What breaks as it first comes out

California Matters

California gets small share of infrastructure legislation

California will receive about $45.5 billion from the infrastructure improvement legislation that Congress recently approved, which sounds like a lot of money.

In fact, it’s the largest share of the $1.2 trillion program of any state and President Joe Biden DAN WALTERS wants Californians to be appreciative.

“The historic Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act will make life better for millions of California residents, create a generation of good-paying union jobs and economic growth and position the United States to win the 21st century,” the White House said in a statement detailing the state’s share.

Gov. Gavin Newsom echoed the White House, saying, “This historic infrastructure package stands to accelerate investments in our clean transportation infrastructure, help mitigate some of the worst impacts of climate change and accelerate new projects that will create thousands of jobs.”

Virtually every Democratic member of Congress from California issued a similarly upbeat statement predicting that the new federal funds would have a transformative impact.

From a relative standpoint, however, California’s allocation is SUMMARY small. At just more than $1,200 per Californian, it’s one of the lowest California gets $45.5 billion from of any state. States the new federal with relatively small populations, such as Alaska and Vermont, infrastructure program, but it’s benefi t the most on a per- small potatoes in resident basis. Two-thirds of a relative sense. California’s share, about $30 billion over fi ve years, is reserved for repairing roads, highways and bridges and we can certainly use it because, as the White House breakdown observes, “For decades infrastructure in California has su ered from a systemic lack of investment.”

Our highways rate at or near the bottom vis-à-vis those of other states simply because ever since the 1960s, governors and legislators have been unwilling to impose the taxes on motorists to keep what was once the nation’s best roadway network in good repair.

Four years ago, then-Gov. Jerry Brown and legislators passed a $5.4 billion per year package of taxes and fees to slow the system’s deterioration but while it narrowed the gap, it did not close it. The new injection of federal money will be welcome, but will fall short of doing what’s needed to restore our roadways to their previous levels.

Another $9.45 billion (over fi ve years) is ticketed ■ See WALTERS, page A5

Letters to the Editor

Outrageous park lights

EDITOR:

The El Dorado Hills Community Services District installed 50-foot, stadium-style lights in the new Heritage Village Park. The CSD has refused to remove these horrendous lights. The board has indicated that they are in favor of lighting up existing parks in El Dorado Hills. Be vigilant and monitor the CSD’s intentions for parks in your neighborhoods.

BONNIE BERGNER El Dorado Hills

COVID-19 data

EDITOR:

This is in reference to Garry M. Silvey’s Oct. 20 letter concerning the incidence of cases, hospitalizations and deaths in individuals who had and had not been vaccinated against COVID19. Silvey referenced a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that summarizes weekly incidences per 100,000 population. The letter writer claimed that providing the incidences in this way is misleading and that they should instead be expressed in terms of percent of the total population.

Thus, instead of a death rate of 1.1/100,000 population for unvaccinated individuals, it should be expressed as a 0.0011% and instead of 0.1/100,000 for vaccinated individuals, it should be expressed as 0.0001%. He claimed this is a better way of expressing incidences because it shows that the numbers are so low the di erence between the two is insignifi cant.

Let’s look at these numbers in more detail. These incidences compute to 3,630 deaths per week for unvaccinated and 330 deaths per week for vaccinated individuals in a U.S. population of 330 million. (These are uncertain numbers because the data are derived from 13 jurisdictions that may or not be representative of the overall population, but that is not important for the purpose of this comparison.) No one could argue that this di erence is insignifi cant.

Mr. Silvey also presented the incidence of death caused by the vaccine, which he cited as 0.0018% (5,940 individuals in the U.S.). This incidence was taken from the CDC Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System. He does not give the time period, but if it is from the onset of vaccinations it would be a period of nine to 10 months, during which time hundreds of thousands of people have died of the disease. One thing that should be said about VAERS is that it is a passive system and most deaths observed shortly after taking the vaccine are almost certainly from other causes.

The purpose of this letter is not to refute the numbers provided by Mr, Silvey, but to concur with the CDC that incidences per 100,000 that it provides are much better at risk communication than percentage of the population as provided by Mr. Silvey. Such low numbers look insignifi cant to the average person even though they are not when applied to a large population.

JOHN HERRMAN Placerville

Headline correct

EDITOR:

In Scott Taylor’s recent letter regarding the recent devastating fi res his headline was “It is the environmentalists’ fault.”

While his letter disagreed with his headline, his headline was spot on. There is so much these armchair foresters don’t understand.

