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About The Bulletin. (Bend, OR) 1963-current | View Entire Issue (Jan. 11, 2021)
THE BULLETIN • MONDAY, JANUARY 11, 2021 A3 TODAY Today is Monday, Jan. 11, the 11th day of 2021. There are 354 days left in the year. Today’s Highlight in History: On Jan. 11, 2020, health authori- ties in the central Chinese city of Wuhan reported the first death from what had been identified as a new type of coronavirus; the patient was a 61-year-old man who’d been a frequent customer at a food market linked to the majority of cases there. In 1861, Alabama became the fourth state to withdraw from the Union. In 1908, President Theodore Roosevelt proclaimed the Grand Canyon National Monument (it became a national park in 1919). In 1913, the first enclosed se- dan-type automobile, a Hudson, went on display at the 13th National Automobile Show in New York. In 1927, the creation of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was proposed during a dinner of Hollywood luminaries at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. In 1935, aviator Amelia Earhart began an 18-hour trip from Honolulu to Oakland, California, that made her the first person to fly solo across any part of the Pacific Ocean. In 1943, the United States and Britain signed treaties relin- quishing extraterritorial rights in China. In 1964, U.S. Surgeon General Lu- ther Terry issued “Smoking and Health,” a report that concluded that “cigarette smoking contrib- utes substantially to mortality from certain specific diseases and to the overall death rate.” In 1978, two Soviet cosmonauts aboard the Soyuz 27 capsule linked up with the Salyut 6 or- biting space station, where the Soyuz 26 capsule was already docked. In 1989, nine days before leav- ing the White House, President Ronald Reagan bade the nation farewell in a prime-time address, saying of his eight years in office: “We meant to change a nation and instead we changed a world.” In 2001, the Army acknowl- edged that U.S. soldiers killed an “unknown number” of South Korean refugees early in the Korean War at No Gun Ri, but said there was no evidence they were ordered to do so. In 2010, Miep Gies, the Dutch office secretary who defied Nazi occupiers to hide Anne Frank and her family for two years and saved the teenager’s diary, died at age 100. Ten years ago: During a public Mass at St. Odilia Cath- olic Church in Tucson, Arizona, several hundred mourners remembered the victims of the shooting rampage that killed six people and wounded Rep. Ga- brielle Giffords. David Nelson, 74, who co-starred on his parents’ popular TV show “The Adven- tures of Ozzie and Harriet,” died in Los Angeles. Five years ago: Gunmen stormed into a Baghdad mall, killing 18 people; the Islamic State group claimed responsibil- ity. Northern Ireland lawmakers appointed Arlene Foster as the first female leader of their unity government. No. 2 Alabama outlasted No. 1 Clemson in a 45-40 victory in the College Football Playoff championship game. Baseball Hall of Famer Monte Irvin, 96, died in Houston. William A. “Bill” Del Monte, the last survivor of the devastating San Francisco earthquake and fire of 1906, died at a retirement home in nearby Marin County at 109 years old. One year ago: Iran admitted that its military had “uninten- tionally” shot down a Ukrainian jetliner three days earlier, killing all 176 people aboard; the statement blamed “human error” for the shootdown, which took place just hours after Iran launched a barrage of missiles at U.S. forces. Today’s Birthdays: Former Ca- nadian Prime Minister Jean Chré- tien is 87. Actor Mitchell Ryan is 87. Actor Felix Silla is 84. Movie director Joel Zwick is 79. Country singer Naomi Judd is 75. World Golf Hall of Famer Ben Crenshaw is 69. Singer Robert Earl Keen is 65. Actor Phyllis Logan is 65. Musician Vicki Peterson (The Bangles) is 63. Actor Kim Coles is 59. Actor Jason Connery is 58. Former child actor Dawn Lyn (TV: “My Three Sons”) is 58. Rock mu- sician Tom Dumont (No Doubt) is 53. Movie director Malcolm D. Lee is 51. Singer Mary J. Blige is 50. Musician Tom Rowlands (The Chemical Brothers) is 50. Actor Marc Blucas is 49. Actor Amanda Peet is 49. Pop singer Cody Simp- son is 24. — Associated Press STATE & WORLD COVID-19 | Distribution dilemmas Vaccine rollout confirms health officials’ fears “The recurring theme is the lack of a national strategy and the attempt to pass the buck down the line, lower and lower, until the poor people at the