(lively music) - COVID 19 cases are spiking again in Ohio with numbers that harken back to last winter.

Two major Cleveland hospital systems have passed requirements that their employees be vaccinated by January 4th as a federal mandate is argued in court.

And Cleveland city council overwhelmingly approved the lease extension and stadium renovation deal for the Cleveland Guardians.

Ideas is next.

(serene music) Hello, and welcome to Ideas.

I'm Mike McIntyre, thanks for joining us.

COVID-19 cases are soaring again and the Omicron variant is beginning to spread around the world.

No cases of the new variant are reported here in Ohio, but doctors are on alert.

Unknown is what impact the variant might have here.

Cleveland mayor elect, Justin Bibb, has named a huge roster of transition advisors and he's tapped Cleveland State University students to be part of that transition.

Cleveland signed off on it's part of the Guardian's lease and Progressive Field renovation deal though the vote unusually was not unanimous.

We'll talk about those stories and much more on the reporters round table.

Joining me this week, Ideastream public media, multiple media producer, Gabriel Kramer, the editor of "The Buckeye Flame", Ken Schneck and in Columbus, Statehouse News Bureau chief, Karen Kasler.

Let's get ready to round table.

Karen, Ohio's top doctor, Dr. Bruce Vanderhoff says, "Omicron is not in Ohio," as far as he can tell, but it's only a matter of time.

- Yeah and I think we've got Reuters is reporting this morning five cases in New York that joins the cases that have been reported in California, Colorado, Minnesota and Hawaii.

And so, yeah, it's with the way that people move around and with the holiday just passed and the holidays coming up then yeah, it's only a matter of time, but health officials keep saying that still the vaccines are the best way out of this, that vaccines are safe and effective and the numbers of vaccinated people who get seriously ill and die are so much lower than the numbers of unvaccinated people.

CNN did an analysis that they reported yesterday showing that if you're in a red state you're 50% more likely to get COVID than in a blue state which is interesting.

So yeah, it's only a matter of time and the question is then what will happen and because there's a state law that now basically says that emergency health orders really can't be put in place like they were at the beginning of the pandemic a lot is not gonna change.

- A lot is changing right now though.

We had at one point, okay, it's settled, everyone who works in a hospital is going to be vaccinated, they have to be by January 4th.

Now that's being thrown into question because of the legal challenge and the two hospital systems and MetroHealth still has its requirement in place and was early with that.

But two other hospitals systems who are saying, "Well, if there's no deadline by the federal government then we're not going to enforce that."

And then we have this Omicron variant, which people don't know a whole lot about and there's been a lot of, I guess what I would say is people seem really exhausted and now more uncertainty is being put in, Ken.

- Yeah, you have to stop trolling my social media (Mike laughs) to get those opinions.

- [Mike] Is that what happened?

- That's where it's coming from.

But yeah, no people are exhausted and remember we were using that phrase, "The new normal" for a while.

We don't even know what that means anymore.

So, people are exhausted, I think the key point about the hospitals too who are just stuck, right?

They are stuck between the courts and good medical practice, but even university hospitals they are saying, "Sure, we can't enforce this," but they are still as hard as they can encouraging everyone who works there to get vaccinated and saying, "This is the route out of this."

- What do you think of this though?

And Karen, you brought this up that if you're vaccinated and if you are boosted, you have a better chance of not getting as sick and particularly with Omicron, as we start to learn about that, and yet what I'm hearing from people who aren't vaccinated or who got vaccinated and felt like, "Okay, that was going to be the solution," now they're like, "Okay, well here we go again.

Everyone's still getting it.

There's another variant.

What's the good of this vaccine?"

So we have that public relations problem that was big at one point, that seems to be coming back and yet in the state of Ohio we hear yesterday more and more people are getting vaccinated, the large number yesterday that sort of came in.

So, where is all that breaking down in terms of what I'm hearing and what I'm seeing?

- Well, I can tell you that one thing that is breaking down is the numbers of breakthrough cases.

I mean, you've got since the beginning of the year 40,000 people who've been hospitalized in Ohio with COVID.

Who were not reported as fully vaccinated, who were unvaccinated, 40,227 and then the ones who were fully vaccinated, 2,289, so a very small percentage.

That small percentage is growing now unfortunately because as these variants come forward and really are mutating, the vaccines have less effectiveness against them and so that's why vaccines are so important.

Is to bring that immunity to this virus so that you don't spread it among the unvaccinated.

It mutates and then goes back into the vaccinated population.

