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Colorado Matters
March 10, 2026: Pivotal time for environmental law; Flu season check-up; A fly fishing sisterhood
00:49:25
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- [00:00]
Ryan Warner
From cpr news, this is colorado matters. Greenhouse gases are no longer a threat to your well being. According to the US Government, the Trump administration undid what's called the endangerment finding that carbon and methane endangered public health. What are the practical effects of the reversal? I'll ask an expert in natural resources law. I'll also ask if this is a terrible, terrible time to get into environmental law or the very best, then the heat is on. Oil and gas companies are gung ho for geothermal.
- [00:36]
Roland Horn
I think it's very promising to see an oil company actually jump in with a drill bit instead of standing around thinking about it.
- [00:42]
Ryan Warner
Plus, a checkup on flu season ahead of spring break.
- [00:46]
Dr. Michelle Barron
Travel is an optimal time to spread things because you're in condensed areas with
- [00:51]
Ryan Warner
lots of people and a fly fishing sisterhood. This is Colorado Matters from CPR News and KRCC. I'm Ryan Warner. U.S. climate protections are disappearing faster than the ice caps. Notably, the Trump administration has revoked the cornerstone greenhouse gas decree. The endangerment finding said methane and carbon and the like are are a threat to our health. That's now out the window. Meanwhile, fossil fuels are intertwined, certainly with military interventions in Venezuela and Iran. We're craving perspective around this moment. So we've reached Chris Winter, an expert in natural resources law at cu. Hi, Chris.
- [01:39]
Chris Winter
Good morning.
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Ryan Warner
Can you name a few practical effects of the revocation of the endangerment finding?
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Irene Rawlings
Sure.
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Chris Winter
Thank you for having me. It's nice to be here and I really appreciate you covering the story. I guess I'd like to start just by, you know, talking about the impacts of climate change here on Colorado and to all of us who live here, you know, as a headwater state, a state that straddles Continental Divide, I think all of us here in Colorado are really feeling the effects of climate change every day. We're dealing, of course, with hotter, drier conditions, increased wildfire risk, drought and challenges to water supplies. And of course, our agriculture and recreation based economies are facing some significant challenges. And so I think a lot of us come to this conversation here in Colorado with a real practical perspective on what climate change means for our way of life here in the state.
- [02:34]
Ryan Warner
And certainly the negotiations are ongoing around the Colorado river on which so many of us in the west are dependent. And so when we think of that as the backdrop to this conversation, are there real world implications of the removal of the endangerment finding on those resources in our way of life?
- [02:58]
Chris Winter
Yeah, absolutely. And I think a lot of us who have been working in this area are Very concerned about these latest developments. And. And we're also concerned about what this means for the future of all of the work that we've invested in to make progress on climate change. So the endangerment finding, the rescission of the endangerment finding that EPA just announced recently relates to the section of the Clean Air act, the federal law that regulates emissions from cars and trucks, motor vehicles. And the EPA has been regulating greenhouse gas emissions for motor vehicles under a provision of Clean Air act that was from 1970, and it authorizes EPA to regulate broadly any air pollutant associated with motor vehicles. And EPA said, oh, this gives us the authority to regulate greenhouse gases. And that authority was upheld by the Supreme Court in a key case, Massachusetts, the EPA, in 2007. And since that time, EPA has been regulating greenhouse gases from cars and trucks pursuant to the endangerment finding, which was a finding that the emissions of greenhouse gases threaten human health and welfare. And so that was the legal foundation for the EPA's authority to regulate under the 1970 Clean Air Act. And so that's really the cornerstone of the greenhouse gas program in this country that has now been rescinded by the Trump administration.
- [04:28]
Ryan Warner
This is perhaps a layman's question, but the distinction here, of course, is that carbon is not an immediate threat, if I'm inhaling it, that carbon is a threat because of its warming powers. And so I imagine there's been some evolution about what is seen as a threat, as a danger to our health, coming perhaps from transportation.
- [04:59]
Chris Winter
Yes. Yeah. And that's kind of the distinction the Trump administration is trying to pick up on. You know, greenhouse gases, of course, threaten human health and welfare because they contribute to global climate change. And we know that human health and welfare, economic prosperity, is suffering from the impacts of climate change in many, many ways. And of course, we feel that here in Colorado. And the Trump administration has really taken a very cramped and narrow view of the Clean Air act and said, oh, no, no, we're going to change the way that we look at this federal law. And really, as you just mentioned, in order for EPA to have authority regulated, it's really got to be about the impacts of somebody breathing in this pollutant directly in a local or regional setting. So that's kind of the distinction the Trump administration is trying to make. And I think many of us who have studied and worked in this area for a long time believe that that's just incorrect reading of the law, but that's kind of where we're at. And I think that's what the courts are going to have to sort out here moving forward.
- [05:57]
Ryan Warner
Okay, so this is a question that the courts will tackle. You expect this to be taken up by the judicial branch?
- [06:06]
Chris Winter
Yes, absolutely. These kinds of cases that are challenging decisions under the Clean Air act are filed directly in Washington, D.C. and the D.C. circuit Court of Appeals, so kind of skips over the trial court. The district court level goes straight to the court of appeals. And there's already been two or three lawsuits filed in the D.C. circuit Court of Appeals a couple weeks ago. And this case will most likely end up back before the Supreme Court before too long.
