Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
... whoa! ... sure glad you guys hipped me to DeWine's exemption for religious gatherings. I was unaware of this which is foolish and represents him bowing down to hyper religious wacko conservative special interests... While DeWine has generally been a fine leader through this crisis, this certainly takes him down a peg in my book.
I would give Gov. DeWine a "B-" for his social distancing policies, largely due to his failure to ban religious gatherings, and other large gatherings such as political protests, unlike in many other states.
In Kansas, three clusters of COVID-19 cases and two deaths have been linked to religious gatherings.
So the Kansas governor banned religious gatherings of over 10 persons. Republican legislative leaders overruled the governor's order, but the Kansas Supreme Court yesterday sided with the governor, but only on a legal technicality dodging the First Amendment Constitutional issue.
At least one church today violated the governor's executive order despite the Kansas Supreme Court ruling.
Cleveland.com reports that 70 persons tested positive for COVID-19 after attending a Pentecostal church meeting in California. Even Georgia bans religious gatherings if persons would stand within six feet of each other.
<<The concern remains high, as outbreaks of the virus have been tracked in several states to religious services, including a Pentecostal church in California where more than 70 people tested positive after attending religious gatherings.>>
<<As the coronavirus has spread across Sacramento County, infecting more than 340 people and killing nine, health officials said 1 in 3 confirmed cases in the county are linked to church gatherings....
One of the church members who contracted the virus, a substitute teacher who worked at Sutterville Elementary School, died three days later, on March 15. Her death was announced by the Sacramento City Unified School District, which closed campuses the day after the woman died. >>
What's particularly bothersome in Ohio is the lousy state reporting of COVID-19 clusters. It's hard to believe that with some churches in Ohio continuing to hold services that there haven't been resulting COVID-19 clusters. Ohio does not disclose COVID-19 clusters, even at nursing homes. See post 10 in this thread.
As discussed in post 14 in the following thread, Ohio has been one of the worst states in disclosing testing statistics. Testing is vital to suppressing this epidemic and in allowing the reopening of the state economy. Yet DeWine and Ohio Department of Health Director Dr. Amy Acton only release the total number of tests for the state, with no discussion of the percentage of positive tests by day or how the test percentages vary by county. Of course, such disclosures might disclose the presence of clusters resulting from religious gatherings, nursing home outbreaks, etc.
The DeWine administration IMO merits an "F" for its disclosure policies.
We have no explanation of why some counties, even less densely populated counties, have exceptional rates of COVID-19 confirmed cases. See post 29 here:
Do DeWine and Acton know why the infection rates are so high in Mahoning County, or less populated counties such as Columbiana or Darke Counties? If not, why not? Don't they believe such rates of infection are worth investigating? If they do know the reasons for the high infection rates, how do they excuse not disclosing the reasons?
So far, DeWine has proposed slashing state budget expenditures by 20 percent, but has indicated no willingness to roll back Ohio's significant tax breaks provided to wealthy Republican supporters.
DeWine has used the COVID-19 epidemic to ban abortions in the state.
Do you still believe that DeWine would make a "fine President?" If so, why???
Were not even discussing DeWine's actions prior to the COVID-19 epidemic.
Would DeWine be better than Trump? Tens of millions of Americans, anyone that was truthful and listened to the counsel of experts, would be better than Trump. Of course, DeWine remains a faithful Trump loyalist even as Trump's deficient policies have ravaged Ohio. E.g., to my knowledge and unlike other governors, DeWine hasn't called for a national testing program and for the federal government to massively ramp up testing resources, an action months overdue and a necessity for Ohio and the nation to deal effectively with this epidemic.
I would give Gov. DeWine a "B-" for his social distancing policies, largely due to his failure to ban religious gatherings, and other large gatherings such as political protests, unlike in many other states.
In Kansas, three clusters of COVID-19 cases and two deaths have been linked to religious gatherings.
So the Kansas governor banned religious gatherings of over 10 persons. Republican legislative leaders overruled the governor's order, but the Kansas Supreme Court yesterday sided with the governor, but only on a legal technicality dodging the First Amendment Constitutional issue.
At least one church today violated the governor's executive order despite the Kansas Supreme Court ruling.
Cleveland.com reports that 70 persons tested positive for COVID-19 after attending a Pentecostal church meeting in California. Even Georgia bans religious gatherings if persons would stand within six feet of each other.
<<The concern remains high, as outbreaks of the virus have been tracked in several states to religious services, including a Pentecostal church in California where more than 70 people tested positive after attending religious gatherings.>>
<<As the coronavirus has spread across Sacramento County, infecting more than 340 people and killing nine, health officials said 1 in 3 confirmed cases in the county are linked to church gatherings....
One of the church members who contracted the virus, a substitute teacher who worked at Sutterville Elementary School, died three days later, on March 15. Her death was announced by the Sacramento City Unified School District, which closed campuses the day after the woman died. >>
What's particularly bothersome in Ohio is the lousy state reporting of COVID-19 clusters. It's hard to believe that with some churches in Ohio continuing to hold services that there haven't been resulting COVID-19 clusters. Ohio does not disclose COVID-19 clusters, even at nursing homes. See post 10 in this thread.