I mean, you still have 594 people since the beginning of the year who were fully vaccinated, who died of COVID, but 12,372 who were unvaccinated died.

So you look at these breakthrough numbers and you can certainly see the public relations campaign that public health officials have been trying to run.

Those numbers are there and they're real and I think that there is though still this perception that the vaccine is not that important or that there are still some concerns about it.

Vaccines are safe and effective, that's what we're hearing over and over again as the message and in the absence of the ability to do major lockdowns and to really get people to wear masks and that sort of thing, the vaccine is considered to be the primary tool to get us out of the pandemic.

- Let's talk about the hospitalization numbers, particularly in Northern Ohio and Northeast Ohio.

Here is Dr. Bruce Vanderhoff in his address yesterday.

- [Vanderhoff] Currently we're seeing the highest incidents of new COVID-19 cases in the Northern portion of the state with the highest concentration of hospitalizations in the Northeast corner of Ohio.

- Gave Kramer, we have any idea why?

- So it does sound like it's hard for medical experts to really pinpoint exactly why.

You know, some are saying things like students coming home for college, families gathering for the holidays, but those aren't exclusive to Northeast Ohio, or Northern Ohio either.

They are saying that rates are getting higher, cases are getting higher in parts of Michigan, parts of Pennsylvania so proximity to those places could be a case for sure but when I looked at some of the numbers I thought, "Well, maybe have some to do with vaccination."

So I looked at vaccination rates for Summit county, Kiowa county and compared them to Hamilton county and Franklin county.

They're pretty much all the same and we were looking at first dose vaccinations between 61, 63% for all four of those counties.

So, it is kind of hard for them to exactly pinpoint why this is happening.

- And the hospitalizations, one of the issues that we're hearing is some hospitals that are reaching capacity are going to have to send patients to other hospitals in Ohio.

The reason for that is staff issues, fatigue.

There are people that are just, they're either sick or not able to work.

That becomes a big concern Ken.

- The burnout rate is unbelievable and there's also a frustration of these folks who are working in the healthcare industry who know that the vaccine is the way out and yet they are so inundated and coming home bone tired from people who are making the choice to not be vaccinated.

So staffing is not just a restaurant industry thing, it's very much a healthcare industry issue right now, not an issue, it's a real problem.

- Right?

When you look at the mess that hospitals are dealing with, you see they're looking at their hospitals and the amount of beds and were full capacity and they're saying, "Okay, what hospital can we send our patients to?"

So if you're in Akron or in Cleveland, they're full too.

So you're gonna see hospitals looking into sending people further away.

You can be in Akron and be sent to a hospital in Columbus so this is definitely a mess that hospitals are dealing with.

And you're probably gonna see doctors and nurses starting to prioritize which patients will get treatment first based on what you have or how severe it is.

So, that's not something, some of the best hospitals in the world right here and they're gonna start making these decisions and that's something you don't wanna see from a world-class hospital with some of the best and biggest facilities in the world.

- Let's talk about some more changes in our world that are disappointing for those who had hoped, you know, maybe by now we'd be cresting the wave and getting back to normal and that is yesterday, Karen, the Biden administration saying that people who travel from outside of the United States into the United States, regardless of vaccination status, now need to be tested if they get on an airplane within 24 hours of that flight.

Yet another change where people had maybe started to travel a little more, thought things were better, this variant comes up and numbers increase and now we're back to that kind of uncertainty.

- Yeah, I think that's a change from a three-day testing window which for a lot of folks seem like a long time.

I mean, especially with something that within a couple of days, maybe you don't see the results.

You don't see the virus showing up.

But yeah, the whole idea of trying to get back to normal, and the US is not the only country that's doing this, there's dozens.

I mean, I wanna say there's nearly a 100 countries that are really looking at their travel restrictions because of this and this was the year.

2021 was supposed to be the year that we got back to normal, that we put the pandemic behind us and it was gonna be a great year and I think for a lot of people it's even been more disappointing than 2020 because this was supposed to be the year that this was over and that we could go out and celebrate and do all the things that we wanna do.

But like Ken has said, and everybody said, people are tired.

People are tired of COVID and they wanna move on, they wanna celebrate the holidays with their families.

One of the tweets that came out this week, Jim Jordan, the Congressman from Western Ohio who has been a critic of, well, everything related to COVID policies and been very supportive of former president Trump.

He tweeted out that we're done with COVID, well, he just had COVID recently.

So apparently COVID isn't done with him anyway.

- Maybe he means that literally, like he's done with COVID, he's recovered from COVID.