- [06:34]
Ryan Warner
You know, it's interesting because when the federal government changes course, it's often that states can decide whether to pick up the mantle. But it seems to me, Chris Winter at cuz, that the administration is thwarting that as well by, for instance, trying to dictate when and whether Colorado shuts down mothballs its coal plants. So can you reflect on state's ability to sort of pick up the slack here?
- [07:07]
Chris Winter
Yeah, absolutely. And I think the role of the states has always been important. And it's going to be even more important moving forward because we have an administration that is so hostile to climate action. So it's really important for Colorado to continue all of that hard work. You know, and we've made a lot of progress here in the state. We have binding targets for greenhouse gas reductions. We're trying to work towards a net zero carbon economy by 2050 here in the state of Colorado. And we've done a lot of work to decarbonize the electrical sector, the utility sector. But transportation is one of the more difficult challenges in that overall picture of decarbonization. And of course that's because it's distributed, everybody has their own car. But it's also because tailpipe emission standards are set in by federal law. And so this section of Cleaner act we've been talking about is really important because it really provides the uniformity and consistency across the country that allows the auto manufacturers basically to comply with these regulations in a way that is predictable and manageable for them. In other words, it'd be really hard to make cars that would fit different emission standards in every state across the country. So it's really important to have a uniform standard for the auto industry. And so that's really part of the challenge here from a practical level is that we need that consistency, that baseline at the federal level to really support the efforts of the auto manufacturers. And a lot of them really aren't in support of this decision from the administration. So the states are doing a lot of things and it's really important for all of us here in Colorado to support our state leaders that are continuing to do this work. But it's difficult in the face of these federal rollbacks.
- [08:56]
Ryan Warner
A man named Jeffrey Clark unexpectedly resigned from the Trump White House. This is a man who has worked for decades to reverse climate policy. I'll add that in the first administration under Trump, Clark worked in the Justice Department. Last November, the president pardoned him for his role in trying to overturn the Results of the 2020 presidential election again with as much as he focused on undoing climate policy. What do you make of Clark's departure?
- [09:25]
Chris Winter
Well, I think it's, I mean, I think it's a black mark on the Trump administration that he was allowed to have so much influence both over climate policy and of course, his role in denialism around the 2020 election. So, but that's, you know, his story is not the only one that kind of points to the fallacies of climate denialism. With respect to this most recent decision to pull back the endangerment finding, the Trump administration, you know, convened a hand picked panel of climate denialists, scientists who were still quite skeptical of the scientific consensus around climate change. And so they handpicked a group of scientific denialists to try to draft this report that would provide a technical foundation for the rescission of the endangerment finding. And at the end of the day, when EPA recently published its final rule, they had to abandon the scientific justification because it was so thoroughly discredited by the scientific community. And so that was a real, another, another black eye on the Trump administration. But I think it's, it shows that the science is clear, the scientific consensus is overwhelming. And so, you know, when the Trump administration tries to wade into the science, they just get thoroughly destroyed by, you know, the decades of scientific research that have gone into educating us on this real significant problem.
- [10:54]
Ryan Warner
Chris Winter joins us. He leads the Getches Wilkinson center for Natural Resources, Energy and Environment at CU Law. What do you make of the incursions in Venezuela and Iran to oil giants?
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Chris Winter
Yeah, it's interesting because there are so many important connections between what we're seeing around the world and internationally with our foreign policy and all of these issues that we're dealing with here domestically in terms of our environmental and natural resources policy and climate change. And so it's quite troubling because I think what we're trying to do here in Colorado and in many places is to facilitate a well planned out transition to a cleaner energy economy. And, and that's a really positive vision. And it has so many benefits, not only for the environment, but it creates jobs, it cleans up our air pollution. It's just much more sustainable. And so I think that these foreign policy developments, incursions into foreign countries, which are designed to really return us to this era of fossil fuel extraction and fossil fuel dominance, it runs directly counter to everything we're trying to do in terms of managing this transition to a clean energy economy. So I think these incidents in Venezuela and Iran are connected as well to the president's attacks on clean energy here at home. And taken together, I think it really should trouble us because those kinds of policies are going to work together over the long term to really inhibit this transition that we really should be expediting as quickly as possible. And that was really the vision behind the Inflation reduction act in 2022. And the IRA had set us on a path to more quickly engage in this clean energy transition. And now we're seeing all of those developments roll back, and it's quite troubling.
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Ryan Warner
I'm thinking about the law students who are interested in natural resources, energy and environment. Is this the best time for them to be getting into the profession or the absolute worst?
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Chris Winter
I have this conversation so, so many times with the incredible law students here at Colorado Law School, you know, which come to this institution because they have a real passion for environmental law, and they see everything that's happening around us and they are asking that exact question,
- [13:21]
Ryan Warner
and are there jobs? Are there jobs to be had? I mean, we're seeing layoffs.
