The BulleTin • Thursday, June 10, 2021 A13
Bats
“They’re going after the big
critters, calling from 20 or 40
meters away, getting a bounce
and chasing it down. People
with undamaged hearing can
hear a spotted bat more than
60 meters away,” he added.
Sara Rose, one of the orga-
nizers of the project and a biol-
ogist for OSU-Cascades North-
west Bat Hub, helped to recruit
volunteers to listen for the bats.
“Most of the volunteers ex-
pressed a specific interest in
bats,” said Rose. “For them,
this was a rare opportunity to
experience bats firsthand with-
out disturbing them. Others
were university students who
wanted some field experience
to add to their resumes.”
The OSU-Cascades research-
ers are studying the spotted bat
to formulate a protection plan
for this sensitive species. Rod-
house said the research showed
the spotted bat species is much
more widespread than previ-
ously thought.
The project “confirmed that
Central Oregon is a hotspot
for this species, regionally, and
should be a place of study and
conservation, even providing
long-term refuge as other hab-
itats decline,” said Rodhouse,
also an ecologist with the Na-
tional Park Service.
Because they are active at
night, the spotted bat is chal-
lenging to see and more diffi-
cult to capture, said Rodhouse,
so the researchers relied on lis-
tening for the bat’s distinctive
“clicking” sound.
Volunteers were dispatched
to several spots around the
High Desert around dusk to
listen for the bats. Rodhouse
said it was a unique opportu-
nity to enjoy the sounds of na-
ture while also contributing to
valuable scientific data.
“The volunteers we heard
from really enjoyed the experi-
ence. It was a great way to have
an excuse to go out and do
something outdoors in a differ-
ent way,” said Rodhouse.
While listening for the spot-
ted bat on his surveys, Rod-
house reported hearing coy-
otes, a barn owl and crickets,
among other sounds of the
desert nights.
“Sounds that we are often
too busy to really hear and en-
joy,” he said.
There are no plans to con-
duct another round of research
due to a lack of funding, said
Rodhouse. But if interest in
the project persists, Rodhouse
hopes another organization
will continue the work that has
been started.
“We definitely could take it
on the road and recruit across
the region, scale it up, generate
even with just one or two more
summers a truly extraordinary
dataset for this elusive animal,
to open up that black box of
how it is faring,” said Rod-
house. “That is my dream.”
versus other types of lotteries.”
Fendrick said if the lotteries
do turn out to be a significant
influence, it could help the
health care system figure out
how to better motivate preg-
nant women to get prenatal
care of certain groups to get
screened for breast, cervical or
colon cancers.
David Baden, chief financial
officer at the Oregon Health
Authority, said even though
vaccination rates have decel-
erated, there is some data to
suggest that the state’s “Take
Your Shot” campaign might
be having some positive effect:
Oregon’s vaccination rates ar-
en’t decelerating as swiftly as
other states, boosting the state’s
rankings.
A few weeks ago, Oregon
was 23rd nationally for the
percentage of its population
at least partially vaccinated,
Baden said. On Monday, it
stood at 17th.
The end result? Baden said
because there’s still a few weeks
left before the June 28 drawing,
he’s holding off on reaching
conclusions about the lottery’s
success.
“The simple answer is, ‘I
don’t know because we don’t
ask everyone who comes in,’”
Baden said, “‘Why did you get
vaccinated?’”
Continued from A1
Submitted photo
Adrian Zamarripa, a volunteer with an Oregon State University-Cascades study of spotted bats, waits at dusk
in the Badlands just east of Bend while listening for sounds of the elusive creature.
Lottery
1.9 million+
Continued from A1
The number of fully vaccinated
people reported in Oregon, with
another 300,000-plus people
partially vaccinated against
COVID-19. But vaccination rates
have recently declined.
“We have more surprises in
the works that you’ll hear about
soon,” Brown said. “So if you
haven’t yet been vaccinated,
now is the time. You never
know, you may just walk into a
vaccine clinic or a pharmacy to
get your vaccine and find out
you’re a winner.”
Oregon is among one of
at least nine states — includ-
ing Washington last week
— drumming up lotteries
in hopes of elevating immu-
nization numbers that have
plummeted in the late spring
nationwide. Most are offering
to make at least one person in
each of their borders a million-
aire — but only if they’re vacci-
nated against COVID-19.
