We had a great conver-
sation and I was impressed with the fact that a
young man had taken interest in an area that
he admitted he was unfamiliar with. My recol-
lection of our meeting at the time is that he just
wanted to learn more about law enforcement in
his community.
Fast forward to today. I recently took the op-
portunity, having not spoken with Shane for
many years, to contact him and inquire about
his running for the position of County Chair
and what his goals were for that position. I was
again impressed. His desire to serve the com-
munity and what he had staked out as import-
ant issues that benefited ALL the residents of
our community was appreciated.
Especially gratifying was the fact that his pri-
mary goal, if elected, was to concentrate on so-
liciting information from all county residents to
address everyone’s concerns about the future of
our community. He laid out a number of issues
that he felt were important. He emphasized the
items identified to address are both immedi-
ate and long term. During our conversation he
didn’t engage in platitudes and pat answers for
what he thought I wanted to hear but rather
what he wanted to accomplish. He focused on
the need for facts and evidence which can be
acted upon at the county level. Not engaging in
superfluous issues that can’t be addressed un-
der the authority of the County Commission-
ers. He spoke of the importance of developing
and maintaining good relations with represen-
tatives from local, state and federal authorities
operating within our community and the fact
that those relationships are necessary and need
to be strengthened for the benefit of our com-
munity.
Shane said his goals are to focus on issues
that affect everyone within our county. He
plans to encourage department heads to gather
feedback from the community and forward
that information to him so as to better be able
to have a finger on the pulse of what the com-
munity feels about their government. Shane
expressed his desire is to solicit ideas and solu-
tions from everyone in the county regardless
of differences of opinion, political persuasion,
or ideologies. He recognizes that the issues
and ideologies that make local governing more
difficult than is necessary can be mitigated or
avoided by solicitation of the variety of view-
points and a collaborative effort to address
those problems.
Now, more than any time that I can remem-
ber, the need for clear thinking and collabora-
tive solutions to the myriad problems facing
local governments is an absolute necessity.
Shane’s thoughtfulness and his dedication to
Baker County citizens and the issues we face
now and in the future is an example we should
all support. Please join me in casting your vote
for Shane Alderson for County Commissioner.
Randy Crutcher
Baker City
Hypocrisy in attitude
toward federal government
After reading the Opinion column in the
Oct. 22 edition and the item on the front page,
I came away with a couple of thoughts. Is it a
little hypocritical to voice so much discontent
against the federal government for meddling in
county business, even going so far as to agree to
discuss forming a Constitutional County. Then
be overjoyed to receive a gift from Uncle Sam
of over 6 million dollars to aid with recovery
from COVID-19, which by the way was even
described as a hoax by some. The grant allowed
the county to use the funds for nearly any rea-
son. I suggest there are so many better ways
to use this money than to bail the county out
of land purchases. So many businesses had to
take out loans to stay in business, schools need
to make so many improvements for air quality
and lunchrooms, and clean water, I could go on
and on, but you get the idea.
Secondly, I would like to extend a shout out to
Mr. Rick Meis from Halfway, who has reminded
us all that we should look at the abilities of the
candidate, not his party affiliation when we cast
a vote for those we choose to represent us.
Don Worley
Baker City
Why I’m voting no on
Baker Rural Fire District tax levy
Vote no on the Baker Rural Fire increased
tax levy.
I was a member of this Fire District for sev-
eral years until the board pulled several stunts
to the detriment of the department and District
as a whole.
The present leadership and the majority of
the board have practiced bad management to
the extent that the vast majority of the firefight-
ers have resigned. This department has not
been able to respond to emergencies with qual-
ified personnel for the last several years, and it’s
getting worse! It has reduced the probability of
the city and other departments in the county’s
willingness to respond to emergencies within
this district.
The board has mismanaged the budget by
purchasing dilapidated equipment from ac-
quaintances (tenders) and depleted the budget
enough to now require these additional funds
to operate rewarding mismanagement is not
logical.
The new station that was just purchased is
in a physical location that eliminated several
properties up Salmon Creek to be covered by
the insurance companies, the ISO (insurance
services organization) requires a station within
five miles of the property. This station does
benefit the city fire department, and the district
and is very nice, but do we really need it? And
the additional cost? The newer Chief is now
paid, and has obligated the Baker Rural depart-
ment to all of sudden be required to pay state
PERS.
The department has failed to follow state law
and does not publish or post its budget for the
taxpayers to read or comment on.
These factors along with other examples of
bad management requires additional funds to
keep to the same amateurish path during these
inflationary times.
Please do not enable this department to in-
crease the amount of taxes it misspends. It’s
time to stop this local government’s negligent
behavior!
