155. Holy S(**&

The big difference between the 1918 Influenza and our Covid-19 can be said in a word: speed. The speeds with which news travels, medicine develops, and people and the virus we carry move. 

Here in Wallowa County we’d about settled in for a long winter’s nap, watching the snow fall from the sky and drift across our roads and yards. Some of us had tried to wash off the old year in New Year’s Day’s polar plunge in Wallowa Lake—while others vowed they’d never go in that lake in mid-summer.

 

We were finding routines, working from home again, but this time because it was too damned windy to go out and our cars might have blown off the road or been covered by a snowplow’s shower. When we woke from that January 2 storm and went to stores for milk and bread, we wore our masks or we did not. Those of us who are mask wearers put them on and off like a pair of mittens as we go in and out of stores. The unmasked don’t heckle us and we don’t heckle them. It’s a kind of standoff—although I know there is muttering from our side that the unmasked and unvaccinated should pay their own hospital bills when the Covid hit sthem, and I imagine the anti-vaxxers and maskers chuckle or fume quietly about our silliness. 

 

And then what? A month ago we hear about this new strain of the Covid that is faster than its predecessors, and that it seems to move right through the vaccinated. Yes, the second and third paragraphs in the news stories opine that the vaccinated suffer less and are hospitalized less frequently, and Dr. Fauci bravely takes the TV mike to say once again that our best defense is vaccinating the unvaccinated and wearing our masks. It is wearying.

 

And then yesterday, January 4, Covid explodes in Oregon, with 4540 new cases, and over 500 hospitalized. And we learn that a friend brought Covid back from a California holiday and another tested positive on returning from Arizona. And the news carries new warnings and directions on testing and quarantining and isolating (and what is the one and what the other?).

We’re well into the second year of this disease, and the second or third or fourth wave, depending on who is counting and where. 

 

A quick look back at 1918 shows an eerily similar trajectory. Mostly by train and troopship, the 1918 influenza circled the globe in 3 or 4 waves and infected some 500 million, a third of the world’s population. It killed 675,000 Americans when our population was 110 million. It petered out with less virulent outbreaks about two years after it started. 

 

We have vaccines—and we have airplanes and personal vehicles that allow us to go anywhere, and fast. Speed seems to be cancelling the advantages of vaccines, and if 1918-1920 patterns continue, the current omicron version will take its toll and play out in a few more weeks or months. Vaccinations and infections will continue to rise, but with luck, and following the path of its 1918 cousin, the Covid will mutate or wind down, and take its place alongside seasonal flu. Sometime in late 2022 or early 2023.

 

# # #

145. Germany

“By the end of winter Germans will be vaccinated, recovered, or dead.”

 

In the cacophony of news about Covid spikes, new vaccines, mandates, protests, and new variants of Covid-19, this is a sobering sentence. It slipped across the radio waves this morning, along with accounts of spikes in Germany, lockdowns in Austria, and a fight between France and England over refugees. 

 

I’ve become religious about reading the Oregon Health Authority’s daily accounts of diseases and deaths in our state, county by county. I feel an emotional lift when the state trendline shows “down”; the past couple of weeks of zeros and ones for Wallowa County have been good for the soul.

 

So, when Wallowa County jumped back to five cases on Tuesday and five again on Wednesday, my mood dropped. And then this quote from Germany on National Public Radio this morning. The whole Covid thing has a rhythm and a story line all its own—and we struggle to catch up and make sense of it: There are 7200 people in Wallowa County and a trickle of winter visitors. The trickle swelled this week with the holiday—the number of Idaho, Washington, and other “foreign” license plates on Joseph’s Main Street outnumbered Oregon this morning. The swelling will go down by Monday.

 

Some 60 percent of those of us who live here are vaccinated, 742 are recovered or in recovery, and 13 have died. New vaccinations plod along, and there must be hundreds of children under five, but still, what will four months of winter do to the 1500 or 2000 currently unvaccinated living with us?

 

In the best case, a good share of that number will be vaccinated, another, smaller number will be in recovery—the new “after” pill will be working its wonders, and Oregon and the nation’s trend numbers will keep going down. We’ll be in some semblance of stalemate, gaining on the semi-mythical herd immunity. 

 

On the other hand, legions of visitors from poorly vaccinated Idaho and vaccine deniers from everywhere will come with the spring, the new South African variant might gain strength, and Oregon and national trendlines will be going the wrong direction. 

 

In which case I’ll be counting—and remembering the quote from the November guy in Germany, looking for my next booster.

 

# # # 

138. Encouraged

This week and last, Covid numbers in Wallowa County are down significantly from the daily 5-20 cases registered in September and early October weeks. 

My first thought was that the tourist season is winding down, and there are fewer Florida, Texas, and Idaho license plates on Main Street in Joseph than there were just two weeks ago. We’re also further away from Josephy Days and the Pendleton Roundup, two big-crowd events in Eastern Oregon. 