New Mexico has taken it a
step further by putting up the
largest-in-the-nation prize: $5
million.
Brown announced May 21
that Oregon is offering a $1
million jackpot, three dozen
awards of $10,000 doled out to
one person in each of the state’s
counties, and five scholarships
of $100,000 for youth for col-
lege or vocational school.
But unlike other states that
started their drawings within a
week or two of their announce-
ments and that are holding
drawings weekly or even daily,
Oregon will draw all its win-
ners on one day, June 28, which
is more than five weeks after
Brown announced the lottery’s
creation.
Officials estimate it could
be another week beyond that
date before they announce the
winners.
State officials seem to have
acknowledged that delayed
timeline might have put a
damper on the initial zeal and
urgency to go out and get vac-
cinated as soon as possible.
“The ‘Take Your Shot Ore-
gon’ campaign was designed
for simplicity, so that there
would be a significant period
of time to incentivize vacci-
nations prior to June 28,” said
Boyle, before adding that the
state might tweak that strat-
egy to award some new prizes
soon.
The lottery, he cautioned,
is one of many strategies the
Source: Oregon Health Authority
state is using to increase inoc-
ulations.
“No individual strategy is
expected to have a singularly
massive impact or to wholly re-
verse vaccination rate trends,”
Boyle said. “Each strategy adds
a little energy to the overall ef-
fort.”
So far, the day-to-day num-
ber of newly vaccinated peo-
ple in Oregon has been disap-
pointing.
While Oregon was admin-
istering about 17,000 shots as
of midweek last week — about
half of the number it was ad-
ministering when Brown an-
nounced the lottery — that
includes shots for people who
already opted to get vaccinated
and are receiving a second
dose.
The key metric to watch to
gauge the lottery’s performance
is the number of unvaccinated
people receiving their first
shots.
The seven-day average of
adults receiving their first shots
has gone from about 9,000 the
day before Brown announced
the lottery to 6,700 nearly two
weeks later. (Because state of-
ficials say it can take up to five
days for vaccinations to be en-
tered into the system, The Ore-
gonian did not use the last five
days of data.)
The decline in newly vacci-
nated people stands at about
25%. And that drop-off means
it’s taking longer for Oregon
to hit a separate benchmark
established by Brown to lift
nearly all coronavirus restric-
tions, including wearing masks
in most settings.
States across the country
launched similar lotteries in
the face of declines, and none
has yet seen stellar results.
Ohio was the first state to
announce a lottery, on May 12,
and Gov. Mike DeWine later
hailed the effort as a success.
Data from the Centers for
Disease Control and Preven-
tion and analyzed by The Or-
egonian show initial stability
compared to Oregon.
Ohio had been newly vacci-
nating about 19,500 adults, on
average, the day before the lot-
tery announcement. Two weeks
later, the average number of
people being newly vaccinated
had fallen only 4%, although it’s
since declined further.
The newspaper reviewed
vaccination data for other
states with lotteries, tracking
the number of newly vacci-
nated adults and also account-
ing for the shrinking pool of
residents in need of inocula-
tion.
Maryland, with its daily
drawings, and New York, with
its weekly drawings, appear
to have held relatively steady
overall and even made some
very modest gains, after fac-
toring in fewer people needing
shots.
California saw a slight dip in
vaccination in the first several
days after Gov. Gavin Newsom
announced the state’s lottery
but also saw a spike in resi-
dents getting vaccinated this
past weekend immediately
after Newsom drew the first
15 $50,000 winners Friday on
livestreamed video. The state
recorded more than 115,000
newly vaccinated people Sat-
urday, the highest daily total in
nearly a month.
Dr. A. Mark Fendrick, a
public health professor and
director of the University of
Michigan Center for Val-
ue-Based Design who has
studied what incentives or dis-
incentives motivate people to
make smart choices in their
health care, said it’s too early
to tell how much this vast ex-
periment of COVID-19-vac-
cination lotteries influenced
individual decision-making.
He will be studying the state-
by-state data for months to
come, including how the dura-
tion between drawings and the
amounts of prize money of-
fered affected human behavior.
“What we’re really happy
about is that the next time
around that we need to do this,
we’re going to know the best
way to do it,” Fendrick said.
“We have this great natural ex-
periment of no lotteries versus
lotteries and types of lotteries
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