receiving end have nobody else that they can send the buck to.” BY MICHELLE R. SMITH AND CANDICE CHOI Associated Press PROVIDENCE, R.I. — Public health officials have sounded the alarm for months, complaining they do not have enough support or money to get COVID-19 vaccines quickly into arms. Now the slower-than-ex- pected start to the largest vaccination effort in U.S. history is proving them right. As they work to ramp up the shots, state and local public health departments across the U.S. cite a vari- ety of obstacles, most notably a lack of leadership from the federal government. Many officials worry they are losing precious time at the height of the pandemic, and the delays could cost lives. States lament a lack of clarity on how many doses they will receive and when. They say more resources should have been devoted to education campaigns to ease concerns among people leery of getting the shots. And although the federal government recently ap- proved $8.7 billion for the vaccine effort, it will take time to reach places that could have used the money months ago to prepare to deliver shots more efficiently. Such complaints have become a common refrain in a nation where public health officials have been left largely on their own to solve complex problems. “The recurring theme is the lack of a national strategy and the attempt to pass the buck down the line, lower and lower, until the poor people at the receiving end have nobody else that they can send the buck to,” said Gianfranco Pezzino, who was the public health officer in Shawnee County, Kansas, until retiring last month. Federal promises Operation Warp Speed, the federal vaccine pro- gram, had promised to distribute enough doses to im- munize 20 million people in the U.S. in December. It missed that target, and as of Friday, about 6.6 million people had received their first shot. About 22 million doses have been delivered to states. The American Hospital Association has estimated that 1.8 million people need to be vaccinated daily from Jan. 1 to May 31 to reach widespread immunity by the summer. The current pace is more than 1 mil- lion people per day below that. President-elect Joe Biden on Friday called the rollout a “travesty,” noting the lack of a national plan to get doses into arms and reiterating his commitment to administer 100 million shots in his first 100 days. He has not shared details and was expected to discuss the effort this week. His office announced a plan to release most doses right away, rather than holding second doses in reserve, the approach taken by the Trump administration. The Trump administration defined its primary role — Gianfranco Pezzino, a recently retired public health official in Kansas needed to deploy a vaccine. The money was not ap- proved until the end of December. Yi-Chin Lee/Houston Chronicle file Houston Health Department nurse Alicia Meza prepares a COVID-19 vaccine dose on Jan. 3. as developing coronavirus vaccines and delivering them to states, which would then take over and ensure that vaccine doses traveled “the last mile” into arms. Each state had to develop its own plan, including is- suing guidelines for who gets vaccinated first. Several health experts complained about that approach, say- ing it led to confusion and a patchwork response. “Let’s just say that I was disappointed how they handled testing, and the vaccine deployment has re- minded me of how disappointed I was when they han- dled testing,” said Dr. Mysheika Roberts, health com- missioner in Columbus, Ohio. ‘Not going to be seamless’ Several public health officials and experts say they believe some of the early glitches are being smoothing out. Marcus Plescia, chief medical officer for the As- sociation of State and Territorial Health Officials, said the slow start should not be surprising given the im- mense scale of the task. “It was not going to be seamless,” he said. Still, Plescia said the federal government could have done more ahead of the rollout — such as releasing billions of dollars earlier to help with staffing, technol- ogy and other operational needs. An ongoing investigation by The Associated Press and Kaiser Health News detailed how state and local health departments have been underfunded for de- cades. Public health officials have warned since the spring that they lacked the staff, money and tools they STATE & WORLD BRIEFING Tatan Syuflana/AP An Indonesian investigator inspects parts of Sriwijaya Air Flight 182, which crashed in the waters off Java