- [13:26]
Chris Winter
Yes, there are absolutely jobs to be had. And certainly at the state level and local and county levels, I think some of the most interesting and important jobs are now going to be in those offices, the state attorney general offices. But, you know, what I say to law students is that this is an incredibly important moment in time for us to be investing in a new generation of leadership in the field of environmental law. And that's because things are changing so quickly, and we really need people who are smart and passionate and full of energy and that care to help us get through this difficult rethinking period. And I think there's a ton of opportunity for young people in that work, and it's certainly not easy. But this is a moment of transition, which I think for professionals is a moment of opportunity. And for all of us in the broader community, I think it's just an incredibly important moment of reflection. And, you know, most of our environmental laws were passed in the 60s and 70s. So it's fair to expect that we're going to revisit them and modernize them and improve upon them. And. And I think that this moment in time where we're struggling with a very hostile administration perhaps also gives us the impetus and the opportunity to actually go through that rethinking process in a way that hopefully will produce positive developments down the road.
- [14:43]
Ryan Warner
Interesting. You almost describe this as like a metamorphosis. Your bio says you live in Jamestown, northwest of Boulder, and that's a community, I'll note, Jamestown, that's been inundated by floods and according to the Forest Service, at highest risk for fire in the wildland urban interface. The wooey as we wrap up. Do you think you'll be able to stay in Jamestown?
- [15:11]
Chris Winter
I certainly hope so. I love Jamestown. It's such an amazing place. And, you know, my backyard backs up onto Forest Service property. There was a fire that burned through there called the overland fire in 2003, and the effects of that fire are still quite noticeable, but in many ways, it's improved the forest condition there because, of course, fire is a natural part of the landscape. So I'm optimistic, but I know we have some challenges, and so I just really appreciate that the Forest Service and our neighbors in Boulder county, you know, are committed to helping all of us continue to live in these incredible rural communities that are still close to the urban core, like Boulder and Denver. So I love it there, and I'm really hopeful that we will have a future in Georgia Jamestown with our community members.
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Ryan Warner
Are you braced for summer?
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Chris Winter
I mean, it feels like we're already in
- [16:04]
Ryan Warner
74 degree high.
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Fellow Host (interviewer with Irene Rawlings)
Yep.
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Chris Winter
Oh, it's been such a crazy year, and I think we're anxious about the fire season, but, you know, the weather around here changes quickly. Of course, we live in the mountains, and so we'll just have to wait and see. But I think, yeah, all of us are really starting to learn how to adapt to this changing climate. And so for a lot of us in Colorado, I think the most important thing we can do is focus on fortifying our homes and taking care of, you know, all of the vegetation mitigation work that we need to do and thinking about what kind of roof we have and, you know, all those important things we can do to protect our own homes and help with defensible space around our homes and communities.
- [16:42]
Ryan Warner
Chris, leave us with a source of hope right now.
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Chris Winter
Well, I mean, the source of hope for me is all the incredible people who live in Colorado and just love spending time outside and understand how important important the environment is to everything we know and love about the state. For me, that's a constant source of hope. And the law students bring that into the, into the classroom here every single day at Colorado Law School. And it's just an amazing place to spend my time. So for me, that, that gets me going every single day.
- [17:11]
Ryan Warner
Yeah. I find that when I'm around young people speaking in classrooms, for instance, that is where the hope comes from. I rarely leave feeling dim about the world. Thank you so much for your time, Chris.
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Chris Winter
Yeah, it's been my thank you so much for having me.
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Ryan Warner
Chris Winter is executive director of the Getches Wilkinson center for Natural Resources, Energy and the Environment at CU Law. Tomorrow, a climate chat with scientist and evangelical Christian Catherine Hayhoe. You may recognize her as the host of the long running series Global Weirding. She'll take us back to the 1990s, when oil companies invested big time in changing public perception.
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Catherine Hayhoe
Levels of concern about climate change were growing equally among Democrats and Republicans in the United States. And they realized that their entire business model was based on digging up, processing and selling fossil fuels that are driving the majority of climate change. So they looked around, they thought, well, what could we do to possibly delay action as long as possible to still have a few more good years? And at that time, a number of professional PR experts had just lost their jobs with the tobacco industry and were literally hired on by the fossil fuel industry to employ the same proven PR techniques, which actually proved to be much more wildly successful in delaying climate action than they were in delaying action to acknowledge the health risks of smoking.
- [18:43]
Ryan Warner
Hey, House. Now chief scientist at the Nature Conservancy. She spent some time with us during a recent visit to Colorado. Our conversation once again tomorrow on Colorado Matters from CPR News, It's Colorado Matters. From CPR News, I'm Ryan Warner. Drill rigs dot the Front Range. Typically they're for oil or gas, but a recent project in Weld county focused on a different energy source.
- [19:35]
Roland Horn
Oil companies have been kind of standing on the sideline watching geothermal. And I think it's very promising to see an oil company actually jump in with a drill bit instead of standing
- [19:45]
Ryan Warner
around thinking about it as an oil company dug into the earth. CPR climate and environment reporter Sam Brash dug into the documents to learn precisely what they were doing. Sam then spoke with Arlo Perez, Esquibel.
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Sam Brash
The company behind this is Occidental Petroleum. They're an oil and gas company most people probably know, just as oxy and starting last spring, just about a year ago, they began drilling a pair of super deep boreholes near a natural gas processing plant south of Greeley. Now, Oxy has declined multiple interview requests me asking them to talk about all this, but it's been pretty clear for a while what they're up to. They were digging experimental boreholes about four miles deep below the surface. And the goal was to test whether techniques developed by the oil and gas industry could make it cheaper and faster to drill super deep geothermal wells, which could be a potential game changer for this particular renewable energy source.