As discussed in post 14 in the following thread, Ohio has been one of the worst states in disclosing testing statistics. Testing is vital to suppressing this epidemic and in allowing the reopening of the state economy. Yet DeWine and Ohio Department of Health Director Dr. Amy Acton only release the total number of tests for the state, with no discussion of the percentage of positive tests by day or how the test percentages vary by county. Of course, such disclosures might disclose the presence of clusters resulting from religious gatherings, nursing home outbreaks, etc.
The DeWine administration IMO merits an "F" for its disclosure policies.
We have no explanation of why some counties, even less densely populated counties, have exceptional rates of COVID-19 confirmed cases. See post 29 here:
Do DeWine and Acton know why the infection rates are so high in Mahoning County, or less populated counties such as Columbiana or Darke Counties? If not, why not? Don't they believe such rates of infection are worth investigating? If they do know the reasons for the high infection rates, how do they excuse not disclosing the reasons?
So far, DeWine has proposed slashing state budget expenditures by 20 percent, but has indicated no willingness to roll back Ohio's significant tax breaks provided to wealthy Republican supporters.
DeWine has used the COVID-19 epidemic to ban abortions in the state.
Do you still believe that DeWine would make a "fine President?" If so, why???
Were not even discussing DeWine's actions prior to the COVID-19 epidemic.
Would DeWine be better than Trump? Tens of millions of Americans, anyone that was truthful and listened to the counsel of experts, would be better than Trump. Of course, DeWine remains a faithful Trump loyalist even as Trump's deficient policies have ravaged Ohio. E.g., to my knowledge and unlike other governors, DeWine hasn't called for a national testing program and for the federal government to massively ramp up testing resources, an action months overdue and a necessity for Ohio and the nation to deal effectively with this epidemic.
As I noted in an earlier post late last week, some of the stuff I'm learning about DeWine's handling of the crisis, most notably his religious service exemption as well as his apparent lack of transparency, have greatly cooled my opinion of DeWine... please don't hold those earlier posts on the Florida board re knucklehead guv, Ron DiSantis, against me.
... whoa! ... sure glad you guys hipped me to DeWine's exemption for religious gatherings. I was unaware of this which is foolish and represents him bowing down to hyper religious wacko conservative special interests... While DeWine has generally been a fine leader through this crisis, this certainly takes him down a peg in my book.
How much hand holding does he need to do? If people are too dumb to realize that they shouldn't be having social gatherings, then they will get the virus simply out of sheer stupidity. You can't fix stupid. When does personal responsibility enter into the equation? Why does DeWine need to hold their hand for them? Does he need to dress them and feed them too? Maybe teach them some activities to do while under quarantine? Provide them with life coaches?
Hey, if you don't like your governor, please, let's do a swap, even up. You can have Whitmer, we'll take Dewine! We'll even throw in the UP if that's what it takes, we're ready to make a deal!
Here's one thing a competent Ohio governor should do today -- begin negotiations with South Korean entities in order to purchase badly needed test kits, apparently complete with all needed testing supplies including nasal swabs and reagent chemicals.
With President Trump in the last few weeks suddenly denying that COVID-19 testing was a federal responsibility, and thrusting the responsibility onto the governors of each state, Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican, took advantage of his Korean-born wife's language skills and perhaps contacts in order to purchase 500,000 test kits from South Korea.
Maryland, with a population of only 6 million, already has conducted 50 percent more COVID-19 tests per capita (11,230 per million residents) than Ohio with a population of 11.7 million (7,442 per million residents).
Now, with 500,000 South Korean tests in hand, Maryland is in a position to increase testing seven-fold from its current 67,891 cumulative tests. Maryland likely is one of the few states now in a position to much more safely phase out "stay-at-home" policies, assuming increased testing is accompanied by robust contact tracing and testing of contacts (who should be quarantined until the test results are available) and effective quarantine procedures.
For his initiative, Hogan has become a new target of President Trump and the Trump administration.
<<Trump may also have been irked by the favorable publicity Hogan received for personally negotiating with South Korean companies to purchase 500,000 coronavirus tests. Hogan’s wife, Yumi, who was born in South Korea, took part in the negotiations. The Hogans were on hand as the shipment arrived in Baltimore on Saturday.
Speaking during the Monday briefing, Adm. Brett Giroir, whom the White House has put in charge of the testing issue, also criticized Hogan. “I don’t know what the governor of Maryland is doing in South Korea,” he said. A few moments later, Trump returned to the podium to say that instead of purchasing test kits from South Korea, it would have been better for the governor to acquire “a little knowledge.”>>
As detailed in the above article, Trump, VP Mike Pence, and Dr. Deborah Birx, Trump's coronavirus task force response coordinator, have said that the states have sufficient testing capacity and are not utilizing it. Hogan has explained why, as detailed in the above article, this Trump administration claim is false about Maryland, and other governors have also pointed out the inaccuracy of the Trump anti-state governor campaign. See post 37 in the following thread:
As noted in that post, governors have called the Trump administration claims of adequate testing resources "delusional" and "absolutely false." Gov. Mike DeWine even said Sunday on "Meet the Press" that Ohio needs greatly increased supplies of reagent in order to double or even triple testing.