Addison Johnson
Baker City
COLUMN
Stoking unnecessary fear over COVID variants
BY LISA JARVIS
Some rather alarming headlines
recently circulated about the new-
est members of the omicron fam-
ily. “Nightmare COVID variant,”
read one. “The most immune-eva-
sive COVID variants yet.” Or, as one
would-be pandemic influencer said
in a tweet shared thousands of times:
“MOTHER OF GOD… #COVID
variants worse than CDC has been
admitting.”
Apparently, it’s spooky season for
COVID variants.
Or not. These fear-mongering
headlines and viral all-caps tweets
are counterproductive. They confuse
and mislead the public about the dan-
gers of the new omicron descendants.
Worse, they potentially undermine a
critical message: COVID vaccines still
provide good protection against all of
these variants.
Much of the recent hubbub arose
because the Centers for Disease Con-
trol updated its estimates of circulat-
ing variants, noting that two — BQ.1
and BQ.1.1., both descendants of the
by-now familiar BA.5 — combined
now account for about 11% of infec-
tions in the U.S. That’s up from less
than 1% a month ago. Meanwhile, a
variant called XBB has been making
inroads in Asia.
The reason for the panicked head-
lines is that these new omicron fam-
ily members are capable of “immune
escape” — a phrase that sounds very
scary when taken out of context. It
makes it sound as if the virus has
evolved past our currently available
tools.
In reality, the virus has mutated
in a way that allows it to get around
some of the front lines of our immune
defense system, our neutralizing an-
tibodies. The world has paid a lot of
attention to neutralizing antibodies
over the past two years because they
are easy to measure, and thus became
a proxy for vaccine effectiveness.
But our immune response is far
more nuanced than neutralizing anti-
bodies alone, particularly given how
much of the population has been
both vaccinated and infected with
some earlier form of omicron, says
Jeremy Kamil, virologist and profes-
sor of microbiology and immunology
at Louisiana State University Health
Shreveport. Vaccinated and previ-
ously infected people have other ro-
bust and still-intact lines of defense,
such as memory T-cells and B-cells.
People previously infected also have
additional immune cells that reside in
the respiratory tract.
“I’m not a fan of that word ‘escape.’
I think a better word is ‘erosion,’ ” says
Katelyn Jetelina, author of the popular
newsletter Your Local Epidemiologist.
“This isn’t a binary that the vaccines
will work or not work. In reality, it’s a
spectrum of effectiveness.”
In the end, all of this means that
the new variants popping up might
mean we see more virus transmission
— and more infections. But the shots
still do a good job keeping people safe
from severe infections, hospitaliza-
tions and death.
That important message could
get lost in the mix of panicked head-
lines about variants. That’s particu-
larly dangerous when enthusiasm for
COVID shots is so low — as of early
this month, only 14.8 million people
in the US had received the updated
bivalent shot. That’s less than 7% of
the more than 226 million Americans
who are eligible for the booster.
The other piece of the story that is
too often overlooked is that these new
omicron variants can still be combat-
ted with Pfizer’s antiviral Paxlovid.
The drug targets a part of the virus
that has remained fairly steady even as
the virus has changed, and is shown to
be effective at preventing serious cases
of the disease — particularly in unvac-
cinated and older populations.
However, there is one reason to be
concerned about BQ1, BQ1.1 and
XBB. These new variants threaten to
disarm the last two effective monoclo-
nal antibody therapies, AstraZeneca’s
Evusheld (used to prevent infection)
and Lilly’s bebtelovimab (used to treat
infections). The drugs have been im-
portant tools to protect immunocom-
promised people and others at high
risk of serious disease. Companies are
working on updated antibodies and
the Food and Drug Administration
must continue to speed them through
emergency use authorizations (and
Congress could ensure companies
continue to be incentivized to keep
developing and manufacturing
these drugs by allocating more
COVID funding).
So when do we worry? Those
alarmist headlines might be justified
if an entirely new branch in the SARS-
CoV-2 family tree emerges — one that
pairs the deadliness of delta or beta
variants with the transmissibility of
omicron. That’s not nearly as likely as
a scenario where more omicron-like
variants continue to emerge, but given
the twists and turns this virus has
taken, “We have to remain humble,”
Jelina says.
And in the meantime, Kamil says
that if you’re someone who hasn’t had
either COVID or a booster shot in the
past six months, now would be a good
time to go get one. Based on what
other countries are already seeing, a
winter wave driven by one or several
of these variants is likely to material-
ize. But that will only result in another
wave of deaths if we stop trusting our
still-good defenses.
Lisa Jarvis is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist
covering biotech, health care and the
pharmaceutical industry. Previously, she was
executive editor of Chemical & Engineering
News.