When I read my new favorite New York Times columnist, Zeynep Tufekci, on Saturday, more good news. In “The Unvaccinated May Not Be Who You Think,” the Turkish-born sociologist says that we have not paid enough attention to who is getting and not getting Covid vaccinations. My tribe has been fixated on anti-vaxxers; Tufekci focuses on the vaccinated, and the “vaccine resistant.” Who they are and why.

Her first bit of data is that 95 % of people over 65 in the United States have had at least one shot. Our older Wallowa County population helps us. And—the biggest factors in predicting who, overall, gets vaccinated are health insurance and regular—and trusted—health care providers. She notes that “low vaccination rates in rural areas may be that they are ‘health care and media deserts.’” 

That’s not us! And we consequently now have over 65% of eligible adults vaccinated, gradually adding a few more each day. When the vaccines are approved for children, our numbers and percentages will climb. 

We might even get a boost from the mandates. Although there is a lot of moaning and groaning with police unions and southern state governors, research shows that most of those not yet vaccinated who are in the “vaccine hesitant” group will comply with the mandates. Some because they need their jobs; many, including those with needle phobia—a category I had not considered—Tufekci argues, will obey they mandates because they can “cross the line… in a face-saving manor.”  

Taken all together—Wallowa County’s older population on Medicare; our robust health care system; the 65 % and growing vaccination rate; the 675 residents who have acquired immunity by getting the disease (almost 10% of our population!), and a quieter Main Street—I feel encouraged going into winter. 

Winter, that long-ago time when Wallowa County—and Oregon—were relatively Covid-free. 

# # #

 

136. People I know

David died in a Boise hospital this week. He was 81—and unvaccinated. I didn’t know him well, but he’d grown up here and lived here for a time later in life. Frank died this week in Maine, after weeks in intensive care. I played football and baseball with his older brother in high school, and one college summer Frank and I played fast-pitch softball together. I have no idea about his vaccination status, just that Covid got him. 

 

Locally, three people I know have died of Covid. Not close friends, but people I know who worked at my kids’ school, the store next door, or Safeway, people I knew well enough to joke with on the street or in the post office. Of them, two were not vaccinated; one died before vaccinations became available. 

 

There are probably others. People who died of this or that “underlying condition,” but might have had the Covid as well. Sometimes people try to turn the tables: “it wasn’t Covid that killed her; she had a bad heart.” Or diabetes or asthma…

 

I’ve known others who have gotten sick and come out the other side. My grandson first, long before the vaccine. He is young and healthy, but still struggled with loss of taste and smell, and headaches. He says that that all changed after he did get vaccinated. 

 

Two friends from Umatilla County have been sick. Both were vaccinated, and both came through after a few days of sickness. I don’t know whether the Pendleton Roundup had anything to do with their illness, but the Oregon Health Authority reported the surge in cases after that event. The rodeo—the crowds, the lack of masks—certainly fanned Umatilla’s flames. The Umatilla Reservation has gone to near lockdown. 

 

Did it fan Covid our way? This week’s Wallowa County new Covid cases: Monday-20, including weekend numbers; Tuesday-2; Wednesday-22; Thursday-6; and Friday-11. That’s 61 cases in seven days. I don’t know how many were vaccinated, have no idea about the seriousness of their cases. I don’t know who they are—but I surely know some of them well enough to hail on the street. 

 

And I know that no close friends or relatives—other than the grandson who came home from Portland with it early in this Covid saga—and no one I work with has become ill with Covid. I also know that this group of friends, relatives, and co-workers wears masks and embraces vaccinations.

 

This is all anecdotal to be sure. Anecdotes add up. 

 

# # # 

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. 

.

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.

 

# # #

133. Letter to the Editor

To the editor and Wallowa County Friends,

 

This summer marks 50 years for me in Wallowa County. I came to spend a year—and I stayed. I stayed because the land is wonderful; I stayed because of people. In the fifty years countless tragedies—fires, accidents, and diseases—have hit Wallowa County families. And again and again neighbors, friends, and strangers have stepped up to comfort and help get people and families through hard times. We haven’t erased bad things, but we have dealt with them honestly and selflessly. We’ve not asked about religion or politics, wealth, or which end of the county the afflicted are from. We just help.

 

And now we have a crisis. Over 500 of us have had or have the coronavirus, and 11 have died as of September 11, according to the Oregon Health Authority. We’re getting 5-10 new cases each day, and our hospital is operating on the edge. Cases in Idaho, with one of the lowest vaccination rates in the country, are exploding. Umatilla and Union counties ditto. A Boise nurse says her overwhelmed staff has PTSD. We cannot send serious covid patients—or serious patients of any kind—to nearby hospitals. 

 

There is fear that our hospital and assisted living center will lose staff with the vaccination mandate. The Soroptimists and Rotary are rounding up volunteers to work at assisted living!

