A16
NEWS
Blue Mountain Eagle
“THEY SAID WHEN THE TRUCK COMES IT WOULD
COME WITH MORE THAN JUST PEANUT BUTTER. IT
WOULD COME WITH COMMODITIES THAT WOULD
BE USEFUL ANYWHERE, BUT THE NEAT THING
ABOUT THE PEANUT BUTTER IS THAT THEY SENT
STRAWBERRY JAM WITH IT.”
—George Sintay, Grant County resident
The Eagle/Rudy Diaz
Jim Spell, left, and Bill Skinner unload pears from the food delivered on March 4.
Food
Wednesday, March 10, 2021
Vaccine
Continued from Page A1
new infections, Lindsay said in a press
release that COVID-19 has “a lot of
room to roam” in Grant County, and
the community cannot afford to let
their guard down.
“COVID is still a very real thing
in Grant County,” Lindsay said in an
email. “It’s easy to get comfortable
when we have two weeks of no new
cases. Not saying all of this to scare.
Not at all. Not my style.”
She said only 11% of the county’s
population had received the COVID-
19 vaccine.
Lindsay said the county is far from
reaching herd immunity, a form of
indirect protec-
tion from infec-
tious
diseases
that can occur
when a sufficient
percentage of a
population
has
become immune
to infection.
“Those who
did have COVID-
19 previously are
only given a pass
from re-catching
it for 90 days,”
Eagle file photo
she said. “We are
seeing
people Kimberly Lindsay,
who have had it Grant County
prior come down public health ad-
ministrator, speaks
with it again.”
She said some during a November
might be suscep- session of county
tible to a “false court.
sense of security.”
Continued from Page A1
Neighboring counties
“We got a great response, and
I feel great to see the food
here.”
Tom Sutton, a member of
the food bank board of direc-
tors, said he was grateful for
the donation from the church
and the help from volunteers
to unload the shipment.
Sutton said he was also
grateful to Chester’s Thrift-
way owner Bob Cow-
an-Thompson for providing
space at to store six to eight
pallets worth of food that
wouldn’t fit at the food bank.
The semi from Salt Lake
City, Utah, had 37,889
pounds of food for the region,
including peanut butter, pack-
ages of instant mashed pota-
toes and boxes of macaroni
and cheese.
Audrey Smith, the man-
ager of the Northeast Ore-
gon Regional Food Bank,
explained she was happy
to see many of these items
partly because they are ones
often asked for but the Ore-
gon Food Bank — which
serves the Northeast Oregon
Regional Food Bank — has
not provided.
She noted it has been sev-
eral months since the Oregon
Food Bank sent canned fruit
and boxes of macaroni and
cheese. And she said this is
the first time she recalls ever
having anything close to this
much jam available.
“I have never received
pallets of jam before,” Smith
said.
The amount of peanut but-
Timber
Continued from Page A1
small woodland owners, who
argued that HB 2379 would be
financially devastating to their
industry.
Critics said the bill would
drive up expenses at a time
they’re already contending
with damage from wildfires
and ice storms, as well as the
steadily rising cost of logging.
The tax would be set at
such a high rate that harvest-
ing timber wouldn’t be eco-
nomically viable, pressing
landowners to convert their
property to agricultural uses
or residential development,
according to critics.
The Eagle/Rudy Diaz
Grant County resident George Sintay requested peanut butter
and got 15,000 pounds of food on March 4.
The county is not too far behind
the rest of the U.S., which has vacci-
nated 15% of the population. Lindsay
said 7% in Grant County have received
the booster shot to complete their
vaccinations.
Harney County, as of Friday, has
vaccinated 16% of its 7,360 population
— with 915 receiving a second dose
and 271 still in progress.
Malheur County, with a population
of over 32,000, is at over 3,800 but
only 11.9% — with over 1,800 fully
vaccinated and over 2,000 in progress.
Baker County is at 18%. Crook
County is at 16%.
Lake County, similar to Grant
County in terms of population, has
vaccinated roughly 16% of its approxi-
mately 8,000 people, with roughly 800
people fully vaccinated and upwards of
500 awaiting a booster shot.
Vaccine perspective
The Eagle/Rudy Diaz
John Day Mayor Ron Lundbom drove the truck that delivered
food to food bank in John Day.
ter also is substantial, wel-
come news because the Ore-
gon Food Bank has been
cutting back providing the
popular staple.
“There is a peanut butter
shortage,” Smith said.
The church shipped the
food from its Bishops Central
Storehouse in Salt Lake City.
Volunteers and church-ser-
vice missionaries staff the
storehouses.
And the church pro-
duced much of the food. This
included the many pallets of
peanut butter, which came
from a cannery the church
owns and operates in Hous-
ton, Texas, said Chadwick.
Lindsay said, while many people
have yet to get the vaccine, it is prema-
ture to determine the county has a high
vaccine refusal rate.
She said that could be the case, but
until the county is at a point where
there is vaccine sitting on the shelf,
they will not know.
“Those that want the vaccine have
taken every vaccine that we have avail-
able,” Lindsay said.
VACCINE WAITLIST
Email name, date of birth, mailing address,
phone number and any chronic health
conditions to vaccine@ccsemail.org or call
the Grant County Health Department at
541-575-0429 to be added to the waitlist for
the COVID-19 vaccination.