There are anti-vax efforts that are still going on as well in Columbus.

So we've talked about the hospitals, as Ken said, are urging people to still do it even though there isn't a federal mandate.

The health public professionals are saying, "Please get vaccinated," for the reasons that you laid out Karen and yet we see in the state that there there's gonna be a hearing coming up on efforts to say, "Well, no one can mandate that you get vaccines."

- Yeah, there's a bill that passed the house and it was kind of this rush to pass this bill last month, where this was kind of seen as a compromised bill that would allow for the COVID vaccine mandate exemptions, people who don't wanna get the vaccine, that would basically open those up to anybody who didn't wanna get the vaccine, anybody who wanted an exemption could get one, it would also ban proof of vaccination status and ban colleges and schools from requiring COVID vaccines that have not gotten full FDA approval.

It passed the house party line vote and now on its way over to the Senate.

There's been some question though about whether it will move forward because there's some resistance among some senators and certainly with governor DeWine about telling businesses how they have to run things when it comes to COVID.

That the business community, healthcare community has been very opposed to this saying that option of requiring vaccines should be reserved for businesses and for healthcare systems and that to put any sort of a state restriction saying you can't require vaccines is unfair and doesn't help.

And so watching this move forward, I think is gonna be interesting because there's a possibility it might not go forward in the Senate where it did go forward in the house.

(serene music) - Cleveland city council approved spending public money to extend the lease of the Guardian's baseball team and renovate Progressive Field.

There was some dissent this time, unusual in such votes on council.

So Gabe, we had more discussion it seems this time and more pushback and yet in the end, if you look at it, it's not a close vote.

- It's not a close vote.

I think that there remains that fear of if we don't do what the teams want, that team will leave.

We saw in the 90s with the Cleveland Browns and it was a nightmare for years for Browns fans and slowed down the development of downtown Cleveland.

But the council members that opposed here in Cleveland, Michael Polensek of ward 8, Jenny Spencer ward 15, Brian Mooney of ward 11.

And I think people are critical of the deal, it won't actually, the return won't actually outweigh the investment, right?

They're not gonna see the return on investment here and funds are coming from the general fund which city council people don't love that.

If you think about that's the money that comes from funding the police department or the fire department.

And of course, time after time we're seeing money going to the stadiums versus into the neighborhoods.

And that's something that when you're representing wards not close to downtown, not close to stadiums, you're wondering, when's our share coming.

So I think all these things we're hearing time and time again but certainly to have a three to three vote is different than the unanimous we've seen in the past.

- And shout out to Jenny Spencer in ward 15, who went on social media and provided a detailed explanation of why she voted against it and it was just some transparency it would be great to see from everybody else.

- What we hear from the supporters of this is that it's a major league city, Cleveland is.

We have major league football, baseball, basketball and major league meaning high level professional.

And that that's an important thing for a city that it gives us some cache, it makes people wanna live here.

It might not be direct dollar for dollar, but the idea of having a city at that level is something that's worth investing in.

And what we're doing here is saying these are public facilities that the public will agree to maintain and upgrade.

- Right?

But that dollar for dollar part and that articulation is something that doesn't, we as a city don't seem to be able to say, this is how we support this and to the tune of this amount of dollars or this percentage so that when it comes up, we just pivot directly to we're a city that needs to have these major league teams.

Okay, great.

To what degree?

What is this investment look like?

Is this a conversation we can have outside of a proposal so that we're not stuck in the proposal saying, "Uh-oh, we have to now commit this amount of dollars."

- And to Ken's point of what Jenny Spencer said, she put out this Google doc well articulated and put it on Twitter for anyone to go look up and see but basically she brought up a few different points of, she wants this to happen, she wants this deal to come through but there's some things that she's apprehensive about.

One of them being, do we really want the funds to come from the general fund for this?

Do we want as much exposure to that as we've been giving it?

And also she mentioned that she would like to see mayor elect Justin Bibb involved in this process if things move forward.

So, it isn't necessarily that all of (indistinct) or those who oppose it don't want Progressive Field there, or don't want the renovations Progressive Field to happen.

It's just a matter of what are some of the things that are in part of this contract that people are apprehensive about.

- I've seen a lot of these over the last 30 years, the general fund commitment did stop me in my tracks, cause it almost always is we will take money from an admissions tax or a bed tax or garage revenues.

This one said this much from the general fund, what the council members are concerned about is if the garage revenue shrinks and people aren't parking, that general fund commitment might increase and we're starting to talk about cutting into things, as you said, that are, as Ken said, that are necessary to spend.