 

Our friends, neighbors, and relatives are in the hospital and nursing home right now. I am 78 and healthy—but I’m at risk. A good many of my friends and neighbors are at risk due to age, asthma, weak hearts or lungs, diabetes, etc.

 

I am asking all of you to put aside politics and religion, vitamins and health regimes, and embrace vaccinations and masks. If “mandates” bother you, remember that you complied with the state to get your driver’s license, to go to school until you were 16, and to go into the military when called. 

 

Your neighbor’s house is on fire and we’re all the volunteer fire department. I am not asking you to change your political or religious affiliation, or to donate blood or a kidney (which many of you have already done). Just a shot in the arm—yes, sometimes painful for a day or two, but overwhelmingly effective—and a mask on the face (when you have time, I’ll share my story of how a mask kept me safe from Covid).

 

Thank you, friends,

Rich Wandschneider  

131. Surrounded, held hostage

The Covid death count in Wallowa County has reached 12. This after weeks during which local health care workers tell us that they cannot release information on deaths. We no longer have a county public health agency, and for that reason the Oregon Health Authority is responsible for compiling and releasing our Covid information. 

 

According to news reports, one in 500 Americans has died during this pandemic. Wallowa County, with 7000 residents, is approaching that with more than one in 700. We’ll soon catch the national number—if we haven’t already, what with statistics trailing facts.

 

We do get daily infection numbers from the OHA—yesterday there were seven new cases in the County. We made it through the early days of Covid with ones and twos—and zeroes. Now the daily numbers hover near that seven. That’s one reason we are feeling squeezed, surrounded by a disease that seems to be closing in on us. 

 

Another reason is Idaho. With one of the lowest vaccination rates in the country, Idaho infections and hospitalizations are climbing rapidly; “triage” is now the order of the day across the state. In my understanding, that means that new patients—Covid and other—are continually evaluated for prospects of improvement, with treatment going to those with the best odds. 

 

And Idaho spills into Washington. Washington’s second largest hospital, Spokane’s 700-bed Providence Sacred Heart and Holy Family, has taken patients from northern Idaho, and is being pressured to take more. Most of the non-Oregon license plates on Joseph’s Main Street read Idaho and Washington. Another way we are feeling surrounded. 

 

Within our state, nearby Umatilla and Union counties have seen surges of Covid. Grand Ronde Hospital in La Grande sent out its numbers this week. I don’t have them in front of me, but the striking thing was that 100% of their cases, critical care cases, and patients on ventilators were unvaccinated.

 

Our small hospital is running at full and near full, with little chance of moving patients needing more extensive care—with Covid or anything else—to nearby hospitals in other counties and states.

 

Rumor has it that the governor’s mandate will cause resignations in our assisted living facility and even in our hospital. That—and the fact that some businesses stubbornly refuse to mask employees or require them of customers, is our final surround. 

 

Those of us vaccinated and promoting vaccinations in Wallowa County—the majority of us—feel surrounded and frustrated, held-hostage by Covid increases and the loud shouts of anti-vaxxers here and nearby. 

 

# # # 

121. “I told you so!"

It must begin in childhood, the urge to be right, and to remind others when our rightness—about the depth of the water, the strength of the tree limb, or the coming disapproval of mom, dad, or the teacher—is ignored. Even when we don’t say it aloud, we love the feeling of “I told you so.”

Many, many of us in the vaccinated world worry about unvaccinated friends and relatives, and pour ridicule on the unvaccinated we don’t know. “Serves them right,” we say—or think. “How can they not get it,” we say.

Last week at the rodeo, I watched from the Rotary food booth as crowds of people waited to get in to the gate, stood in line to get our burgers, and marched away from the last event in a welcome drizzle of rain. There were no masks, although I thought that people were inclined not to bunch up, to wait their turns in orderly single lines. Some awareness there, I thought. And most of my friends who did go are quite surely vaccinated.

As the crowd marched out in the rain, many went on to the Thunder Room for more beer, loud music, and the chance to dance. That, I remember thinking, is surely a spreader event. Maybe a super-spreader.

I and many friends—I know because we talk about it—look at the daily stats out of the Oregon Health Authority. We watched Wallowa County get a small surge—ten Sunday to beat our one-day record, and enough in a week to put us in red on the national "infection percentage" map from the New York Times. 

There are enough local infection stories to allow us of the vaccinated to think and sometimes say “I told you so,” but the upsurge that must be associated with Chief Joseph Days Rodeo does not make super-spreader category, does not allow us the self-righteous feeling of I told you so. 

And yesterday, when Wallowa County showed only one new case, I caught myself a bit sad, because “I told you so’ had been beat back. I jumped to “they came from everywhere and took it home with them.”

What uncharitable thoughts. “I told you so” didn’t make you better when your mom used it, and didn’t make your friends more careful when you used it. 