It's questionable whether DeWine is willing to incur the wrath of President Trump, his political ally, by purchasing test kits from South Korea. Yet, any Ohio governor willing to put the welfare of Ohioans over partisan political considerations, would immediately contact Hogan and receive a primer on how to purchase South Korean test kits, and find the best Korean-speaking Ohioans in order to complete a large purchase of Korean test kits.
DeWine's effort to protect the inept federal COVID-19 testing effort is demonstrated by the DeWine administration's unwillingness to provide daily testing data so vital to controlling an epidemic and readily made available by most states. See post 14 here:
Obviously, President Trump doesn't want Americans to know that South Korea has used massive per capita testing and robust contact tracing and quarantine policies to effectively control the COVID-19 epidemic WITHOUT SHUTTING DOWN THE KOREAN ECONOMY.
Despite not shutting down its economy, South Korea has a cumulative COVID-19 death total of only 234 persons. Adjusting for the fact that South Korea's population is 15 percent that of the U.S., if the U.S. epidemic response would have been as competent as in South Korea, only 1,560 Americans would have died from the COVID-19 epidemic. Instead, despite Draconian measures that have spread financial distress and hunger across the nation, the reported U.S. COVID-19 death total exceeds 42,000 and is increasing by over 1,000 per day.
Despite having a population 4.5 times greater than Ohio, South Korean death totals are almost half of the COVID-19 deaths reported by Ohio. And, again, stay-at-home policies were never implemented in South Korea.
Sadly, it's likely that the lack of robust and standardized federal COVID-19 data collection standards, the U.S. cumulative death totals are significantly understated.
Obviously, South Korean testing resources are so great that they are exporting massive testing resources to other nations, including the U.S. Understandably this is an embarrassment to the Trump administration, with Trump claiming that he has done "everything right" in his response to the COVID-19 crisis.
South Korea arguably did everything right, especially compared with the Trump administration. Despite reports for over a month (see posts 31 and 34 in the following thread) that shortages of nasal swabs and reagent chemicals were limiting the utilization of U.S. testing resources, and over three months into this epidemic, only on 4/19 did the Trump administration exercise the Defense Production Act to ramp up nasal swab production.
As noted in the above article, Trump claims that sufficient swab supply is available, a claim disputed by governors, including Gov. DeWine:
<<"The people who are actually going to do the swabbing, many times they don’t have the swabs,” Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine told MSNBC on Sunday morning. “So what we did in Ohio — Ohio State University and our health department got together, formed a group, and they’re working every day to get more swabs out.”
Still, DeWine, a Republican, emphasized that the workaround is far from adequate for the level of testing the state needs to even think about reopening its economy as President Trump has urged.
"We’re making progress, but we’re not where we would like to be certainly,” he said.>>
Ohio State and Ohio manufacturers have launched an initiative to supply Ohio medical professionals with swabs given federal inaction. See post 35 in this thread.
So one of Gov. DeWine's greatest failures in this epidemic is his unwillingness, apparently for partisan reasons, to demand a robust and competent federal response to this crisis. Unlike other governors, DeWine has never criticized Trump's effort to pass the buck to individual states, many with much fewer resources than even Ohio to respond to shortages of testing supplies. Even though protestors in Ohio challenge continued social distancing policies designed to prevent overwhelming our limited hospital resources and avoiding mushrooming death totals as in Italy and New York City, neither DeWine or other Ohio Republicans have challenged Trump's pass-the-buck efforts.
<<The whole point of the presidency is to have an elected official who represents the interests of the entire country, not of a specific state or electoral district. That is, the purpose of the presidency is unification. Trump’s goal, to the contrary, is to drive state-by-state division. He’s undermining the very ideal of a unified United States in pursuit of electoral advantage.>>
The Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution with a provision for a powerful chief executive, specifically considering what powers George Washington would need to create a nation out of 13 independent states. The assumption was that the U.S. always would have a competent and moral President. Bad assumption.
<<One vigorous debate surrounded whether the government's executive should be a single person or a board of three. Eventually a clear majority voted for a single executive based on the knowledge that Washington would probably be the first President. As a result, the presidency was written with Washington's honor and patriotism in mind, permitting him to define more clearly the office once he was elected. >>
I have very little doubts that we'll have a 2nd wave and possibly a 2nd 2-3 week quarantine this summer. You can't reopen the state with inadequate testing. It's just a hail mary to see if we can weather the 2nd wave without much deterrence to everyday life.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kerby W-R
The sad truth is that since he's reopening too soon it will just drag out this whole virus pandemic for a longer period of time.
It is too early I think. But I hate to break it to you - this is going to drag out until there is a vaccine. There's no way around that.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Buy South Korean test kits?