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Arlo Perez Esquibel
Okay, so when I think about geothermal energy, I think hot springs. The state has plenty of those, but that's not something that Weld county is known for. So why are they drilling there?
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Sam Brash
That's a really good question. And you're totally right. You know, traditionally geothermal power plants have been close to places like Hot Springs or places with volcanic activity like Iceland. But if you go deep enough, geothermal energy is everywhere. The deeper you go, the hotter it gets.
- [21:10]
Arlo Perez Esquibel
That makes sense.
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Sam Brash
And that's why oil and gas companies are really well positioned to start testing this theory. Here's Roland Horn, he's the director of the Stanford Geothermal Program at Stanford University, who we heard from earlier.
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Roland Horn
It's especially promising that Oxy is an oil company because they have the technology, they have the people, they have the land positions.
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Sam Brash
And it's not so much a question of whether there's heat for these companies to tap into. It's more a question of whether that can be economic to access that heat.
- [21:38]
Arlo Perez Esquibel
I want to talk about what they found. Does the drilling pencil out?
- [21:41]
Sam Brash
That's a really good question. And we don't really know right now because Oxy hasn't released its full results here. A spokesperson for Oxy did tell me in a written statement that the project quote said set new drilling milestones for Colorado. And they're now working to assess the data they collected. What we do know from permitting documents is that they drilled these two boreholes really quickly. So for a quick history lesson, during the Cold War, Soviet geologists spent almost two decades digging the COLA superdeep borehole, which went about seven and a half miles deep. These wells are about four miles deep, and Oxy managed to drill one of them in about 18 days. So really fast. Another modern comparison is Fervo, a leading geo geothermal startup. And they drilled a three mile deep hole in Utah in 16 days. So we're right in the same ballpark.
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Arlo Perez Esquibel
Yeah, 18 days is definitely much quicker. Than 20 years. So why does that speed matter?
- [22:37]
Sam Brash
It all goes back to economics. Drilling is expensive, and when you drill super deep into the earth, the heat can damage equipment. It's really just wreaks havoc on drill bits and everything like that. This is this company showing, yes, we can do it and we can do it quickly, which means we can probably do it cheaply because we don't have to have staff and equipment on site for that long. And we can do these things one after another in quick succession. Here's Michael Rigby. He's an energy transition facilitator with the Colorado Energy and Carbon Management Commission.
- [23:07]
Chris Winter
It was very much focused on how can we drill better and faster, deeper for geothermal. And in that regard, I think there's a lot of value because the faster and more efficient and cheaper you can drill, more and more projects become economic.
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Sam Brash
I should be clear, though, that just because Oxy has drilled these wells doesn't necessarily mean we're going to see geothermal power plants pop up all around the state.
- [23:31]
Arlo Perez Esquibel
Wait, why?
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Sam Brash
The question isn't just whether oil and gas companies could do this, it's whether or not they could see value in it. It's one thing to prove that geothermal is possible, and it's another to say that geothermal is promising enough that a company like Oxy or would invest in it instead of tried and true fossil fuels, which are still profitable and have been profitable for decades.
- [23:53]
Arlo Perez Esquibel
Sam, let me make sure that I'm understanding you. It sounds like this is a really interesting experiment, but to actually see that it's going to be something concrete that's yet to be seen.
- [24:01]
Sam Brash
Yeah. And I think a lot of that depends on the more detailed results that we haven't seen from Oxy just yet. That could show that this does make a lot of sense and be really revelatory in how oil and gas companies might move forward in the future and whether they see geothermal energy as a piece of what they do.
- [24:19]
Arlo Perez Esquibel
Well, I look forward to that development. Thank you so much, Sam.
- [24:21]
Sam Brash
You bet. Thank you.
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Ryan Warner
Fascinating stuff from CPR climate and environment reporter Sam Brash speaking there with Colorado Today co host Arlo Perez Esquibel. Read Sam's coverage of geothermal research@cpr.org and Colorado Matters continues in this next half hour with a checkup on flu season. I'm Ryan Warner, and you're with CPR News and krcc. This is Colorado Matters From CPR News and krcc. I'm Ryan Warner. Five children have died from the flu this season In Colorado. And with spring break coming up, the risks rise. CPR Health reporter John Daly spoke with Dr. Michelle Barron, infectious disease expert at UC Health.
- [25:05]
Dr. Michelle Barron
It's challenging in the current environment to get good information. I think that there is still a lot of confusion around what different viruses do and what the potential impact they can have. And I think, especially in when we get to respiratory viruses, I think there's a common misconception that the flu or RSV or other respiratory viruses can't actually harm someone, especially harm children. And I think it's important to get vaccinated. Flu is still circulating. Colorado is not seeing the same rate of increase in influenza b as other parts of the country. But that doesn't mean that you won't get exposed to it. We're about to go on spring break. A lot of people will be traveling. Travel is an optimal time to spread things because you're in condensed areas with lots of people. It's not too late to still get your vaccine. If you didn't get it in the fall, there's still opportunity to get it now. And the flu vaccine has been shown year after year to decrease rates of hospitalization and also decreases rates of mortality. Is it perfect? By no means, but nothing is. But it is a good way to protect yourself and your family.