It’s no solution for the Pandemic. 

# # # 

118. The Spike

Although we in Oregon are comfortably near the lowest of the states in terms of percentages of incidence and death by Covid, we have joined the country in the current spike. We’ve trolled along at about 300 new cases each day—until this week, when we flirted with 600 cases per day, and passed that on Friday.

And Wallowa County, where our vaccination rate hovers somewhere between 50 and 60 percent, we’ve had days and days of 0 new cases—until this week. It was 3, then another, and then 5 cases on Thursday. There is news of another local death too, a woman in her late 50s. 

Small numbers, but we are a small place, 7000 of us plus the travelers from New York, Wisconsin, California, Washington, Idaho, and North Dakota. Can we assume that most travelers are vaccinated? I haven’t seen stats on that, but imagine they are split like the rest of us. Even with Fox News now, at least at times, advocating vaccinations.

Why is it so hard! The illogic of it is startling. The White House and some Republican governors are reeling.

I think it is our radical individualism and the belief in total personal control. Yes, air travel is safer than car travel by the statistics, but I am in control in my car—until another car crosses the center line. And yes, vaccinations might have worked with polio and measles, but I know or know by hearsay about someone who got the Covid vaccination and died. I’ll take my own chances.

Or, more combatively, “don’t mess with my freedom to live and do as I want,” and I don’t like shots, or don’t like doctors or anyone else telling me how to live, what to eat, how to take care of my heart or my overweight or smoking or drinking or couch-addicted self.  Just leave me alone!

# # #

93. Covid Hits the County

The first 8 or 10 days in February saw 27 new cases of the coronavirus and our fourth Wallowa County death. Numbers have continued to mount—with one or two cases each new day. Our sense of splendid isolation from Covid-19—and many other ills of modern society—has cracked. 

 

Most of us now wear our masks like we put on a sweater on a cool day or take one-a-day vitamin. Some few still fight convention and find an argument for personal freedom in walking into Safeway or the hardware store without a mask. While we mask wearers have become “naturals,” unthinkingly pulling it over the nose as we go through the Safeway door, the anti-maskers must have to constantly think about this expression of personal freedom. 

 

They forget, of course, the admonition of most gospels of freedom—the staunchest libertarian puts a boundary at the point at which his or her liberty infringes on the liberties—or the wellbeing—of others. 

 

Advocates of the “Swedish solution”—herd immunity—are quieter now. Although there are still stories of Covid Parties on college campuses, the idea being that enough young people—who mostly rebound quickly—will get the disease, heal up, and create the herd. I’ve not heard arguments from herd immunity folks about what are now called “long haulers,” people who contracted Covid-19, maybe even with mild symptoms, and then, weeks later, have heart, liver, or muscle problems. 

 

I know of no local cases, but in an interesting parallel, I do know two who suffered from polio more than 50 years ago and are now suffering from “post-polio syndrome”—muscle weakness and pain, etc. That long ago viral scourge is not done with us yet!

 

I know a few who wear masks and keep their distances carefully—but worry that the vaccine will not work or work ill on them. They will keep the Covid at bay on their own terms, without the help of big pharma, because no vaccine has ever been developed this quickly, because Bill Gates had something to do with it, or maybe because they just don’t like shots! 

 

There are, even among the careful mask wearers, staunch anti-vaxxers. Robert Kennedy, Jr. is national leader in this group. The son of the assassinated former Attorney General and nephew of President John F. Kennedy, has a long and successful career as an environmental lawyer—which puts him in the “liberal” section of our country’s sometimes strange politics. He leads a group that promotes the idea—debunked by most medical experts, that autism is linked to vaccinations. 

 

Among the anti-vaxxers and the reluctant waiting for more information there are stories of deaths after vaccinations. A friend says she knows of four healthy people who have died after being vaccinated. Robert Kennedy apparently claimed that baseball legend Henry Aaron was killed by the Covid-vaccine. Aaron, 86 years old, in a wheelchair and poor health, stepped up to take the vaccine to encourage more black Americans to do so. The Atlanta coroner found his death to be natural, having nothing to do with Covid or with the vaccine.

 

I’ve searched the press for stories of vaccination deaths; you would think that they would be prominent. Although there are stories of strong reactions, including one in our hospital—I can find no substantiated death stories. With millions of vaccinated, you would assume a few deaths. The most complete story I found was about 23 deaths in Norwegian nursing homes. Examination showed that “common adverse reactions of mRNA vaccines, such as fever, nausea, and diarrhea, may have contributed to fatal outcomes in some of the frail patients.” Their advice was to stop vaccinating the elderly who are sick.

 

In the U.S., over 41 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines were administered from December 14, 2020, through February 7, 2021. During this time, 1,170 reports of death (0.003%) among people who received the vaccine. On examination, none of the deaths has been attributed to the vaccine. I think the message is that .003 percent of any group of 41 million will perish in a two-month period, and/or that vaccinating the very ill might speed their dying.

