A8 The BulleTin • Wednesday, May 19, 2021
EDITORIALS & OPINIONS
AN INDEPENDENT NEWSPAPER
Heidi Wright
Gerry O’Brien
Richard Coe
Publisher
Editor
Editorial Page Editor
Bill could open
more housing
O
wning a home can be a “we made it” moment for
families. It’s a space for them to call their own. It can
create stability. It can help a family create wealth. It can
help strengthen a community.
But in Central Oregon and across
the state, what can be missing are
starter homes for first-time buyers.
State Sens. Tim Knopp, R-Bend, and
Lou Frederick, D-Portland, joined
together as chief sponsors on a bill to
make that easier: Senate Bill 458. The
bill was also sponsored by state Reps.
Jason Kropf, D-Bend, and Jack Zika,
R-Redmond.
The bill will provide more oppor-
tunities to build what’s called middle
housing — such as duplexes.
Oregon already took a big step in
that direction in 2019 with House
Bill 2001. It allowed middle housing
in neighborhoods that were previ-
ously restricted to single family-de-
tached homes. That wasn’t greeted
with welcome everywhere. People
worried it would mean the character
of neighborhoods would be upended
with more housing. Some people
don’t want greater density. But Ore-
gon does have a problem with hous-
ing supply. And as Knopp has said:
“The best way to bring down the cost
of housing is to increase the stock of
housing built at affordable cost.”
SB 458 was introduced at the re-
quest of Habitat for Humanity. It
takes HB 2001 a step further. It al-
lows lots to be created for new mid-
dle housing units as long as they
meet the local development code on
the parent lot. It essentially reduces
the regulatory barriers to selling
both units of a duplex as two indi-
vidual homes when the real property
was not previously subdivided or
partitioned.
This bill has its detractors, as well.
The reasons are similar to those
brought against HB 2001. But if you
believe owning a home is a good
thing for Oregonians and if you be-
lieve Oregon must do more to ensure
more people can own homes, this bill
helps get Oregon there. And it’s not
every day you see Knopp and Freder-
ick — usually on different ends of the
partisan spectrum — take the joint
lead on a bill.
The bill has passed both houses
of the Legislature and its next stop is
Gov. Kate Brown’s desk.
Oregon Lottery likely
to seek more money
I
f playing the lottery is your thing,
you could soon get one more
chance a week. The Oregon Lot-
tery Commission will soon be voting
whether to allow an additional Pow-
erball drawing.
It’s almost certain that the commis-
sion will do it. It doesn’t set the rules
for Powerball. It participates in Pow-
erball along with other states. And
the “Powerball Product Group” has
approved an additional drawing on
Monday to accompany the current
drawings on Wednesday and Satur-
day. If Oregon wants to keep selling
Powerball tickets, it needs to allow the
additional drawing.
What will the change mean? The
states selling Powerball tickets are not
benevolently trying to create more
winners. They hope it will mean
more sales of tickets and more rev-
enue over time. Staff of the Oregon
Lottery project increased Powerball
ticket sales will mean about a 5% in-
crease in sales in Oregon.
More drawings can mean more ex-
citement. Lottery operators hope you
buy the fantasy: Never work again.
More millions than you could ever
need. Raining cash down to help your
family, your friends, your favorite
causes.
The reality is your chances are
pretty awful. The probability of win-
ning the Powerball grand prize is 1
in 292,201,338. Winning $4 is much
easier at 1 in 38.
If you have the money to lose,
Powerball can be fun. It’s also like a
voluntary tax. Since 1992, Powerball
has generated between $10 million to
$20 million per fiscal year in Oregon
for things like education, state parks
and services for veterans.
The breakdown for 2020 in Ore-
gon was:
Gross sales: $31,196,079
Prizes: $15,589,343 (50% of gross)
State transfer: $10,615,363 (34% of
gross)
Retailer commissions: $2,472,882
(sales) and $115,176 (prize)
The gross sales figures in 2020
were about half what they were in
2018.
If you buy Powerball tickets think-
ing it’s the answer to bring you long-
term happiness, you are likely to win
disappointment. Think of it more as
buying a fleeting dream that also goes
to some good causes.
Editorials reflect the views of The Bulletin’s editorial board, Publisher Heidi Wright, Editor
Gerry O’Brien and Editorial Page Editor Richard Coe. They are written by Richard Coe.
