A6 THE BULLETIN • FRIDAY, JANUARY 1, 2021
Last call
Continued from A1
We all know what happened
next.
“If you had told me last year
that in a year we’d be out of
business, I wouldn’t have be-
lieved you,” Greg Wales said
near last call Wednesday.
Owners of local restaurants
and gyms who limped through
2020 are increasingly choosing
to close up shop, but some are
reopening and risk hefty state
fines.
Heather and Greg Wales
decided not to openly ignore
Gov. Kate Brown’s pandem-
ic-related business restrictions.
In response to COVID-19,
Oregon counties are now cate-
gorized according to risk with
Deschutes County among the
many considered “extreme.” In
these counties, dining is limited
to outdoor-only and gyms and
indoor entertainment areas are
to remain closed.
Brown on Tuesday an-
nounced Deschutes County
would remain in the “extreme”
set for at least another month.
Wales expected to spend part
of Friday pouring his remain-
ing inventory, about $24,000
of beer, down the literal drain
in the middle of the floor. He
called it his “donation to the
city water department.” A
group of Oregon mayors has
supported defying the governor
by passing resolutions “opening
up” business in their commu-
nities.
Redmond Mayor George En-
dicott acknowledges he doesn’t
have the power to reopen busi-
nesses even if he tried.
“What most people don’t re-
alize is that mayors, we have no
authority here,” he said. “We
have persuasive abilities but in
this case, the governor is the au-
thority, and regardless of how I
personally feel, I cannot direct
people to open up their busi-
nesses. That comes with risk.”
Endicott, 71 and in his 12th
year as mayor, says he talks
to more and more owners
of hospitality and fitness-fo-
cused businesses who’ve cho-
sen to re-open in defiance of
the governor’s orders, though
he declined to identify any.En-
dicott attended Geist’s closing
night, sans facemask. He said
the Beerworks isn’t alone. At
the beginning of 2020, Beccer-
ra’s on 6th Bistro was bringing
fine dining to downtown Red-
mond. Several months into
the pandemic, owners Moises
and Sheila Beccerra pulled up
stakes and ended their busi-
ness.
Endicott said the closures
hurt, especially in light of how
hard officials worked to attract
new business to Redmond fol-
lowing the Great Recession.
“There has to be a balance
between lives and livelihoods,
and I don’t think we’ve found it
yet,” he said. “In some respects,
losing your livelihood is akin
Year in review
Continued from A1
A federal tactical squad sent
to Bend by the U.S. attorney
for Oregon to extricate immi-
gration agents and two detain-
ees whose departure had been
blocked by activists opposed to
Trump’s aggressive policy on
immigration.
A bitter election that swept
Trump out of office — though
he continues to try every ave-
nue to overturn the result.
All that alone would make
for an epic news year. But
dominating everything was
the worst worldwide pandemic
in over 100 years.
So far, COVID-19 has killed
1.8 million around the world,
including more than 345,000
in the United States and nearly
1,500 in Oregon.
A pandemic was not on the
political radar at the start of
2020 In January, the biggest is-
sue in Oregon was the fate of
a carbon cap program in the
Legislature. For the second
time in two years, Democratic
leaders believed they had the
votes to pass a bill, but Re-
publicans walked-out to deny
the two-thirds attendance of
members in each chamber to
establish a quorum to consider
legislation. Brown then issued
an executive order to unilater-
ally start the process.
The number 19 in
COVID-19 designates that it
first appeared in 2019. Late
that year, a mysterious illness
appeared in Wuhan, China. By
January, it had spread through
China and jumped to Europe.
By the end of February, it was
in Oregon. In December, Ant-
arctica became the last conti-
nent to report cases.
The virus changed life im-
mediately. In late winter, offi-
cials talked in terms of weeks
or months. Trump said it
would disappear by April.
Some scientists said it would
die off when the weather
turned warmer in the summer,
much as the seasonal flu did
each year. It’s now spreading
faster than at any time during
the crisis. A new, more easily
spread variation appeared in
Britain and by year’s end was
reported in California and
Colorado.
Oregon’s disaster planning
Challenges
Continued from A1
Those discussions are par-
ticularly important in a com-
munity where the vast majority
of the population — 94.1% in
Deschutes County, according
to the U.S. Census Bureau — is
white, said Jager, now a senior
at Bend High.
“We’re aren’t seeing as much
blatant racism here, so people
aren’t really aware of it happen-
ing,” she said.
Some members of Bend
4 BLM, like Summit High
School student Jace Bracelin,
believe the group symbolizes
Central Oregon’s recent left-
ward political shift.
“I think there’s definitely a
cultural change happening in
Deschutes County, in Bend,”
Bracelin, 17, said. “I think we
are a symptom of that.”