 

I guess there are still a few who believe that it’s all a big hoax, a plot to sell vaccines, or to promote the work and wealth of Bill Gates. But they are quieter now, and from press reports, the skeptical of all kinds are quietly taking their places in line and getting their shots.

 

I got my first shot last week, joining farmers and teachers, old friends and newcomers, Republicans and Democrats, at Cloverleaf Hall, where a joyful group of professionals and volunteers efficiently moved us towards immunity. I invite my “younger” friends and neighbors to get in line and grow Wallowa County’s herd of the immune. 

 

# # #

 

 

90. The Race(s)

Yesterday’s news of anti-vaccine protesters at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles follows on the Capitol siege and a year of sporadic resistance to safeguards against C0vid-19—and denials from partial to total about the virus itself. The California story is notable, because California is a Blue state with Democrats in control of most reins of government—and because California will soon eclipse New York as the state with the most Covid deaths. 

I wait my turn—my appointment is for Tuesday, February 9—to get my own vaccination, and watch the daily numbers of Covid positives among the 7,000 of us here in Wallowa County, Oregon. We’ve been a poster community, our schools up and running, our hospital and health care system on top of testing and tracking, and the rush of summer tourists apparently unable to bring us the virus. We’ve not been affected by the church outbreak in nearby La Grande, or by the relentless numbers of positives in Umatilla County to the west. But recently, in the last week, daily numbers of positives in Wallowa County moved from 0 to 1 with the very occasional 2, to daily positives with a high of 5. 

 

It feels like I am—we are—in a race to get our vaccinations as the virus finally makes its way through the long windy road from La Grande, or up and down Rattlesnake Grade from Lewiston, Idaho (a state with recent jumps in cases and deaths amid protests at masking and distancing). There are only two roads in and out in the winter, with one more open just a few months each year. We wait—and watch the Idaho license plates on Main Street and the daily numbers from the Oregon Health Authority (1 on Friday; 3 yesterday) against the days we get vaccinated and the weeks before efficacy. 

 

The country too is in a race, on one side the protestors, naysayers and deniers, who are wary of coronavirus vaccines, or don’t believe in vaccines at all, or who believe that the virus itself is a concocted story promulgated by Democrats or aliens. On the other side are the hundreds of thousands of health care workers who continue to risk their own lives to stop this thing; the survivors mourning lost relatives; the children and grandchildren who have parents and grandparents like me, 78 years old and in good health but nevertheless deemed “at risk”; and the new Biden administration and its efforts to get a grip on the pandemic and move on to the economy and climate change. 

 

# # #

88. Memory break

I know that it was 10:00 a.m. on a Wednesday in February, and I think it was in 1988. It was cold and the sky was magnificent—like today’s sky.  

Gerry McNamee walked into the small corner of Ralph Swin hart’s engineering office on Enterprise’s Main Street—where I shared Ralph’s computer and managed my new Pika Press publishing company and started dreaming a new thing called Fishtrap. (Pika Press stumbled on for a few years, publishing a few books that did not become best sellers but pleased some local history buffs and baking enthusiasts; Fishtrap lives on.) Gerry said it was a fine day to go ice skating on Wallowa Lake. 

 

So, we did go ice skating on Wallowa Lake. Out of the car at the foot of the Lake, we toted skates to the frozen shore. It was a beautiful day—the temperature must have been in the single digits; the sun had climbed over the East Moraine, and there was a fine layer—maybe a quarter inch—of hoar frost on the ice-covered lake. We tied on our skates, pulled on our mittens and pulled down our stocking caps—and glided off.

 

I learned to skate young in Minnesota, but we moved to California when I was ten and I’d not made the transition to roller skates (this before the aligned single rollers, when roller skates were clunky, many wheeled things you strapped to shoes).  I’d taken it up again after moving to Wallowa County in 1971, but was only a workmanlike skater. I was not graceful skating backward and making sharp turns skate over skate. 

 

But on that Wednesday on Wallowa Lake Gerry and I were speedskaters. We headed for the broken topped pine a mile or two up the eastern shore. We swung our arms and listened to the swoosh of skates through frost on ice. I don’t think we stopped for breath until we reached that goal. Then we laughed and chortled at our private pleasure. No one else in the County, no one else in the whole world was there that day to earn that pleasure. 

 

Gerry’s gone now; I’d be afraid to get on skates at the Lake—though I might risk it on a small rink with side rails to catch me. But the mind and memory are sometimes wonderful, and on this cold Thursday in 2021 I can still hear the swish of four skates and see a glorious grin on Gerry McNamee’s face the day we skated the Lake alone. 

 

# # #

77. The Island

A friend who lives in two places—here and in the Willamette Valley—writes from Corvallis that everyone there is wearing masks. He remembers that many here were/are not. 