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John Daly
What is it about flu that makes it so dangerous?
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Dr. Michelle Barron
Flu can. I mean, everybody that's had flu will tell you they feel systemically ill. They have body aches, they have headaches, they have, you know, walking to the bathroom is a major effort, like a lot of fatigue. And flu stimulates the immune response. And that's some of why you have all these different areas just outside of your respiratory tract that causes you to feel bad. But flu can also cause pneumonia. And because of the damage that it does to the lung tissue and to the lung filtering system puts you at high risk for bacterial infections. And that's often what we see with clinical deaths is they got the flu, and then a couple of days later, they start spiking really high fevers, or they start having really profound issues breathing. And it's usually a secondary bacterial infection.
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John Daly
So the sequence would be you catch the flu, maybe it develops into pneumonia, and then you get a secondary, like, bacterial infection, and then your body just can't fight off all of that.
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Dr. Michelle Barron
Right. There's already some little bit of damage to your lungs that normally would have been able to maybe filter some of this out. You may still get sick enough to end up in the hospital, but it causes enough damage to where the bacteria Has a lot more opportunities to cause harm than maybe they would if there were no issues.
- [27:56]
John Daly
Is flu more dangerous for children or young children than for adults?
- [28:01]
Dr. Michelle Barron
Yes. Well, it depends on the age group. So, yes, certainly young children are very vulnerable and at high risk for complications from flu, probably somewhat in due part to their immune system not being as robust as it is when they're older. And then in adults, it's the extremes of age. So the very young, the very old, when you get over 70 or sometimes over 80, the mortality associated with flu can be much higher than you see in people that are in their 20s or even in their 50s.
- [28:29]
John Daly
So in Colorado, we now have had five pediatric flu deaths this season. Three out of the five were in children under five. So does that go along with what you just said, that they're the most vulnerable? And is that because they haven't been exposed to flu before, so their body's not really ready to fight it off?
- [28:51]
Dr. Michelle Barron
Some of it is being naive. They're immune naive, and that they probably have been exposed. But also their immune system still is pretty immature. And so think of like you're training the military forces, right? You go to basic training, and they can do stuff. These are individuals that, you know, can do many things, but they. They're nowhere a Navy seal or an army ranger, right? Like, there's still ways for their immune system to mature and be able to be fully equipped to protect them. And that just. It's a time function that we all unfortunately go through in life. Not unfortunately, we fortunately go through in life, I guess.
- [29:30]
John Daly
How does the flu vaccine work in preventing flu?
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Dr. Michelle Barron
So flu vaccines contain components of the virus. It is not typically something that's going to cause you to have the flu, because I think that's a misconception. The flu itself is dead, or it's only parts of the flu virus. And it gets introduced to your system through the shot or through the nose, if you do the nasal one. And it basically activates your immune system and says, hey, we have potentially an intruder here. And then they go through their exercise, the immune system does to say, okay, we got it, we're ready, we're primed, we're trained. It's like if you wanted to use an Olympics analogy, they're ready for the Olympics. It's ready for it to come. And so then when it does enter your body, there's not a delay in. Typically a delay in the response. So it's already said, yep, we know it's that. What. What to do. We're ready to hit it hard and. But that's why you get symptoms, both sides, right? Like, people ask, why when I get a flu shot, do you sometimes get body aches or fever? And people think, oh my God, I got the flu from the flu shot. You're just having an immunologic reaction to your body, preparing for it. Not having symptoms doesn't mean your immune system didn't work. Some people are just more sensitive and more have more hyper reactions from the immune system. And then, like I said, when you start to feel sick, that fever you get is because your immune system is responding. And all the aches and other things are again, usually from your immune system sending out chemicals in the blood which make you feel bad. But the goal is to kill the virus is what it's attempting to do. Now you can have collateral damage. That's part of what happens with flu in the immune system, right? You can have very young, healthy people where the immune system is just over. It sends out the nuclear bomb instead of just sending out the, you know, frontline troops. And so when that happens, the system just, like I said, goes wild and can cause collateral damages to other organ systems outside of just the target that it was trying to go to.
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John Daly
And just to clarify, that's in reaction to getting the shot.
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Dr. Michelle Barron
That's when you get the flu itself. The shot itself is just some people have minor symptoms. And I think people then get very distressed and say, you see, I got the flu from the flu, or they do get the flu, but the shot wasn't in their system long enough to have had the effect. And again, the flu shot is not 100% preventing you from getting flu. It does decrease that risk. But really, the biggest benefit of the flu shot is that it decreases severity because your body is already primed to try and manage this. So you're less likely to end up hospitalized, and you're typically less likely to die if you already have had the flu shot and then still get the flu.
- [32:30]
John Daly
We've had a particularly bad flu season. We had a record number of hospitalizations around Christmas time. Now we've had this, you know, five pediatric deaths. Our flu vaccination numbers seem relatively low. Maybe about a third of the population. For the youngest age group, it's about 34%, the one I just checked. Is there a connection between the severity of the flu season that we're having and our rates being a vaccination being low? In other words, if our vaccination rates were better, would we have seen potentially fewer hospitalizations than and even fewer deaths really?