The U.S. Forest Service is under the Department of Agriculture for a reason — trees are a crop. National forests are not a park. Frivolous lawsuits by so called environmentalists and scientifi c hoaxes like the spotted owl have e ectively neutered our timber industry. Closed and abandoned mills are everywhere with one here in Camino.

How timber is harvested is, to an extent, determined by species. If you have lodgepole pine and want to get it back when you harvest it, you must clear cut. Most other pines can be both clear or selective cut. Firs must be selective cut in order to get a healthy fi r forest back.

In a Forest Service selective cut I participated in before this environmental madness ended proper management, we cruised and marked a proposed timber sale for a 30% harvest. Two-thirds of the mature trees would still be standing after the sale and harvest. Not only would this make the forests more healthy and easier to fi ght fi res in, the roads the timber companies make to facilitate their harvest are invaluable when it comes to getting heavy equipment in to e ectively fi ght a fi re.

Thinning is an important part of the mix; however, like trimming a lawn, it doesn’t replace mowing GEORGE ALGER Placerville

The Rural Life

Superbugs, meet the wonder worms coming for you

OK, so I was wrong. My June 2014 column ranting about fl ies was way o base — or at least part of it was — and I want to correct the record.

I was right, mind you, that fl ies spread disease, torment livestock and picnickers and contaminate our food (by pooping and vomiting on it).

But I was wrong about the loathsomeness of maggots, the “infant” stage of a fl y’s life. My column blasted these worms, calling them the “most revolting of creatures.” I went on to say that despite the whole circle of life thing, our world would likely be better o without fl ies and their nasty brood.

And that’s where I was dead wrong.

Turns out maggots are nearly miraculous in their ability to heal chronic wounds — yes, on humans. The tiny larvae even kill bacterial strains of di cult-to-treat infections, including the dreaded fl esh-eating MRSA (methicillin-resistant

Staphylococcus aureus ). Maggots as a wound dressing? It’s actually not a new thing, but there’s been a resurgence of interest in it just lately because of the troubling rise of antibiotic resistance — more on that in a moment. I know — the thought JENNIFER FORSBERG of maggots crawling in human fl esh is just MEYER short of horrifying. But consider that the fi rst recorded instance of maggots as a “treatment” occurred as far back as the 1800s. Field surgeons in Napoleon’s army noticed that wounded soldiers with blowfl y infestations actually survived better than those without. Napoleon’s surgeon general went on to report that the maggots devoured the dead, decaying tissue, enabling the wounds to heal. Field doctors in our own Civil War actually placed maggots in soldiers’ festering wounds. We now know that the worms did more than just remove the necrotic tissue; they also killed o pathogens with their anti-bacterial saliva — a trait that evolved to help the larvae survive in the microbe-infested environment of rotting fl esh.

Maggots were documented to aid the survival of badly wounded World War I soldiers, too; after that the use of medicinal maggots moved into civilian practice. They proved especially useful in fi ghting osteomyelitis, a deep bone infection that often becomes chronic. In fact, by the early 1930s, more than 300 U.S. hospitals were routinely using maggots in wound care.

The discovery of penicillin and other antibiotics, which occurred at about this same time, enabled medical science to move away from the use of maggots. This suited some practitioners — and most patients — just fi ne, considering the ick factor. After that, maggot therapy remained at a low tide for the next four decades.

But when antibiotic resistance emerged in the 1980s, the medical world again turned to the humble little worms for help with intractable infections. A recent episode of “Science Friday” on National Public Radio explained that researchers are exploring the full use of maggots to treat a range of chronic wounds like diabetic foot ulcers, venous leg ulcers, gangrenous bed sores and burns.

“What maggots can do within three days is what sometimes takes years of time to achieve with other therapies,” a biomedical researcher told Science Friday. The larvae don’t bite or chew on the wound, but rather “secrete enzymes, like little chemical scissors, which break down the dead tissue into a soup [which] they drink.”

Medical maggots of the common green-bottle fl y are now being specially bred for this purpose. Newborn maggots, smaller than a grain of rice, may be placed directly on a wound or they may work their magic from within a “BioBag,” which uses a permeable foam layer to separate them from the wounded tissue.

It all sounds wonderfully benefi cial, especially considering how antibiotic resistance is eroding the e ectiveness of drug therapy in fi ghting infections. Amazingly, maggots can even adapt in real time to create their own new defenses against germs, so they don’t eventually stop working the way antibiotics often do.

Yet … there’s still that ick factor. Historically, it’s been so strong that it causes some patients to feel they’d prefer amputation to maggot treatment.