First, I’d say that most of us in Wallowa County are wearing masks when we are inside at a store or school or even walking into a restaurant. There are the occasional defiant ones, who must get some pleasure from stepping into the post office or walking the aisles of Safeway mask-less. But the banks and vet clinic don’t even open their doors; you use the drive-thru or call from the parking lot where the masked vet or an assistant comes to see your dog, cat, or horse, and, if necessary, take the animal inside while you wait outside. 

 

Second, we truly are blessed to live parts or most of our lives outside. I walk and ride my bike every day, swim in the summer. And a lot of my neighbors are out walking, biking, hiking, skiing and snowmobiling. Many work outside on farms, ranches, logging and highway crews, and construction sites. One of the reasons most of us live here is to live a good portion of our lives outside.

 

Third, when we are inside, the waiting rooms, market aisles, and church pews are just not as crowded as they are in the city and suburbia. There are no mega churches, cineplexes, or malls; you have to stop outside to go from one store to the next.

 

So far, Wallowa County has been remarkably clear of the coronavirus. We cannot quite count on fingers and toes, but we’ve not hit 100. A truck driver friend thinks he picked it up at a Umatilla County truck stop. Umatilla has food processing plants, and field crews that crowd into crummies to and from work. 

 

Schools here are in session, and when a local student picked up the virus at a party in nearby Union County, the school shut down, his immediate classmates quarantined, they scrubbed the school, and are now happily back in session. And my grandson unwittingly brought it back from Portland, but saw no one else here before being tested and quarantined.  Our health system jumps on these things.

 

The trick here is steady as she goes—that most of us keep wearing our masks and living outside as much as we can, and then line up for our vaccinations. I don’t know what to say about Corvallis or Portland. 

 

# # #

57. It’s Serious

The death counts for the coronavirus keep going up. Only two in Wallowa County, but now more than 70 total positive tests—and I can name seven of them! Our state’s new cases topped 1000 two days running, and Governor Brown has mandated a partial closedown. Nationally, they are remaking charts, as we are approaching 200,000 new cases each day. The American Covid-19 death toll will soon pass a quarter million. 

 

The numbers are slippery, but somewhere between 100 and 130 Secret Service officers and agents tested positive or are quarantined due to contact—this after accompanying the campaigning president around the country in the weeks before the election. The crowds were largely unmasked, as they were at the White House election eve party that has become a “super-spreader.” 

 

There is no doubt in my mind that the president and his staff were banking on electioneering to highlight his personal vigor and victory over Covid—and to portray Biden as a sissy resorting to masks, campaigning “from the basement.” They bet that the numbers would not go up until after the election. They won that part of the bet!

 

So how do we now, with all numbers in all states spiraling upward, convince those who have not taken Covid-19 seriously to realize that this is real, that masks work, and that any real economic recovery must look for a time when we are all safe together. How do we depoliticize masks and social distancing, help churchgoers intent on crowded indoor services realize that waiting and caring for a few weeks is going to be better for them and their churches tomorrow. How do we convince college students that parties that spread disease are not cool, that if they want to be able to party next year they’d do well to drop party from this year’s vocabulary. How do we convince deniers that people get very sick and die from this coronavirus? 

 

I’m over 70 and I’ve been exposed. Quarantining now but feeling find. If it’s the same next week it will be because I had a mask on at the time of exposure. That mask, and the one that my infected grandson wore, might have saved my life. 

 

Let’s save more lives, wear our masks and remind others to wear theirs, keep our distances, support our restaurants buying takeout, Zoom our Rotary meetings and make the contributions we can to those most impacted by this very serious disease. It’s not politics; it’s health.

 

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53. Surge

Yesterday, Election Day, there were 108,000 new Covid-19 cases and 1201 deaths recorded in the United States. Oregon numbers continued to climb—near 600 cases again, and rural counties, long quiet in this pandemic, are showing upticks. Wallowa County recorded three new cases yesterday. The Wallowa School is still half shut down due to at least one official and more unofficial cases.

 

Why? Is this a normal uptick with colder weather and more indoor activity? Are immune systems compromised with fall colds and flus partially to blame? Is back to college—and back to school—responsible for moving it around? Could all of the close gatherings around electioneering and the election have contributed? 

 

I will remind people that in 1918, when the Spanish Flu, or Influenza, was circling the globe and the Great War was coming to its awful conclusion, war’s end in the fall of that year sparked a huge wave of disease and death in this country and across the world. The virus, which had baffled health experts on all sides of the war and in non-combatant countries, gathered strength in fall, worked its destruction in league with pneumonia and other diseases, and exploded with the celebrations of war’s end. 