- [33:13]
Dr. Michelle Barron
Excellent question, and I'm not sure that I can answer it definitively. I know certainly for certain diseases, vaccines really do make a difference in terms of that threshold of having a certain amount to be protective with fluids, sometimes a little more complicated because if there's mismatches in the strains and it doesn't always account for underlying conditions as well. And so it's not a great thing that we don't have a lot of vaccines. But I don't know that we can definitively say because we've had lower vaccination rates that that's why we've had more flu hospitalizations. It's a little bit more complex than sort of one by one standard.
- [33:58]
John Daly
But your best advice for families and individuals weighing whether to get a flu shot is what?
- [34:06]
Dr. Michelle Barron
Absolutely. I'm in favor of you getting your influenza vaccine or your flu shot and any other vaccines that you're eligible for. If you don't know for sure if there's something from an allergy or just other things that you just want to understand better before getting it, talk to your provider, talk to your pharmacist. All of these people are educated and can give you hopefully the correct information. It would be wise to stay off the Internet, talk to a human only because there's so much stuff out there that is completely incorrect or partially correct but doesn't actually apply to you. And when you actually talk to your provider or your pharmacist, they can actually ask you those questions about your health or your concerns and especially when it comes to your little ones. Parents are obviously very protective of those individuals all the time because they're your kids. But it shouldn't be. You shouldn't not get a flu shot because you're worried that they're going to end up with some kind of complication. Those are rare and uncommon and again can be discussed very easily with your provider.
- [35:12]
John Daly
And the CDC says that of the children who've died from flu this season, I think the number they give is 90% were unvaccinated.
- [35:23]
Dr. Michelle Barron
Yeah, and again, that's a really unfortunate thing, but is not a complete surprise in that that protective benefit wasn't there. Does that say that if you got the flu shot that you still couldn't have had a complication? No, but it certainly minimizes that. If you get the flu or flu like symptoms and you are young, old or in a household that has people that are vulnerable for complications. So maybe it wasn't the five year old, but it was your 15 year old that got sick. Talk to your provider. There is prophylaxis that can be given to try and prevent other members of the household that are vulnerable from getting the flu. And I don't think people recognize that as a potential. On that same sort of vein, if you get diagnosed with the flu either through a home test or you go get testing, if you're a vulnerable host, you can't. Even if you're not a vulnerable host, if you want to minimize the number of days you're ill, you can ask your provider for a prescription for an antiviral against flu.
- [36:27]
John Daly
Is that what you meant when you said prophylaxis?
- [36:30]
Dr. Michelle Barron
Sorry, yes. An antiviral medication, and there's several. Tamiflu is the one most people are familiar with, and I just don't think they think about even asking for it, especially with home tests where you're just same with COVID There is still treatment for Covid if you're in the right category where you're at risk. And I just think it kind of fell off people's minds because they're like, oh, well, you just gotta, you know, stay home and rest. And there's really nothing I can do. But it's worth at least asking.
- [36:56]
Ryan Warner
Well, that is Dr. Michelle Barron, senior medical director of infection prevention and control at UC Health. She spoke with our health reporter John Daly about this flu season. This is Colorado Matters from CPR News. It's Colorado Matters from CPR News. I'm Ryan Warner. They call themselves the nation's largest adventuring group for women. Sisters on the fly is marking 25 years with more than 25,000 members. Women Spruce up vintage trailers and camp together. I still remember the 1957 aloha that pulled into CPR's parking lot.
- [37:37]
Diane Smith
It's called a canned ham because of the shape on the outside. If you look at it, it looks like you can open up a canned ham.
- [37:45]
Ryan Warner
The trailer was owned by Diane Smith of Fort Collins. It was eye catching inside and out.
- [37:51]
Diane Smith
I would call it cowgirl eclectic. On the inside, multicolored cowgirl boots, fancy scarves that I've added a few sequins and blingy things to. On the outside, the cows have bling as well. You probably haven't noticed their necklaces yet.
- [38:07]
Ryan Warner
While the Sisters on the Fly camp, they also kayak, shoot fish and cook in cast iron. Their recipes, from Cajun cornbread to sassy pulled pork, are collected in a cookbook. It comes from Irene Rawlings, Denver author and radio host. We sat for a spell in that trailer back in 2013.
- [38:30]
Fellow Host (interviewer with Irene Rawlings)
Irene, it's nice to have you on the show.
- [38:32]
Irene Rawlings
Thank you so much. I'm thrilled to be here.
- [38:34]
Fellow Host (interviewer with Irene Rawlings)
It is so cozy in this trailer. I can imagine why you like being
- [38:38]
Ryan Warner
in the great outdoors, but having a
- [38:41]
Fellow Host (interviewer with Irene Rawlings)
little slice of home along with you,
- [38:43]
Irene Rawlings
you know, we do. We love fishing, we love horseback riding, we love cooking in cast iron, sitting around the campfire telling tall tales and then coming, coming back to our comfortable beds. I tell you, when you're in the outdoors, the moment your head touches a pillow, you are asleep.
- [38:59]
Fellow Host (interviewer with Irene Rawlings)
We're going to get to the recipes and cooking with cast iron in just a moment. But I want to talk more about sisters on the Fly. I love that you can earn Girl Scout like badges for things that you might expect. Okay. Kayaking, outdoor cooking, and for silly things like going potty outdoors for time.