Vaccines, not masks, are the solution
BY MONICA GANDHI
Special to The Washington Post
W
hen the Centers for Dis-
ease Control and Preven-
tion called for universal
mask-wearing to prevent the spread of
the coronavirus in April 2020, much of
America took heed. And by doing so,
we helped slow the spread of a disease
that has taken the lives of more than
3.4 million people globally, including
more than 580,000 in the United States.
Now, it’s time for us to listen to the
CDC again. In declaring last week that
most vaccinated people don’t need to
wear masks, the agency leaned on solid
science that shows the vaccines are
working — not only to protect the per-
son who got the shot but also the peo-
ple around them.
I am keenly aware of the protective
value of masks. I was among the first
to publish a scientific brief on the im-
portance of universal face-masking
for the U.S. public. Since then, I have
published many papers with others
promoting masks as a way to not only
slow the spread of the virus but poten-
tially even reduce the amount of virus
the wearer is exposed to and reduce the
severity of disease if contracted. Based
in part on our work, the CDC revised
its guidance in November to conclude
that masks don’t just protect others
but also protect the person wearing
them. Our research also contributed to
CDC guidelines early this year that the
fit and filtration abilities of the mask
make a difference in blocking viral par-
ticles, leading many Americans to start
double-masking.
I am a believer in the power of
masks. But the vaccines are even more
powerful, according to a growing body
of research — not just in clinical tri-
als but in the real world. Study after
study has demonstrated that they pre-
vent severe disease and infection at
astounding rates. Vaccines prevented
COVID-19 hospitalization among
adults 65 and older by 94%, prevented
symptomatic infection among health
care workers in Israel by 97% and
blocked severe COVID-19 disease by
97.4% in Qatar, even when the major-
ity of circulating virus was from vari-
ants of concern, according to studies
cited by the CDC the day it released
its new mask guidance. Studies also
found that serious breakthrough in-
fections among vaccinated individuals
are extremely rare. Of over 115 million
Americans vaccinated, only 0.0009%
have had severe COVID-19 after vac-
cination, despite the virus continuing
to circulate in their communities. Vac-
cines truly defang the virus.
We now have ample data to show
that the vaccines also block transmis-
sion. The ability of this virus to trans-
mit from individuals who are infected
but do not show symptoms (asymp-
tomatic) has been the reason it was
previously so difficult to contain. But
studies at this point show us that vac-
cines massively reduce asymptomatic
infection.
When the CDC rolled out its most
recent recommendations on masks
last week and President Joe Biden fi-
nally told us, “we’ll smile again, and
now see one another’s smiles,” I, along
with many others, agreed that this was
a wonderful, data-driven, science-ac-
knowledging day. But others who had
hailed the initial recommendation
in 2020 to wear face coverings by the
CDC as scientifically sound reacted to
the new guidance with trepidation and
surprise.
But there is harm in rejecting this
science and the recommendations of
a famously cautious CDC. Masks, dis-
tancing and ventilation are mitigation
strategies; vaccines are the solution. We
don’t need to mitigate the impact of
the virus by other interventions if we
can suppress it through immunization
instead.
My biggest concern about failing
to embrace the science at this point is
that it could prevent the return of full
in-person school. The science tells us
that, on our current trajectory, it’s pos-
sible to get all children back to school
in person by the fall — free of masks,
regular testing, social distancing or
fear. That is not only because adoles-
cents are now approved for the vaccine
and a vaccine for the very young could
be available by then. With fewer people
infected, the probability of any unvac-
cinated people being exposed to the vi-
rus will become vanishingly small.
But science cannot always overcome
fear, as we have seen in California,
where more than half of students re-
main in distance learning even though
it is the state with the lowest case rates
of the novel coronavirus, which can
cause the illness COVID-19, in the
nation and among the states with the
highest vaccine uptake. Many groups,
including the American Federation of
Teachers, recognize the need for reg-
ular school to resume nationally. If we
let fear dominate our narrative now,
the fate of schools in the fall will re-
main in the balance.
e e
Monica Gandhi, an infectious-diseases specialist,
is a professor of medicine at the University of
California, San Francisco.
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Why carbon is so important when talking about climate change
BY BRENDA PACE
e e
Editor’s note: This is the first in a series of four
columns over the next two months on climate
change and potential legislation that may give
readers information they can take action on in the
effort to meet carbon emission reduction goals.