That's an issue.

- Right, and then I think there's another point here to be made.

So Mike Polensek in ward eight, that's the Collingwood area.

You know, his comments were criticisms dating back to 1994 saying I was when the team had a different owner at the time.

The promises about the ballpark since about 94 and he was basically saying that the promise had been made, and that means promises to boosting small business in the area, promises to help rebuild other neighborhoods around the city.

But the other big thing is bringing contracts to minority owned, women owned businesses to help as they rebuild the stadium and that was another thing Johnny Spencer brought up and people who are opposed to this they want that guaranteed in this deal and they haven't seen that.

So, the team is saying, of course, we're gonna do this, but there's nothing really holding them to guarantee that and that's something that city council was saying like, "Hey, this is something we would like," at least in a 13-3 vote.

- Meanwhile, the product the team that would be playing there is in a league that right now is in lockdown.

They're in the midst of a labor impasse so there's a lot of uncertainty around that too.

- Sure.

I mean, the lockout is as a stretch.

I think it's a stretch of scenario that's really going to affect things but when you think about this being a collective bargaining agreement, a CBA dispute between the ownership and the players, really what this means is the players can't go to work, right?

They can't work for the team right now which means if this extends into the season, they can't play, if they can't play, they can't have ticket sales, if there's no ticket sales, that's part of the emissions tax that is going to be helping the city pay for this, which means that they're gonna find other ways if that doesn't happen.

So, everything I've read from analysts or major league baseball writers are suggesting that this deal should get done by the time season begins and you have to imagine the last time there was a work stoppage and major league baseball was the mid 90s.

The team- - Believe me I remember.

- The TV deals and the player contracts are so lucrative than they were back then that I have to imagine both sides are going to want to get a deal done because they want to make this money.

There's too much money to be made.

(serene music) - Cleveland mayor elect Justin Bibb added dozens of transition advisors this week to help guide his new administration as it takes shape.

They come from a wide cross section of the city, including the leaders of all three hospitals systems, the founder of Cleveland's Black Lives Matter chapter, a former leader of the city's police union, and a familiar name, former State Department of Health director, Dr. Amy Acton.

Bibb is also looking to fill key positions in his administration, including law and finance directors.

He'll be hiring a new police chief as Calvin Williams will leave his position on January 3rd and he's tapped a bunch of Cleveland State students and said, "Hey, I need some young people to help me with that."

As not only the editor of "The Buckeye Flame", Ken, but as a professor at Baldwin Wallace University, what about that idea of saying, "Hey, let's tap into this new blood."

- I love this story, right?

So it's not just tokenism either of well let's make sure there are some youth voices in the mix.

It seems like he's really giving them a seat at the table, these Cleveland State University students.

It's not just, oh, go fill out a survey but an actual voice.

So this is great and it should be noted that he's also recently had meetings with Case Western, Reserve University president, with Tri-C's president so it seems like he really is going to value the voice of students here who, we have a real issue in keeping college students in Cleveland after they graduate.

So this might be a really great tactic for some badly needed retention in the Cleveland area.

- Gabe, youth is one aspect of the diversity of the list of people that we saw, but it seems like it is a kind of a mixture of all different kinds of people in Cleveland and I would say when I looked at it, I thought, "Okay, they've been on The Sound of Ideas, they've been on The Sound of Ideas."

Like a lot of people that I think the community values what they have to contribute and that shows in the fact that people seek out their thoughts and opinions but when you look at this list, what do you think about the commitment that Justin Bibb said he would make to making sure we had a diverse group of people that reflected the city?

- Well, he's keeping his promise that he had been making all year and this is something that I think people really appreciate.

You know, if you want your transition team, your cabinet, your staff to represent the city and reflect the city you have to have diversity.

You have to have equity and inclusion because this is what the city looks like.

The city looks like what his transition team looks like.

And I wanna talk a little bit more about that commitment to the youth, because his campaign was heavy on getting younger people to vote, but even more so, getting younger people, college students specifically, to help him run his campaign and help volunteer for his campaign and get other young people, college people, engage their campaign.

So, before the election, I spoke with Erika Anthony who was with Cleveland Votes at the time now is the executive director of the Ohio Transformation Fund and is part of the transition team for Justin Bibb and she has said, "One of the things about politicians in Cleveland that is in some ways a tradition now is that there's this promise to get young people engaged and get them involved and wanna talk to them but that usually stops after the election, right?"

Cause it's about getting their vote but after that, there's no continuation of how we're gonna continue to help and get them involved.