- [39:18]
Irene Rawlings
The first you know, it is, we say it's like Girl Scouts, except with martinis. One of our mottos is we make girls out of women. And for a few glorious days, truly, we are mothers, we are grandmothers, we are dog walkers, we are school bus drivers, we're librarians, we're federal judges. We're a lot of different people and we're expected to be be for other people. We're expected to be all those things. When we go out with the sisters on the fly, we truly can be girls for a few days when we're camping out. It started out with two real life sisters who were fishing on the Madison river and caught a big fish. And in the retelling of it, each time the fish gets bigger and bigger and bigger. Sisters said, wouldn't it be fun to share this with our friends? And now there are sisters in every state in Canada, in Australia and New Zealand, and also recently, two sisters in la belle France, in Provence in the south of France.
- [40:16]
Fellow Host (interviewer with Irene Rawlings)
You mentioned the Madison river, which is in Wyoming. But you camp all over the country.
- [40:21]
Irene Rawlings
You know, we do. We have meetups in Rocky Mountain national park in Santa Fe, New Mexico. We camped on an island off the coast of Georgia. So we meet all over the place. Formal meetups, Sisters travel from all over the country, and then we have meetups about once a month in various states.
- [40:38]
Fellow Host (interviewer with Irene Rawlings)
And these vintage trailers are a big part of the adventure. They are like something out of old issues of Sunset magazine, you know, and
- [40:47]
Irene Rawlings
a lot of us get our inspiration out of old issues of Sunset magazine.
- [40:50]
Fellow Host (interviewer with Irene Rawlings)
I understand that's actually where some of your recipes in this Sisters on the Fly cast iron cooking cookbook come from. Vintage recipes, recipes from your own family.
- [41:01]
Irene Rawlings
They are. They're recipes that grandma and grandpa may have used when they went out camping. There are recipes. Some of them come by happy mistakes when we're out camping and don't have something or have too much of something else. All of the recipes have been tested in my kitchen, which is why I'm 20 pounds heavier now than I was when I started writing this book. Because they're all delicious and they all work in your home kitchen or out camping. So you can use it cast iron either way.
- [41:25]
Fellow Host (interviewer with Irene Rawlings)
Well, the book starts with a chapter called Cast iron College. Now, you don't cook in the trailers. That would be something of a fire hazard. So we're going to step outside and why don't you give us just a little cast iron 101 before we dig into some recipes, shall we?
- [41:39]
Irene Rawlings
Yes.
- [41:42]
Fellow Host (interviewer with Irene Rawlings)
Now, here in the parking lot of Colorado Public Radio, you've set up a propane stovetop and you've got both your cast iron skillet and a Dutch oven.
- [41:52]
Irene Rawlings
I do. I brought some vintage cast iron here. Actually, both pieces that I'm going to be using today came from my mother.
- [41:58]
Fellow Host (interviewer with Irene Rawlings)
And the point is, you can have cast iron iron forever, forever, unless you
- [42:02]
Irene Rawlings
pour cold water into a hot cast iron pot and then it will crack like the Liberty Bell.
- [42:06]
Fellow Host (interviewer with Irene Rawlings)
So that's like the first lesson in cast iron college. What are some of the other lessons? I know that seasoning them. You don't wash them with soap, do you?
- [42:15]
Irene Rawlings
No, you can wash them in soap. Most people just wipe them out. Or you can use a little light soap and a brush and then dry it immediately over heat. If it gets rusty, which it might first, you burn the rust off or you scrape it off. Then you season it with oil. Or you can buy seasoned cast iron. There's only one cast iron maker left in this country. It's lodge cast iron out of South Pittsburgh, Tennessee. There used to be a cast iron maker in every small town in this country back in the 19th century. And it was usually the same person who was the farrier, who did the
- [42:49]
Fellow Host (interviewer with Irene Rawlings)
blacksmith and who did horseshoes.
- [42:51]
Irene Rawlings
Yes, horseshoes and cast iron. But now there's only one left, and they have made it easy for us by pre seasoning the cast iron.
- [42:59]
Fellow Host (interviewer with Irene Rawlings)
You write adoringly about your cast iron. I mean, it's almost like a love affair.
- [43:03]
Irene Rawlings
I do love it. I didn't cook in cast iron for a very long time. I was afraid of it. I cooked in Teflon because it was easy. And then I realized that this cast iron was easier than that and kind of gave me a window into the life of my mother and my grandmother and other women who cooked in cast iron.
- [43:20]
Fellow Host (interviewer with Irene Rawlings)
You have recipes including summer squash pie, which looks amazing. You write that it's perfect for late summer when everyone has way too many zucchini and is looking for new ideas. What are we going to be making today?
- [43:34]
Irene Rawlings
Today we're making a breakfast because breakfast is real important when you're camping. And we're making a pork sausage, little patties with blueberries in them. We're cooking them in butter and maple syrup and then we're wiping up everything with pancakes.
- [43:49]
Fellow Host (interviewer with Irene Rawlings)
The pancake sponge. Can you cook light with cast iron?
- [43:54]
Irene Rawlings
No. The short answer is no. When you're out in the woods, really, you want something hearty?
- [43:59]
Fellow Host (interviewer with Irene Rawlings)
Well, I love this idea of combining sausage and blueberries. So why don't you get to it?