This past summer, separate
from participating in numer-
ous police brutality protests,
the group organized a rally at
the steps of the Bend-La Pine
Marion County Sheriff’s Office/Oregon Capital Insider
Highway 22 East of Salem was shut down in both directions at mile post
13 for search and rescue efforts in the Santiam Canyon area on Sept. 9.
was built around a 9.0 earth-
quake on the Cascadia Sub-
duction Zone off the coast of
Oregon that would send tidal
waves to decimate the coastal
cities, while much of the area
west of the Cascades would be
heavily damaged.
But instead of a cataclys-
mic event that would be over
in minutes but take the state
months to recover from, 2020
brought an undulating long-
term disaster in COVID-19.
By March, the theaters were
closed. No sports events. No
concerts. Eventually, no travel
and no visitors — if possi-
ble. Schools were closed, with
learning going online to mixed
results. The initial outbreak
hopscotched around the state,
only to eventually settle into
a community-spread pattern
that left no corner of the state
untouched. The stay-at-home
order by Brown seemed to
work, with Oregon “bending
the curve” on infection rates
to the point that a phased re-
opening was rolled out.
By July, the curve was bend-
ing back up, only to head
down again in August. The in-
fection rate bottomed out on
a day usually associated with
another time Americans were
unexpectedly killed: Sept. 11,
the date of the 2001 terror-
ist attacks that killed about
3,000 people. But an ominous
new phase began as fall ap-
proached, a steep rise in cases
that only now is showing some
initial signs of slowing. In De-
cember, COVID-19 was kill-
ing the equivalent of the 9/11
attack nearly every day in the
U.S.
The nature of the United
States of America is that
much of the decision-mak-
ing on handling the pandemic
was decided by states, who
took markedly different ap-
proaches. Oregon had some
of the most restrictive rules,
while neighboring Idaho had
some of the least. Oregon’s
approach has resulted in the
fourth lowest infection rate per
capita of the 50 states.
But in a sharply politi-
cally divided nation, the vi-
rus became a political litmus
test. Trump at first dismissed
COVID-19 as a blip of ill-
nesses. Even when the pan-
demic swept across the nation,
Trump did not follow health
experts recommendations to
wear a mask and maintain
physical distance from others.
Many of his supporters did the
same, refusing to wear masks
and opposing closing busi-
nesses and other restrictions.
Trump was infected and
spent a weekend in the hospi-
tal, receiving aggressive treat-
ment with medicines available
to only a handful of people.
Within three days, he was out
of the hospital.
Trump critics who hoped
his serious brush with the vi-
rus would temper his refuse-
nik attitude toward masks, so-
Schools administrative build-
ing in downtown Bend. At
the event, Bend 4 BLM mem-
bers and other local students
and activists, mostly people of
color, asked the school district
for more inclusive curriculum
and teaching practices.
Bend 4 BLM being com-
prised mainly of current
Bend-La Pine students gives
the group a unique perspective
on education, Bracelin said.
“I believe the students in
America hadn’t had the oppor-
tunity to speak out about their
experience,” he said.
This winter, the group
turned its attention to a winter
clothes drive with the Bethle-
hem Inn, along with research-
ing and sharing statistics on
racism and discrimination,
Jager and Bracelin said.
But just because Bend 4
BLM isn’t marching through
downtown Bend this winter
doesn’t mean the group’s fight
against racism is over, Jager
said.
“Just because it’s not as much
in the news anymore, doesn’t
mean it isn’t still going on,” she
said. “We can’t forget to com-
to losing your life.” Activists
promoting reopening are dis-
tinct from right-wing figures
like Redmond’s BJ Soper, who
wants to fully reopen the econ-
omy and also are opposed to
social distancing measures in-
tended to stop the spread of
COVID-19.
Soper refers often to sections
of the the U.S. and Oregon con-
stitutions as a justification. On
Wednesday, he wrote to De-
schutes County Sheriff Shane
Nelson and the Deschutes
County Commission saying the
state was at a “crossroads.”
“The governor is not an all
powerful queen issuing com-
mands over subjects,” he wrote
to The Bulletin. “She has no
authority to tell any individual
how to think or act.”
It’s not an opinion shared
by Endicott or Brown, who
on Thursday issued a forceful
statement chastising local pol-
iticians attempting to subvert
pandemic-related health and
safety measures, calling them
“irresponsible.”
“Undoubtedly, those same
local elected officials who are
encouraging businesses to fully
reopen and flagrantly disre-
gard public health are unlikely
to have the backs of businesses
when faced with fines and pen-
alties, nor are they likely to be
willing to be held responsible
for the public health impacts
their actions create,” Brown
said.
To business owners consid-
ering re-opening in defiance
of the law, Brown said she’d di-
rected “all available resources”
to aid enforcement by Oregon
Occupational Safety and Health
and the Oregon Liquor Control
Commission.