T
he news reports have been
shocking to watch. More and
stronger hurricanes and torna-
does threatening the destruction and
flooding in the East and fires destroying
communities in the West.
Climate refugees are not just in for-
eign countries but in the United States
with people leaving California and east-
ern coastal areas. Many Oregonians are
still living in temporary housing after
last year’s fires.
If you fish, farm or fight fires, you see
the evidence firsthand. To cope with
skyrocketing costs, insurance compa-
nies and federal disaster agencies are
just beginning to adjust to these threats
with substantial changes in premiums
and funding.
We all pay taxes and buy insurance,
right? We presume climate change is in-
volved, but how does it work and what
has carbon got to do with it?
Scientists have been studying the
history of the Earth in many different
ways — from changing flora and fauna
to changing geography and geology.
They’ve learned from chemistry, fossils,
ice cores, corals, ocean sediments, RNA
and DNA. They’ve extracted, reverse
engineered, used spectrometers and la-
sers to look at specimens and into the
earth. One of the spectacular discover-
ies that has resulted from all this work is
the relationship of carbon dioxide and
temperature.
The National Climatic Data Center
at the National Oceanic and Atmo-
spheric Administration has graphed the
last 800,000 years of this relationship.
There have been nine major peaks of
both carbon and temperature and nine
valleys. The correlation over this period
is positive and linear but variable. Vari-
ability depends upon interrelationships
between numerous Earth characteristics
such as the distance of Earth in its orbit
around the sun, volcanic activity, cloud
formation, Earth’s surface conditions
and more, all of which can create feed-
back loops that accentuate or slow tem-
perature’s reaction to carbon. But the
basic relationship is that temperature
and CO2 escalate in tandem.
Though the Earth’s temperature has
gone up and down over the eons by as
GUEST COLUMN
Pace
much as 14 to 15 degrees Celsius, these
changes occurred over many thou-
sands of years. As a simple observation,
each peak in NOAA’s graph required
90,000 years on average. From the last
valley some 20,000 years ago, Earth has
heated some 11 degrees Celsius— or
about .055 of a degree each century.
But in the last 100 years, our tem-
perature has increased a full degree,
and about 80% of that has occurred
since 1980. Quoting NOAA again, the
10 warmest years on record occurred
since 2005.
Similarly, carbon dioxide in the at-
mosphere increased about 236 parts
per million in the last 20,000 years to
about 416 ppm, according to NOAA’s
direct measurement this year. Over the
eons the carbon level in the atmosphere
had never exceeded 300 ppm until
1950. These last 70 years have seen car-
bon increase 39%.
Carbon dioxide is the dominant
gas in the atmosphere contributing to
higher temperatures, but methane and
nitrous oxide are more powerful green-
house gases and so also a part of the
process.
The greenhouse gas title was earned
because all three interfere with the
transmission of heat accumulated on
the Earth’s surface. When the sun’s heat
enters the atmosphere, it does so as
visible light, and greenhouse gases do
not interact with it. When heat tries
to bounce back into space, however, it
becomes infrared energy, which green-
house gas molecules absorb and retain.
A more complete description com-
posed by Sarah Fecht is at Earth Insti-
tute, Columbia University, dated Feb.
25, 2021.
The effects on Earth of climate
change can be seen throughout the sys-
tems that support life on Earth. But we
can talk about it locally as well. Melting
of ice sheets can raise water levels at the
coast. These higher coastlines can exac-
erbate floods from earthquakes and tsu-
namis, which can send Oregon coastal
refugees over the mountain to us.
Here in Central Oregon, the melting
of our mountain glaciers has been well
documented. Reduced snowpack has
affected available water for virtually ev-
erything: habitat, fish, wells, farmers.
Early melting of whatever snowpack
exists means that reservoirs cannot fill
or even retain enough water through
the season for irrigation and recreation.
Drying forests mean more and hotter
fires. Reduced soil moisture can change
the biota of the soil such that our local
species may not regrow. While winds
like we had recently are expected about
once a year, they may begin to happen
more often.
There are innumerable events locally
and within businesses and university
research centers to reduce carbon emis-
sions or the effects of climate change.
However, the most substantive and
encompassing efforts are at the federal
level, and the next article will be de-
voted to those.
e e
Brenda Pace is retired from Pace Research Co., a
regional economics consultancy, and the Center
for Natural Lands Management, a habitat
management nonprofit for endangered species
responsible for more than 75,000 acres.