Eagle file photo
The Moderna COVID-19 vaccine at the Grant
County Health Department.
Q&A
Continued from Page A1
the road, the same virus causes shingles. ...
The same principle applies: The body forgets
how to fight off chickenpox, and then shingles
occur.
You do not want to get shingles if you can
avoid them. And if you get vaccinated, there is
a good chance you won’t get shingles.
What are your thoughts on the Johnson
& Johnson, the new, single-shot COVID-19
vaccine?
It is a good vaccine. It is not an mRNA
vaccine (like the Pfizer-BioNTech and Mod-
erna vaccines). It is transmitted through a viral
vector, adenovirus virus, a virus that does not
cause disease, but is genetically modified and
exposes your body to parts of the coronavirus
(not the virus itself) that will then recognize
and kill coronavirus should you contract or be
exposed to it.
The efficacy rate is lower than the Mod-
erna and Pfizer, 94% and 95%, while Johnson
& Johnson’s is about 70% — but, in terms of
vaccines preventing death or hospitalizations,
is equally as effective.
How, if the efficacy rate is lower, would
it be equally effective when it comes to pre-
venting hospitalizations and deaths?
Even though you may contract COVID and
you may contract COVID more often ... your
chances of dying from COVID with either vac-
cine are almost none.
Will a COVID-19 vaccine alter one’s
DNA?
The mRNA doesn’t get into the cell’s
nucleus ... which I think is one of the fears out
there. It has the cells reproduce a protein out-
side of coronavirus.
When your body is exposed to coronavirus,
it has this memory. Even though it’s never seen
it before, it quickly recognizes it as foreign and
can stop the spread of the virus, stop it from
the devastating effects that it has on the lungs.
Should pregnant women get the vaccine?
I think we’re hesitant to study any kind of
medication or vaccine in pregnancy because
we don’t know the outcomes yet, and this vac-
cine has not been studied in pregnant patients.
To the extent that pregnant moms are worried
about how this may affect their developing
fetus, I don’t blame them.
Have patients expressed concern or
shown hesitancy about getting vaccinated?
I have had a positive response. The peo-
ple I’ve talked to want the vaccine. There are
exceptions out there, and some of that has
more to do with the fact that the vaccine is rel-
atively new. I think that scares some people.
Other people don’t feel like it applies to them
and that they’re not going to get sick. And they
may not.
The truth is that this virus does not seem to
have had a high impact on kids, or even mid-
dle-aged folks. We are not seeing those kinds
of deaths. Primarily, it has been older folks that
have died.
But I think, as a community, one of the
things we can do is step up and say, “I’m not
getting this vaccine for myself. I’m getting it
to protect my grandparents in the community
at large because I don’t want COVID to spread
here.”
“THE LAST THING OUR LOCAL GOVERNMENTS NEED IS FOR THE STATE
LEGISLATURE TO PASS ANY NEW TAXES ON AN INDUSTRY THAT CAN
CONTINUE TO OPERATE AND PROVIDE MUCH-NEEDED FAMILY WAGE
JOBS WITH BENEFITS TO THEIR RESIDENTS DURING THESE DIFFICULT
ECONOMIC TIMES.”
—Association of Oregon Counties
“Rural Oregon cannot
take any more punches to the
gut. This tax only furthers the
urban-rural divide that we are
seeing ripping across our great
state,” Ellie Hilger, a Tillamook
County forestland owner.
“I thought the decades-
old timber wars were com-
ing to an end with last year’s
memorandum of understand-
ing between timber and envi-
ronmentalists,” she said, refer-
ring to a deal to forestall ballot
initiatives over logging rules.
“The old battle lines are being
redrawn, and once again,
families like mine are in the
crosshairs.”
Proponents of HB 2379
argue that severance taxes
were once imposed on tim-
ber harvests in Oregon before
getting replaced in the early
1990s, but they’re needed
again to pay for firefighting
costs and local government
services.
Supporters also claim that
Oregon’s timber taxes bring
in roughly one-third as much
revenue as in Washington,
even though that state harvests
half as much timber.
Private timberland own-
ers represent 77% of the acre-
age protected by the Oregon
Department of Forestry but
only pay 22% of the state’s
firefighting costs, said Rep.
Paul Holvey, D-Eugene, the
bill’s chief sponsor.
Holvey said he tried work-
ing with county governments
on the severance tax but said
they’re opposed to the pro-
posal due to fears of “cross-
ing” the timber industry, on
which they’re economically
dependent.
“It seems counterproduc-
tive to reject that outright,”
Holvey said of the tax dollars
counties could receive.
As for “mom and pop”
forestland owners, Holvey
attributed their opposition to
“talking points” from the Ore-
gon Forest & Industries Coun-
cil, a timber group, and the
Oregon Forest Resources Insti-
tute, an industry-funded educa-
tion organization.
“They rely on OFIC and
OFRI for their messaging,” he
said.
Long before the recent
wildfire and ice storm dam-
age, the timber industry has
claimed it’s not appropriate
to consider additional taxes
on logs, Holvey said. “It will
never be the right time for
someone to be taxed, if you’re
the one getting taxed.”
Michael B. DesJardin
Dentistry, PC
Preventive, Restorative & Endodontics
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