- [44:04]
Irene Rawlings
Here I go. Just. I'm going to put this on. Put this on. There it goes. It's going on the stove. It'll take just a moment for it to heat up. I'm going to pour in the maple syrup. We'll put a little bit of butter in there. And we are going to then put in the sausages that I've actually pre made. Usually I would make those while we were telling stories. We tell stories around the campfire all the time.
- [44:29]
Diane Smith
So.
- [44:29]
Irene Rawlings
Okay, I'm putting the sausage on now. Well, I should probably wait for that maple syrup to. To brighten up a little bit, don't you think?
- [44:35]
Fellow Host (interviewer with Irene Rawlings)
I think so. You've embedded the blueberries into the raw sausage, so they're going to cook right alongside they are.
- [44:43]
Irene Rawlings
And I have extra fresh blueberries I'm going to throw in the recipe calls for dried blueberries and dried blueberries are the best for this. Or if you happen to be camping in Maine and feel like climbing the mountain, Cadillac mountain, picking your own blueberries and throwing them in the sausage. The wild blueberries are really excellent.
- [44:58]
Fellow Host (interviewer with Irene Rawlings)
The dried ones I guess probably puff up with all that sugar and fat and goodness.
- [45:04]
Irene Rawlings
Oh, geez. Yeah. Sugar and fat and goodness. I like the way you put that.
- [45:11]
Fellow Host (interviewer with Irene Rawlings)
You can hear the sizzle there. And the maple syrup and the butter are creating this delicious looking and even better smelling froth.
- [45:21]
Irene Rawlings
And that's the froth that you're going to use with the tiny little pancakes.
- [45:24]
Fellow Host (interviewer with Irene Rawlings)
You said that some of the recipes were the result of happy hour accidents. What are examples?
- [45:29]
Irene Rawlings
One of the recipes happened. It was a potato salad recipe, actually. You need potato salad and you cook the potatoes in cast iron. The sister reached for paprika and caught cinnamon instead and threw the cinnamon in on top of the potato salad, scraped most of it off. You know, you can't scrape it all off. You've got the mayonnaise and the onions and everything in there. So it was all in little crevasses. And she stirred it in and now this. This is the best potato salad recipe ever. With this mistake, she was talking and telling stories and doing whatever and just grabbed the wrong container.
- [46:00]
Fellow Host (interviewer with Irene Rawlings)
Will you give us that recipe for the website?
- [46:02]
Irene Rawlings
Yes, absolutely.
- [46:03]
Fellow Host (interviewer with Irene Rawlings)
So we'll put the recipe for the cinnamon potato salad and these blueberry sausage patties@cpr.org I mentioned a little earlier the patches you get for doing various things in the wilderness. Kind of like the Girl Scouts. Are there patches for you still to earn?
- [46:20]
Irene Rawlings
Oh, absolutely, there are patches. I need to do the Maisie patch. Now. Maisie is. Our members range in age from 22 to 93. Maisie is 93 and she still goes out fishing. Until she turned 90, she drove her own rig. And you get a Maisie patch for watching Maisie. Let me tell you what that entails. Maisie will go faster than anybody, you know, anybody I know. She will fish until she. She drops, even when it's raining sideways. And you have to keep up with her. And if you keep up with our oldest member, you get a mazy patch. And I'm still to earn one.
- [46:58]
Fellow Host (interviewer with Irene Rawlings)
Well, shall we give these sausages a try?
- [47:00]
Irene Rawlings
That would be great. They look like they're going to be pretty good, actually. Pretty good. Okay.
- [47:06]
Fellow Host (interviewer with Irene Rawlings)
It's almost like breakfast candy.
- [47:10]
Catherine Hayhoe
It is.
- [47:10]
Irene Rawlings
Your mother wouldn't approve and you got to brush your teeth after your done.
- [47:15]
Fellow Host (interviewer with Irene Rawlings)
Oh, that is absolutely wonderful. I was afraid that the maple syrup would be overwhelming, but it's not. The sausage seasoned flavor comes through beautifully with those sweet bursts of blueberries.
- [47:30]
Irene Rawlings
This has been a lot of fun.
- [47:32]
Fellow Host (interviewer with Irene Rawlings)
Thanks for coming by.
- [47:34]
Ryan Warner
Irene Rawlings is his sister on the fly. She put together a cookbook of cast iron recipes. She's also written the club's story in the new book Sisters on the fly 25 year silver jubilee. I want to note that the member who brought her campy trailer to our parking lot in 2013 has since passed away. Diane Smith of Fort Collins was proud to be sister number 16. As for Maisie, her memory lives on through the patch.
- [48:12]
Irene Rawlings
Sam.
- [48:40]
Ryan Warner
And that is colorado matters for now, with thanks to our team.
- [48:44]
John Daly
Sandy batulga, tyler bender, carl bielek, anthony
- [48:48]
Dr. Michelle Barron
cotton, pete kramer, andrea dukakis, zan huckpechone,
- [48:53]
Ryan Warner
matt herz, tom hess, michael hughes, pedro lumbragno shane rumsey.
- [49:00]
Irene Rawlings
Haley sanchez. Chandra. Thomas whitfield.
- [49:04]
Ryan Warner
And I'm ryan warner. Thanks for spending time with us at cpr news and krcc.