“I expect enforcement agen-
cies to continue to use an edu-
cation first approach, but Or-
egonians need to understand
that these rules are enforceable
under law,” she said. “For busi-
nesses that refuse to comply,
cial distancing and lockdown
were quickly disappointed.
Returning from the hospi-
tal, Trump went to a balcony
in the White House and dra-
matically took off his mask.
He appeared in a video telling
Americans not to let the virus
dominate their lives. He op-
posed vote-by-mail, a stance
that led to voters standing in
long lines on election day in
some states hardest hit by the
pandemic.
Trump’s doubts fed and
echoed feelings among a large
swath of Americans who felt
the cure was worse than the
disease. Oregon’s relative suc-
cess in limiting the infection
rate of the virus came with
a cost. The on-and-off shut-
downs of businesses and ac-
tivities to control spikes of
COVID-19 crippled small
businesses while an estimated
400,000 lost their jobs.
While the employment situ-
ation improved in the second
half of the year, it is showing
signs of another downturn as
federal aid cuts have more em-
ployers shedding workers. The
state’s antique Employment
Department computer sys-
tem couldn’t keep up, leaving
jobless Oregonians without
benefits for more than eight
months. The department is
still playing catch-up on the
avalanche of claims.
It’s been 10 months since
the virus appeared in Oregon
and there is widespread “quar-
antine fatigue.” For some, that
means stretching the bound-
aries of their isolation to in-
clude more visits with friends
and family. A more strident
form has individual businesses
and sometimes whole cities
or counties saying they won’t
obey the rules anymore.
Protests of COVID-19 re-
strictions have grown and
combined with Trump’s un-
substantiated claims of fraud
in the election of Joe Biden to
fuel increasingly aggressive
demonstrations. The Capi-
tol in Salem has been closed
during the pandemic, leading
to protests in the plaza outside
that at times have required po-
lice response. But the events
took an especially aggressive
turn on Dec. 21 during the
Legislature’s special session.
Protestors tried to force
their way into the Capitol to
demand to be allowed into
the galleries of the House and
Senate. State and local police
in riot gear were able to stop
the advance just inside a side
door that led to the rotunda. A
few protestors then smashed
some of the glass doors at the
entrance.
Even news of the possible
end of the pandemic turned
sour. Two vaccines were re-
leased in December. Health
workers and elderly people in
long term care facilities started
receiving the first of a two-shot
inoculation. Oregon has given
first shots to about 40,000 peo-
ple. But logistical bottlenecks
being experienced by many
states has Oregon well below
its original goal of having given
100,000 first shots by the end
of 2020. At the current pace,
Polls show that 70% of the ap-
proximately 250 million adult
Americans want to be vacci-
nated. But at the current rate,
most won’t have their turn to
get the needle until summer, or
perhaps even autumn.
Meanwhile, the virus re-
mains. The third wave of virus
is setting records for infections
and deaths, with a further
spike caused by Christmas
bat racism.”
e e
Reporter: 541-617-7854,
jhogan@bendbulletin.com
OSHA and OLCC staff are em-
powered to take administrative
action, including issuing cita-
tions, fines, and Red Warning
Notices if necessary.”
An Army vet, Greg Wales’
passion for beer making was lit
while he was stationed in Ger-
many. He and his wife, a former
special education teacher, chose
Redmond after researching ar-
eas with both good schools and
a thriving beer culture.
Wales, 55, said he never
considered flouting the gov-
ernor’s rules, in part because
black marks on his liquor li-
censes would follow him to any
state in the country should he
choose to try to make it some-
where else.
“We’re going out peacefully,”
he said. “Oregon, we love you.
Hopefully someday, we can
come back, but right now we
need to make a living and pro-
vide for our children.”
e e
Reporter: 541-383-0325,
gandrews@bendbulletin.com
season travel unknown until
mid-January. Oregon has one
of the lowest number of in-
tensive care unit beds per cap-
ita in the United States. Some
regions have sporadically re-
ported having no ICU beds
available on a given day.
Most people on the planet
are glad that 2020 is over. But
the calendar is a creation of
humans. Time flows past ar-
tificial breaks of days, months
and years. The vaccine’s ar-
rival in less than a year was in-
credible news. But the overall
flow of good or bad still leans
to the latter. Pessimists know
that those who have repeatedly
thought throughout 2020 that
things couldn’t get worse have
been proven repeatedly wrong.
Several cities in Oregon
have announced an open re-
bellion against closures of
restaurants and shops. The
new Congress and new Legis-
lature will face daunting tasks,
not the least of which is to
figure out how to meet with-
out infecting everyone with
COVID-19.
So, welcome 2021. It should
be easy to improve on your
predecessor. But we’ll all wait
for the proof.
e e
gwarner@eomediagroup.com
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