But with Justin Bibb committing to college students, it really seems that commitment to not just get them there through the election process, but get them there after the fact to be engaged in politics as well is a huge point to what Justin Bibb had been trying to before election and now here we are, after the first Tuesday of November.

- It's worth noting he's closer in age to them than he is to me, you know?

So, this is also in keeping sort of with his own youth movement.

- And it's not just the individuals and really this list is incredible.

And you read through the list and you see these names of Zach Reed and Dan O'Malley and certainly- - Dr. Aparna Bole.

- Oh my gosh, he got Chinenye Nkemere, yeah.

But it's also the names of the committees that are super intriguing to me because they do signal a shift so you have an open government committee, which, okay, that sounds great.

One called modern city hall and another one called talent and I'm looking forward to some sort of talent show from these folks.

(Mike laughs) I think it's gonna happen.

- Well on that talent show, I think the star would probably be Dr. Amy Acton, because boy, she was for a while, just at the scene here in Ohio and then of course, Karen, we saw that she left her position because of all kinds of weird blow back that she was getting and really dangerous kind of talk from people.

Were you surprised to see her name on this list?

- I think she's got an interest in politics, but really more in the policy end of things and the actual doing something in terms of setting policy rather than the campaigning and that sort of thing.

I think it's part of the reason why she got out of the US Senate race.

It would have been a brutal campaign, which we're already seeing at least on the Republican side.

And so I think to avoid all that, but still get into the policymaking arena again, this allows her that opportunity to do that.

(serene music) - Ohio will use a new mapping technology to help find forever homes for adoptable children.

Ken, I know it's near and dear to your heart.

We've talked to it and you actually broke it on this show that you're a person that's interested in adoption and I know that you've been looking into that process.

What about this idea of trying to use technology to match people like you with kids who need people like you?

- Yeah, I took a huge step forward this week with the adoption process, even though if you're someone who wants to pursue this reading, Karen Kasler's tweets are not great for pursuing parenting.

It's not encouraging to me.

(Karen laughs) So I just wanna put that out there, but yes.

- I have a 16 year old son so you know.

- Yeah, so it's not helpful, but yeah, LGBTQ people, youth disproportionately experiencing homelessness due to a lack of accepting families and overall systems and yes, as we've talked about, we thought it was going to be about 10% of LGBTQ in foster care and the actual statistic released this year is 32%.

So anything that can help match people up, I would also like to say still here in the state of Ohio, the ordinance on the books says that even though this is not legally possible, the Republicans in the state of Ohio have insisted that the ordinance on the books says that adoption in the state of Ohio is for a man and a woman, even though again, that's not the actual law.

So there's so many barriers.

So something that helps match people up would be amazing.

- Karen, quickly what is this technology?

Is it an app or something?

- Yeah, as I understand it, it's a way to comb data sources to find potential relatives, friends, others.

People who could potentially be either caregivers or adoptive families.

They use public information from more than 300 sources.

And so Ohio would be the first state in the country to try to do this and try to find matches for there's about 3,100 kids who are adoptable right now, but 16,000 kids, like you said, in the foster care system, a lot of that is related to Ohio's continuing opioid problem and the way to try to connect these kids with family and others who might be able to care for them and bring them into their homes is really, really valuable.

- And I would say, Ken, depending on the age of your adopted child one day, just get ready to hear.

- Fine.

- Yeah.

- [Karen] (laughs) Yeah.

- Yeah, as discouraging as they may be, Karen's tweets have been really helpful in preparing me.

(Ken and Karen laugh) - Again, I have a 10, I have a 16 year old son.

He's not the most energetic person when it comes to helping with chores and stuff.

- [Gabriel] Karen, you're almost said 10, those six years go by fast.

(Karen laughs) - [Mike] They sure do.

- My head spinning cause I've just, my daughter is now an adult at 21.

My son is 23.

We're done, right?

(laughter) We've launched.

- I mean, I did put a check mark in the box to low maintenance baby so I should be fine.

(laughter) - [Karen] Oh, those exist.

(laughs) - I'm the youngest at 29, my parents were done so.

- You're the youngest of what?

- I'm youngest at 29 years old.

- Oh, I thought you said other 29.

(laughter) My goodness.

- [Gabriel] My parents probably think they're not done either so.

- Monday at nine on The Sound of Ideas on 90.3 WCPN we'll talk about shopping local, how to make your friends and family happy while keeping money in the community.

I'm Mike McIntyre, thanks so much for watching and stay safe.

(gentle music)