The Daily Sentinel, July 30, on chronic wasting disease in Colorado:

Colorado Parks and Wildlife has a plan to stem the spread of chronic wasting disease.

If you’re not a hunter, you may not know what chronic wasting disease is. It’s a form of prion disease, which is always fatal to those infected. Among other prion diseases are scrapie in sheep and goats, mad cow disease in cows and Creutzfeld-Jakob Disease in humans.

Chronic wasting disease affects deer, elk, reindeer and moose. The Sentinel’s Dennis Webb broke down the prevalence in Colorado herds, including a 10-fold increase in the White River mule deer herd that has wildlife officials - and Meeker-area hunters - alarmed.

According to the Centers for Disease Control, scientists believe CWD proteins (prions) “likely spread between animals through body fluids like feces, saliva, blood, or urine, either through direct contact or indirectly through environmental contamination of soil, food or water. Once introduced into an area or farm, the CWD protein is contagious within deer and elk populations and can spread quickly.”

No cases have been reported of CWD spreading to humans, but as Webb noted, some research suggests it can infect primates that eat meat from infected animals or come into contact with brain or body fluids from infected deer or elk.

So, wildlife officials recommend testing harvested carcasses. In some areas where prevalence is high, testing is mandatory, but free. But testing can be done regardless of harvest location for a $25 cost subsidized by the agency. There’s a whole bevy of protocols for field dressing animals and disposing of animal parts, too.

Hunters, of course, know all this. They’ve been dealing with CWD since the early 2000s. But as prevalence rates go up, hunters seemed to be getting more alarmed. The senior wildlife biologist for the northwest area told Webb that a number of hunters in the Meeker area have indicated they want the agency to be proactive about the disease, even if it reduces hunting quality in the short term.

The agency’s response plan is to target adult males, or bucks, which become infected at higher rates than young deer and does. The plan calls for using hunter harvest management as needed.

Mandatory testing of White River herd bucks in 2017 showed a 15.3% prevalence of CWD, compared to just 1.3% in 2003.

This is scary stuff. Wildlife officials want to get the prevalence rate below 5%. Rates greater than that seem to cause exponential damage, making it difficult to manage herd health and numbers and attract hunters, which figure prominently into containing the spread of chronic wasting disease.

Wildlife officials cannot relish talking about chronic wasting disease, but they have been honest about the extent of the problem and what they plan to do about it. It’s important for the public to understand the plan so that it can see whether it’s working - though that’s expected to take years. Meanwhile, hunters can’t be too careful with precautions.

Editorial: https://bit.ly/2ZnY3Rt

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The Pueblo Chieftain, July 30, on Pueblo County tax to fund new jail:

For the third time in six years, Pueblo County leaders are going to try to convince voters to approve a tax increase to cover the cost of building a new jail. The previous efforts in 2015 and 2017 failed at the ballot box. To get a different outcome this fall, county officials will need to change their approach.

The county actually is planning to put two issues on the November ballot. One would raise the county sales tax rate by a small amount - currently, 0.39% is what’s being discussed - while the other would decrease the marijuana excise tax to 3% from 5%, while raising the marijuana retail sales tax to 6% from 3.5%.

If voters approve both tax increases, the general sales tax money would be used to finance the cost of a new jail while the marijuana sales tax money would be used to pay for scholarships, contributions to nonprofit organizations and some capital expenses. However, if the general sales tax increase is defeated but the marijuana sales tax increase is approved, then some of the marijuana money would be used to cover the costs of a new jail.

If all that sounds a little complicated, it is. And there are some uncertainties that aren’t being addressed as part of the county’s twin spending proposals.

For example, county officials haven’t identified a site where the new jail would be located. They’ve said they don’t want the new facility to be constructed Downtown, but that leaves a lot of real estate where it could go. Historically, voters haven’t looked too favorably on plans that lack specificity.

