When I called Grande Ronde Hospital, La Grande, on Friday, Aug. 13, to speak with a specialist, no one was available. I was told that everyone was “upstairs with COVID patients.”

Jackson County has run out of beds and they’re turning away surgical patients. They went from 99 cases on July 4 to 655 cases in one month — 0 to 60 in no time flat.

The National Guard is being sent to 20 hospitals across Oregon to help with logistics. The president and chief executive officer of St. Charles Health System in Bend thanked Gov. Brown for that help, saying that the “stress on Oregon hospitals was unprecedented.”

Here’s the reality — the virus is calling the shots, not the governor.

The Oregon Health Authority makes recommendations about what steps should be taken and that’s what happens next. Propaganda on Facebook downplaying the severity of the virus, asking people to ignore vaccination and attacking the governor is very destructive. It has cost lives and it will cost more, including young people. That’s already happened. My recommendation is simple — get off of Facebook now to keep the poison from spreading.

There is no freedom without responsibility, including responsibility to the others around you. Anyone who doesn’t understand that should step aside. All of our community leaders, political, religious and those involved in health care, need to come forward with one voice and state clearly and publicly that we all need to get vaccinated. That is the only thing that will keep this from wrecking our medical systems.

Please do your part.

Norm Cimon

La Grande