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I think the idea is that "open up the state" doesn't mean what a lot of people think it means. DeWine has been pretty mum on specifics but he said no Ohio State Fair this year -- I think we can infer from that and his aggressive cancelling of The Arnold spectators that all large public gatherings will be prohibited, probably through the summer and most likely through the end of 2020. Amy Acton also said not to expect play dates or social gatherings through June. Schools opening in the fall are still up in the air. So "open" will mean you can go get your haircut as long as the salon or barber shop is taking appropriate sanitation and social distancing measures. You'll wear a mask and there will be a limit to how close people can sit together in the waiting room. That's "open" but it's not business as usual. I trust that they're looking at models that support this plan.

More mixed messaging from the federal government. Trump says it's time to "liberate" states from unnecessary lockdowns, but now he also wants to shield corporations from liability if their employees come down with covid-19. Get back to work, rubes! And if you get sick it's not our problem!

Because she's pretty

That was a boner joke btw

I'm gonna remember it so fucking hard

Well she certainly doesn't have my vote, what with her not representing my district or even living in my state.

They're basically lab subjects at this point. It's fucked.

I saw that number over the weekend, I didn't realize that was 73% of all inmates in the prison. That's insane. The other prison they mention, Pickaway, has 384 cases and 5 deaths, for a death rate of 1.3%. Based on the state's current death to hospitalization rate that would be 50 hospitalizations but they say deaths are still climbing. Applying that same death rate to Marion would mean 24 dead and 240 hospitalized. It'll be interesting to see how the infection plays out in that population. 73%, though. That's one contagious motherfucker.

^^ that was funny. I made my wife a mask today after listening to a couple weeks now of how my experience sewing patches on uniforms somehow made me more qualified to do so. It literally took me 4 hours because I don't have a sewing machine. Does look pretty nice though.

Yeah the whole liquor store thing is pretty sad, I think everyone has the same thought process. First it's "well that's not essential" and then it's "oh, right." Unprescribed medicine.

Quite true.

You're missing that in this scenario there's a standing order not to open for safety reasons. If there's a killer on the loose and the governor says "No events because this guy might show up and shoot everyone," and they open anyway and a guy shows up and shoots everyone.... that's on the place for defying the order. eta: Well maybe it's not "on the place" but I do think it would open them up to a lawsuit from the victim's families.

That's kinda what epidemiologists do, though. Already there are hundreds of genetic variations in the novel coronavirus, they don't amount to different "strains" yet because they all attack cells using the same mechanism still but they do allow researchers to track movement of the virus. If a known carrier goes to Norwalk and a bunch of people come out with the same genetic variant, and there's no other reasonable explanation for how all of those people would have caught it, and one of them dies... well it wouldn't be hard to get expert witnesses from the epidemiology world to testify that they were xx% certain that the spread happened at Norwalk. And then like Kerry said, it'd be a civil lawsuit, which doesn't have as high of a burden of proof. I think it's probably unlikely that anyone would bother but you'd have to ask yourself if it's worth the risk.

Hypothetical, if CV-19 had a 90% death rate, would it be government overreach to step in and take drastic measures to prevent hundreds of millions of Americans from dying? Disregard the mechanism (state/federal), just in general would that be a proper role of government or is that an abrogation of freedom?

Not anymore, we're halfway through April and CV-19 has already killed more people than the 18/19 flu season preliminary CDC estimate. This is on pace to be equivalent of a very, very bad flu season, and that's on top of the flu, and that's with drastic quarantine measures.

What's up with that defaced US flag?

OK but let's pretend we're all on Gilligan's island, you're the skipper. The professor says that a storm is coming and we'll all die of exposure if we don't build a shelter. Gilligan starts losing his shit because he doesn't want to die. But building a shelter is hard work, so Thurston Howell's dumb ass convinces Marryanne and Ginger and his whore wife that the storm won't be so bad, and building a shelter is dangerous anyway what with the hammers and all. So you vote, 4 to 3 and no shelter gets built. Everyone dies. Now you're at the pearly gates and you slap Gilligan on the back of the head like the skipper does and say, "If you hadn't gotten so hysterical this wouldn't have happened." For some reason your knee-jerk reaction isn't to be upset with the Thurston Howells that are peddling misinformation, distrust, and bad-faith arguments, but the Gilligans and whatever "media" you think are responsible for the Gilligans. For every "sky is falling" pundit I can guarantee you I can find an equally moronic Sean Hannity segment where he says everything is fine and this is all overblown. We can all agree that pundits are jackasses, but why not direct more ire towards the jackasses who are actively working to undermine an effort which you yourself consider necessary? I can brush off the sky is falling crowd, I have a lot harder time brushing off the "this'll all go away in April when it gets warmer" crowd. DeWine wasn't the smartest guy in the room, he just made the (IMHO) minimal effort of actually listening to scientists. It's a pretty low bar for politicians to meet and yet he's one of the few who did. I give him more credit for how he's handled everything afterwards (he really has been stellar, I know I've said it before), but that initial step of listening to the fucking scientists should have been what every functioning adult did. Did you know that there are STILL 7 states that haven't issued lockdown orders? I didn't. Guess what letter is after their respective governor's names. It's crazy how much Republicans hate scientists. The PPE situation is not going to be solved by the free market -- no company is going to stockpile PPE for a hypothetical payday every 100 years, and no company is going to be able to compete on a global scale with China without some kind of price fixing. It's a problem that requires a competent government to solve. I hope we all keep that in mind when we're exercising our right to hold our elected officials accountable.