Then there’s the issue with the marijuana tax money. If the overall sales tax increase fails but the marijuana sales tax increase is approved, that wouldn’t provide enough money on its own to cover the debt service on a new jail, which is expected to cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $115 million to $141 million. Where will the rest of the money come from? County officials haven’t said yet.

In addition to those addressing those loose ends, county officials will need to sharpen their message as to why the new jail is needed.

Some of our citizens have said they don’t want to spend more tax money to coddle criminals. But that’s not why a new jail is needed.

First of all, it’s important to remember that most inmates in the jail are awaiting trial, which means they haven’t been convicted of criminal activity. They shouldn’t be locked away under inhumane conditions while they’re under the presumption of innocence.

Also, the overcrowding at the jail poses a risk not only to inmates, but the guards and other staff who work there.

But if neither of those arguments is compelling, consider that some low-level offenders currently are going free because there’s no room for them at the jail. True, these are offenders accused of committing what are generally considered to be “petty” crimes, but no crime is petty if you’re the victim.

Pueblo County officials would have a better chance of success with these ballot initiatives if they could convince their counterparts in city government to support them as well. After all, as Sheriff Kirk Taylor has pointed out, a majority of the inmates at the jail are accused of crimes committed within the city limits.

Convincing people to support tax increases is never easy. However, the need for a new jail is there. County and city leaders just need to come up with an effective strategy for explaining that to their constituents.

Editorial: http://bit.ly/317Sibc

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The Sentinel Colorado, July 24, on needless ambulance rides:

The health care system in Colorado, just like those across the nation, is rife with waste, inconsistency, absurdity and greed.

Aurora gets an “A” for absurdity in the case of expensive ambulance runs at Anschutz medical campus.

A recent Sentinel Colorado story by reporter Quincy Snowdon revealed that Aurora firefighters are called to the Anschutz campus hundreds of times a year to wastefully drive people, clearly in a non-emergency condition, a few hundred feet to nearby hospital admitting entrance, creating a massive, needless expense that taxpayers and consumers ultimately pay for.

Since 2015, Aurora firefighters - many of whom are also trained paramedics - have responded to the medical campus doctor offices, clinics and other facilities more than 1,400 times, according to The Sentinel story.

It’s almost a call a day. The calls often come from medical officials and result in a patient, often not facing an emergency situation, being taken for an exorbitantly expensive ambulance ride for a few hundred feet to UCHealth’s Anschutz Inpatient Pavilion at 12605 E. 16th Ave.

More than half of all calls through June to the campus have been to the Day Resource Center, which provides a variety of homeless services in a building that used to serve as a gym for the Aurora Police Department, according to the story.

“We take people downstairs, out to the ambulance, and drive them to the other side of the building - literally,” Aurora firefighter Vance Maune told The Sentinel. “And then that patient incurs a huge expense from that.”

Ambulance rides start at about $1,500. Aurora fire officials say they’re committed to roll them and teams of firefighters out when nurses or aides call 911 to get a patient transported from one part of the campus to another.

Deputy City Manager Jason Batchelor said, “There are some concerns there about an appropriate allocation of resources.”

There needs to be action. While campus officials have worked to create a new system that would allow far less expensive and critical systems than Aurora firefighters and pricey private or public ambulances to transport patients, changes have been delayed, according to campus officials.

These are the kind of regular irregularities that drive up the cost of health care out of reach for a growing number of Coloradans.

Gov. Jared Polis has created a new office cheekily dubbed, “Office of Saving People Money on Health Care.”

The office is headed up by Lt. Gov. Dianne Primavera. This looks to be a perfect case to scrutinize and find a way to expedite a solution and ensure similar waste isn’t occurring elsewhere in Colorado.

It’s critical that Polis, state lawmakers and health care industry officials look at inherent and massive structural flaws in the health care system in an effort to finally bring some kind of universal health care to Colorado. But all principles in the issue must search and solve relativity problems, like needless ambulance rides, that collectively do as much harm to health care consumers as do big philosophical defects.

Editorial: http://bit.ly/313dC1t

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