 

US citizens danced in the streets after the November 11, 1918—some irony in the date—signing of a peace treaty. Soldiers came home, loved ones went to meet, and the virus danced the people towards 600,000 American deaths. Masks, quarantines, and other measures that had been carefully put in place to slow the disease in its earlier days were abandoned with relief from a greater evil—or so the people thought. 

 

What do we do? Common sense and the experts tell us to: ONE, wear masks; TWO, keep our distances; and THREE, restrict our travel. For the next three weeks, citizens in Greece will have to announce intentions by cell phone before leaving their homes! Let’s not go there. 

 

But let’s do the obvious, and now that the election is over, can we take all of the politics out of it?

 

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50. Seven friends and my own fears

As of now, 44 people in Wallowa County have tested positive for Covid-19. Six of them are people I know as friends; that number could be higher. All have been hit recently, and again, as far as I know, only one hospitalized and all OK. The seventh friend is a woman who used to live here and now lives in Bend; she was seriously ill and unconscious in the first spring round of Covid. 

About thee weeks ago I woke up in the middle of the night and stumbled into the bathroom. My head was spinning, as it sometimes does when I just bounce to my feet too fast, but this time it wouldn’t stop spinning. I got back to bed and made it back to a fitful sleep, woke early and stumbled through the day with what felt like a hangover. 

 

And I started thinking, going through the signs of Covid. I didn’t have a cough, I didn’t have a sore throat or trouble breathing. I went on my morning bike ride and found that I could smell the fall leaf turnings and chimney smoke; I recalled tasting the morning coffee. 

 

But even then I began cataloging the people I had been in contact with: co-workers; old Peace Corps friends who had parked their RV in my driveway overnight a few days prior; people in stores…. 

 

* * *

 

My friend Bob announced his contagion on Facebook, said that he was generally careful about masking and distancing, but had made a trip out of the county and been careless. And brought it home. Another friend is announcing on Facebook, and others are self-quarantining.

 

It strikes me that this Covid must be working its way into the minds of many Americans as it has mine. And that others are rejecting it wholesale with denial. 

 

Caution is prudent, but we cannot be personally immobilized. I have fear for us, and hope that we continue to act prudently. But I have fear of deniers. People hold onto incorrect beliefs tenaciously, and deal with realities by irrationalities, raising their voices and trumpeting their denial. 

 

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48. A Good Day

The days are definitely getting shorter—and colder. We’ve had soft freezes a few nights; next week temperatures are due to drop to the mid-20s. Serious fall, but it’s October, and bright sunny days sometimes wake after those cold nights.

Friday was like that, with afternoon temperatures all the way to the mid-60s. Enough reason, some thought, to have a late afternoon-early evening gathering in my font yard. I called and texted, and said I’d light a fire, order up a pizza, and see what people could conjure out of their kitchens. 

A dozen of us spread—not huddled—around a fine small fire, distanced and unmasked, taking advantage of our great outdoors. We put the pizza, beer and wine, a cake, quiche, chips and an assortment of plums and apples on a table and took our turns feeding and drinking, moving chairs to make small conversations with one group and then another.

The talk was of hikes, ski-times, places we like in the Wallowas, people we like who weren’t here—some gone all together. Horace Axtell, the Nez Perce elder most of us had seen and heard often enough to bring a smile at the mention of his name and his stories, is gone. We noted that. Our sculptor had sold a piece and someone brought me a birthday fabric hanging. 

I’d had a birthday earlier in the week, when the weather was snotty—so this was one excuse for the Friday gathering. But mostly it was friends jumping on a fine October day to see each other—and maybe forget about the disease and politics that has dogged us for months. 

We hadn’t counted on the sunset, but the streaks of red wove in and through clouds across most of the coming night sky. That took up some conversation, and an I-Phone image of it the next day confirmed its brilliance.

These one-minute-on-the-pandemic musings let me let off steam and get my insightful insights out to friends. But they’re also becoming a kind of diary, and somewhere out there, when this pandemic and all the strange accompanying aberrations of whatever normal behaviors were seven months ago are forgotten—or have become permanent, they’ll be reminders of my life journey as it slides into its 79th year.

I wanted Friday in that memory book.

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43. Small is Beautiful

Maybe it was luck that made me stay in a small town; maybe it was the whisper of the Creator. But time and circumstance, the circle of friends, and growing knowledge that the Nez Perce left this place physically but not spiritually, have kept me here in the Wallowa Country—two million acres of canyons, mountains, rivers, wheat and hay fields, and four small towns. There are about 7,000 of us living here most of the year. The place swells in summer with second-homers and tourists. And this year, after the coronavirus shut-down eased up enough for measured travel, a trickle, and then a surge of visitors wanting to take masks off and breathe mountain air. 

They come from Portland and Seattle, but the license plates now show New York, Arizona, and Florida as well. And of course California. Some are retired—a band of RVers met at Wallowa Lake pledged to follow the Trail to Bear’s Paw, Montana, where the non-Treaty Nez Perce finally stopped in their flight towards Canada. Others come with children and grandchildren, looking for some normalcy in an altered world.