Take a look at your own words then, man. Someone can easily construe you saying "You've got people on one side screaming the sky is falling and we have to take these extreme measures" as to mean you don't think those extreme measures are necessary, or that anyone who's in favor of extreme measures thinks the sky is falling. Do you see that now? You're saying that wasn't your intent, that you agree with DeWine that these extreme measures are necessary. Be more careful in the future. Say something like, "There are reasonable people basing their decisions on facts and putting [information] out there in a thoughtful way who say that these extreme measures are necessary, and then you've got people on the other side who...." Is that an accurate statement of your position? If "the sky is falling" people are saying the exact same thing as the reasonable people like DeWine, and the other side isn't agreeing with the reasonable people like DeWine, maybe your beef isn't really with the sky is falling crowd.

Wagner, you said: "You've got people on one side screaming the sky is falling and we have to take these extreme measures." DeWine and Acton are saying we need to take these extreme measures. You characterize that as them "screaming that the sky is falling," yet you say that's not propaganda. Square that, please. Leave cable news out of this. Is our governor pushing propaganda?

I have a friend who's an allergist (MD), I have a friend who manages a pediatric practice, I have a friend who's a pediatric nurse. The doctor's business is basically dead, the pediatric practice is basically dead, the nurse has had her hours cut to almost nothing. Why? Because those are all non-essential services. Nobody wants to bring their kid to the pediatrician for the sniffles right now, nor does that practice WANT anyone bringing their kid in unless it's serious because they have to treat everyone who walks through the door like a COVID-19 patient. The fewer clients they see right now, the better for them, the better for the clients, the better for society. I ALSO have a friend who's an ER doc at Riverside. His kids have barely seen him in weeks. He's a walking zombie. COVID-19 hasn't caused a run on boob jobs, whether or not you're getting laid off in the medical field right now kinda depends on whether or not you're actually involved in the COVID-19 battle. Christ, again with "media propaganda." DeWine and Acton say that we (Ohio) are running low on PPE, they say that we don't have enough tests. They say that it looks like we've kept the surge under our capacity but that we have to be vigilant. That's it. From the source. Direct. I'm not sure why you think media propaganda is brainwashing everyone who listens to our leadership directly. There's literally no media involved.

Yes, the military is very big on leadership. I've been in 18 years, from day 1 I've been hearing nonsense like "Back in my day we were told to just shut up and color, now I give this new generation of airmen an order and they want to know why!" There is certainly a time and a place for shut up and color, or to follow orders without questioning why, but by and large effective leadership requires buy-in from your subordinates. Explain why life has to suck and if your troops respect you, and they see that you've got their best interests at heart, they'll do what's necessary. Bark orders that seem to contradict reality without offering an up explanation and you're going to get bitter troops, foot dragging, general malaise and possibly revolt. It's certainly hard to be an effective leader if you have bad actors in your ranks spreading misinformation. That's all I'm saying.

Unfortunately people will also be inclined to defy regulations if they believe bullshit pushed by propagandists and con-men. Examples include, "It's just another flu!" "It's not that bad if you're under 55!" "States are inflating their numbers!" "It's actually caused by 5G towers!" "Democratic hoax!" "The cure is worse than the disease!" Some douchebag once said "Facts don't care about your feelings," and that works both ways. If people feel like they're being oppressed unnecessarily the virus don't care. It seems inevitably at this point that uninformed pushback in red states will cause social distancing measures to be lifted without regard for the consequences, and we'll see a huge surge in deaths later this year.

Don't misconstrue the 1 May day as anything other than the expiration date for the current lockdown. DeWine has given no indication that that's when he's going to let "things start to get back to normal." All he's saying is we're on lockdown until 1 May, and he'll reassess based on new information as that gets closer. Relevant paraphrased commentary from today's briefing: There must have been some spicy exchanges as reporters tried to get DeWine to talk shit on Trump. He (wisely) never takes the bait. This is in reference to Trump talking like HE'S going to be the one to open the country back up, even though he hasn't done shit to close it and therefore is in no position to reverse anything. There are 50 lockdowns right now and Trump is in charge of 0 of them. Anyway, DeWine's paraphrased response: In other words, I know if I talk shit on Trump he'll do dumb stuff like withhold PPE and make me deal with Jared Kushner's dumb ass, so I'm going to talk about how great the federal government has been even though they still aren't giving us enough fucking tests. Later, someone tried to be more direct: 3:03 PM: Can the president reopen the state without your consent? 3:09 PM: The president tweeted recently that the president has the final say on reopening the country. How does that make you feel? In other words, No, he cannot, but we all recognize this for the toothless bluster that is Trump's MO. We're going to keep doing what we're doing and following the science.

I hadn't heard that but it's not like there aren't nutjob conspiracy theorists in Ohio.