135. Border county

Border County

 

Wallowa County is in the northeast corner of Oregon, with Eastern Washington acres of rugged country and a bit of the Grande Ronde River to the north, and Hells Canyon of the Snake River the natural separation from Idaho to the east. South and west is more Oregon, but not over easy ground. 

 

We’re a buffer: the Snake River a buffer and border with Idaho to the east; a windy road up and down to the Grande Ronde River and then to the Clearwater and Snake River corridors at Lewiston buffers the north. 

 

It seems we’re also a border and buffering place against Covid. At home, Wallowa County is relatively Covid-aware, with a vaccination rate higher than Union and Umatilla counties (Baker County’s is better). Our medical system has been diligent in testing and tracking, hospitalizing when necessary. 

 

But we have a vocal minority asserting personal choice above community health, just as they have in neighboring Idaho. And we have stubborn locals joining Idaho visitors and escapees from the other Oregon—many of them unvaccinated Oregonians—in refusing to wear masks in stores and other public places. 

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A couple of weeks ago, one of the unmasked and admittedly unvaccinated West-side Oregonians attacked our Joseph restaurant table’s conversation with the news that the Covid is a huge political plot. And here’s the news from Kooteni County in Idaho: “It’s gotten so bad in northern Idaho that some Kootenai Health employees are scared to go to the grocery store if they haven’t changed out of their scrubs,” said hospital spokeswoman Caiti Bobbitt…  “Some doctors and nurses at the Coeur d’Alene hospital have been accused of killing patients by grieving family members who don’t believe COVID-19 is real…”

 

We have a Wallowa County version of that: deaths attributed to heart conditions or bad lungs or diabetes. Yes, Covid has easy pickings among people with “underlying conditions.” That term is so hackneyed I hesitate to use it, but this is exactly what it means. Patient A has had some heart issues, refuses vaccination, gets sick, refuses testing, dies at home and the post-mortem test shows she had Covid. Patient B is diabetic…. Their anti-vax friends attribute the deaths to heart and kidneys. And to the vocal minority of locals and the anti-masking visitors from Idaho and the rest of Oregon, vaccinations—and the medical establishment and vaccinated majority who take Covid seriously—are deserving of contempt. 

 

We, the fatigued and sometimes intimidated majority, grumble about the lack of masks, and wait in this border county while Oregon’s overall Covid stats continue to look better—and Idaho’s situation sees no good end in sight.

 

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