Our schools have carefully reopened—with real classes and classrooms. There are masks and adaptations, but it is real enough for a few new students who have grandparents here, or a single mom fleeing a hard work-school situation in the city.

Colby College in Main—1800 students—has reopened too, in much the same way. They made the national news, with a president who said we can do this, must do this to keep educating young men and women. We’ll test and distance, he said, and have smaller classes. The student body president said that partiers who can’t live with the rule of no more than ten in a class or social group just have to leave. In 1973, E.F. Schumacher's wrote Small is Beautiful, denouncing the “economics of giantism and automation.” Wealth does not mean happiness, he said. Work and life should be at a human scale.  Economic systems should provide space for human interaction; no city should have more than 500,000 people. 

Schumacher cautioned about globalization and the depletion of natural resources, wanted economies built on sustainability rather than growth. Cities that grow like fungus, airports that shuttle millions daily, factories that “assemble” parts from many directions to make cars and televisions that scoot along spider networks of international distribution, do not make us happier. 

And all those growth and speed things built for people are good for the growth and transportation of viruses too.

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37. 1950s Redux

The surge in outdoor recreation and people from cities and suburbs looking for a rural home is not just happening in Wallowa County. Oregon parks, trails, and beaches are busy across the state. In our county, people are taking up primary residence in second homes, and real estate sales and construction is booming. 

Megan McArdle writes in the Washington Post, September 5, that we are not alone, and then she warns of a disastrous side effect:

“The housing market tells a story of two Americas. One has the educated and professional classes, most of whom can work from home. They’re breaking leases to move to the suburbs or the country; trading up to bigger places; taking advantage of low interest rates to refinance; building additions for the new home office.

“The other America has the people whose job requires their physical presence. Many are out of work and worried about how to pay their rent or mortgage; those who still have jobs are stuck in place and worried about getting covid-19.”

There are echoes of the post WW 2 housing boom and growth of suburbs. WW 2 vets and the GI bill, which provided government aid for schooling and housing, fueled that boom. It was abetted by the mechanization of agriculture—fewer people needed on the farms—and by the fact that millions of American men had seen Paris and San Diego, and weren’t interested in going back to the farm. Women too—over 300,000 served in the Armed Forces and an estimated six million went to work during the war in factories and other jobs previously held by men.  They too, were ready for something different—and often crushed at having to leave jobs they’d done well and would have liked to have continued.

Come the suburb. Levittown, Pennsylvania, a brand new and completely planned community, was the iconic suburb, but it was followed by usually tract developments—houses in one or a few plans, turned left and right—across the country.

The Federal Government chipped in with new water and sewer money, while it failed to provide funds for rebuilding aging infrastructure in the cities, and lo, the urban ghetto. 

I don’t know which way post-Covid housing and migration will go, but there is an eerie echo here of economic and racial divides—already in place—about to explode. 

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29. Surrounded

We’ve been feeling pretty smug and safe in Wallowa County; 18 Covid-19 cases, one death, but... 

Umatilla County, our next but one neighbor to the west, is now the hot spot in the state, with over 2100 cases and 26 deaths as of yesterday. Oregon Health says that testing in that county is running at 18% positive. The big outbreaks have been at a WalMart Distribution Center and at several food processing plants, and the daily tick-ups of 50-100 cases has caused the Governor to send Umatilla County all the way back to “Go”—that’s before stage 1 reopening!

Umatilla is just the other side of Union County, which had the Covid spotlight for a time when a church chose to ignore guidelines and spawned over 200 infected parishioners. Union has settled down, but we share State Highway 82 with them, and they are linked by Interstate 84 with Pendleton, and Portland, Umatilla, Morrow (more outbreaks), and Multnomah counties. 

If you head east from La Grande, you’ll hit Idaho. Blaine County (Sun Valley) was an early Idaho leader, but they’ve given way to Boise (a four-hour drive from us), now with over 8000 Covid cases, and to Lake Coeur d’Alene, four hours north of us in Kootenai County, which counts over 1600 cases. 

At home, we’ve learned that four people who do not list Wallowa County as their home have tested positive for Covid-19 this week. They are not included in the Oregon Health Authority’s Wallowa County count, because the Health Authority keeps track of these things by “county of residence.”

So here we are, tucked against the Snake River on the east, counting license and car dealer plates from Idaho and Washington north and south, and from Florida, Arizona, Texas, California, Georgia, and other Covid spots across the land. Our state and Forest Service campgrounds, Wallowa Lake beaches, and outdoor restaurants are full. We wonder when a disease that doesn’t worry about home addresses will jump from tourist to local, or will ride in with one of our own now visiting friends and family in Texas or Idaho.

Wear my mask. Keep my distance. Stay outside. My mantras.

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