Island, on Sunday. Indonesian divers find parts of plane; 62 presumed dead Authorities said they determined the location of the crash site and black boxes of a Boeing 737-500 on Sunday, a day after the aircraft apparently crashed into the Java Sea with 62 people on board shortly after taking off from Indonesia’s capital. Officials believe they identified the location of the flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder. Earlier Sunday, search and rescue operations resulted in parts of the plane being found in the sea at a depth of 75 feet. Rescuers pulled out body parts, pieces of children’s clothing and scraps of metal from the surface. The plane disappeared Saturday afternoon. It was en route from Jakarta to Pontianak, the capital of West Kalimantan prov- ince on Indonesia’s Borneo island, on a flight that was expected to take around 90 minutes. It was still unclear what caused it to crash. There was no sign of survivors. Indonesia, a densely populated island nation, has been plagued by transportation accidents on land, sea and air. The United States banned Indonesian airlines from operating in the country in 2007 but reversed the decision in 2016. Pompeo relaxes U.S. diplomatic rules regarding Taiwan Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced Saturday the State Department is voiding longstanding restrictions on how U.S. dip- lomats and others have contact with their counterparts in Taiwan. China’s state media lashed out Sunday, accusing Pompeo of “seek- ing to maliciously inflict a long-lasting scar on China-U.S. ties.” The Trump administration has sought to strengthen bilateral re- lations with Taiwan. Pompeo said the State Department has created complex restrictions when it comes to contacts between the two parties. He said those actions were taken to appease the Commu- nist regime in Beijing. “No more,” Pompeo declared in a statement. The Chinese government maintains that mainland China and Taiwan are parts of “one China,” though the island is self-governing. Ruptured sprinkler floods new Multnomah courthouse An overhead sprinkler ruptured at the Multnomah County courthouse in downtown Portland early Saturday morning, caus- ing “extensive damage to multiple floors” of the recently com- pleted $324 million building. County officials said a sprinkler head on the seventh floor of the building failed. The building sits at the east edge of the Hawthorne Bridge. The cost of the cleanup isn’t yet known. The courtis ex- pected to reopen Wednesday. The building opened in October. — Bulletin wire reports Vaccine distribution Vaccine distribution involves a long, complex chain of events. Every dose must be tracked. Providers need to know how much staffing they will need. Eligible people must be notified to schedule their shots, given the vaccine’s handling requirements and the need to observe people for 15 minutes after the shot — all while social distancing is observed. It’s difficult to plan too far ahead because the num- ber of doses the state receives can fluctuate. Hospitals cannot give all their workers shots on the same day because of possible side effects and staffing issues. Rhode Island health officials said it can take up to seven days to get doses out to people once they are re- ceived. Officials in several states, including Rhode Is- land, Pennsylvania, Kentucky and New Jersey, said the lack of supply is one of the biggest obstacles to getting more people vaccinated. The federal government has done little to provide information resources that local officials can tailor to their own communities, to address concerns of people such as pregnant women or Black men living in rural areas, said Dr. Michael Osterholm, an infectious dis- ease expert at the University of Minnesota, who is a member of Biden’s COVID-19 advisory board. “You don’t need 50 different states trying to do this kind of work. What you want to have is a smorgas- bord of information sources,” Osterholm said. Some states are getting creative. Oregon held a mass vaccination event at the state fairgrounds with the help of the National Guard. Gov. Kate Brown said it aimed to vaccinate 250 people per hour. New Jersey planned to open six vaccine “megasites” where officials hope more than 2,000 people per day can eventually get their shots. But without a federal plan, such efforts can amount to “throwing spaghetti at a wall to see what sticks,” said Chrissie Juliano of the Big Cities Health Coalition, which represents metropolitan health departments.