(dynamic electronic music) - The Omicron surge has peaked in Northeast Ohio.

State health officials say the wave of infection is shifting southward.

Cleveland's new mayor pledges to overhaul the city's broken snow removal plan.

And lawmakers work to meet a Saturday deadline for new state legislative district maps.

Ideas is next.

(Ideas theme music) Hello, and welcome to Ideas.

I'm Mike McIntyre.

Thanks for joining us.

Hospitalizations from COVID-19 have dipped by nearly a quarter in Northeast Ohio.

Health officials say the Omicron surge has reached its peak here, but now its intensity is shifting southward.

A big winter storm belted Northeast Ohio this week and Cleveland's new mayor says he hears the complaints about the city's poor response and vows to fix the snow removal system.

Lawmakers face the Saturday deadline set by the Ohio Supreme Court to draw a new fairer state legislative district maps.

And Intel confirms plans to build a massive computer chip manufacturing campus in Central Ohio, what is now being eyed as the Silicon Heartland.

We'll talk about those stories and the rest of the week's news on the reporters round table.

Joining me, Ideastream Public Media's managing producer for health, Marlene Harris-Taylor.

WKSU news director, Andrew Meier, and statehouse news bureau chief Karen Kasler.

Let's get ready to round table.

When you hear a surge has peaked in Northeast Ohio, Marlene, that's good news.

- That's absolutely good news, Mike.

I mean, it's what we've all been waiting to hear.

And we've seen this in other countries where Omicron had a steep climb and then as most people got infected, then it had a steep decline.

So they're saying that possibly by middle of February and March, we may get back to something more normal.

- [Mike] And what is normal?

- That's a good question, what is normal?

(laughs) - I mean, when you think about it- - I don't know, Mike, we will find out.

- We've had these moments before where it looked like, okay, I guess we're coming out of this.

There was a time in June when people sort of felt like, okay, we're doing good.

And then Delta sort of reared its ugly head.

And so the question now is when we see these numbers going down, what does that mean for what people have been doing?

Some have been masking using the KN95 or N95 masks, obviously vaccinations, still social distancing, maybe saying, no, I'm not gonna go to that 100-person indoor party.

Is there worry though that now that the numbers go down, people say, "Well, we're gonna go back to it?"

- Well, I should say that all the health officials on county level and the state level are all saying this week, continue to do what you've been doing.

So even though the numbers are going down, there's still a lot of spread in our community.

There's still a lot of Omicron out there.

So nobody should do anything drastically different right now We should still continue to mask.

We should still continue to social distance.

We should still continue to avoid large crowds for right now.

But what I'm hearing the experts say, Mike, is after Omicron is outta here, most of us will have some kind of immunity either from Omicron, having had it, or from the vaccine.

And unless another variant that we don't see on the horizon comes through, then most of us who have that immunity will be able to move through society relatively normal.

Will we be able to drop the masks?

I'm not entirely sure about that, but I just read a story this morning with about four different national experts, and they all agree that after Omicron clears out, we should at least have a respite for a while, unless another variant comes back up, but this could send signal the end of the pandemic phase and get more into the endemic phase, which means the coronavirus becomes more like a cold or the flu, it comes around every year, but maybe isn't as dangerous as it's been.

- Andrew, the health professionals have said that the masking and social distancing, they helped, but we always expected Omicron was something that was gonna burn through quickly.

- We did.

And again, looking at other countries where we first saw Omicron it burns through the populations there's very quickly.

It seems fortunately that we're seeing something similar here in Ohio.

But again, in looking at the briefing that the Ohio Department of Health yesterday had, Dr. Bruce Vanderhoff said, "Okay, we may be over the worst of this, "but the situation is still dire."

So you look at statements from organizations like the Ohio Hospital Association who point to continued masking, continued social distancing, shifts in schools to hybrid or virtual, for a week or two, during the worst of this as helping to mitigate what has been really a wave of new cases.

- And this is all happening just as the Cavalry is coming in some ways.

The U.S. Air Force Medical personnel were deployed.

Some were at the Cleveland Clinic.

I saw a story that we had up on ideastream.org about that.

So there's that part of it.

There's also FEMA that's sending help to Akron.

So you wonder whether declining cases would change their mission.

In the meanwhile, the Ohio National Guard which was helping to test people, have now been redeployed to harder hit areas of the state.

Karen, the governor has said that there are spots where they're needed now.

In fact, the testing center in Cleveland, the W.O.

Walker Center, is closing on Sunday, but there's still a lot of need elsewhere.

- Yeah.

The Omicron variant what's left of Delta even still is starting to shift here from Northern Ohio down to Southern Ohio.

State health director, Dr. Bruce Vanderhoff reported in a press conference yesterday that was covered by my Statehouse News Bureau colleague, Joe Ingles, that Southwest Ohio had a 14% increase, Western Ohio at a 13% increase in ICU patients.

And when you start looking specifically at those regions in the Cincinnati area, in the Southwest Ohio, one in four patients has COVID, one in three in the ICU has COVID.

In Southern Ohio, it's one in three patients, one in three in ICU, and in Southeast Ohio, one in three patients and one in two in the ICU.

So half of all the ICU patients in Southeast Ohio have COVID.

So that's where the 2000 members of the Ohio National Guard are now shifting to try to help staff those beds and staff those hospitals, and do the work that they've been doing in Northern Ohio down there.

- What about, Marlene, the need for testing?

We've talked about how the shift for these facilities, like W.O.

Walker center in Cleveland are going further south, but there's still a need for testing.

And we see that on college campuses.

We're seeing that all over the place.

What's the situation with that now, is it easier to access?

- Yeah, well, in terms of schools in Ohio, the Ohio Department of Health said a few weeks ago that they were going to take their testing supplies and push them into the schools to make sure that there were adequate supplies there, but there is still going to be an ongoing need for testing, because as Andrew just said, the spread is still here in our community.

It's not gone yet.

So even though we're hearing this wonderful news, people still need to test if they start to feel, you know, that little tickle in their throat, that's one of the signs of Omicron.

People still need to test.

But the good news, Mike, is that the home testing kits are becoming more available now.

And the federal government set up a site where people can go and sign up and get testing kits sent to their home.

I went to the site, I signed up, it was relatively easy.

Now, I have yet to receive those tests to my house.

So the question will be, how soon are they gonna come?

And the federal government has also taken the step to supply masks to people.

Starting next week, they're gonna send masks out to pharmacies and community health centers, where people can get the really good N95 masks like the kind they use in the hospital.

So testing is still a thing we should be doing for the short term here, because there's still a lot of spread.

Once we get back to normal, if we will, testing will still be a factor in places where people congregate like workplaces, like school.

- I understand when it comes to the four free tests, free as they're taxpayer funded from the federal government that they would be sent out later this month and that they're actually going to prioritize certain ZIP codes where there're people that are hardest hit and where there are some issues.

So your timing of getting them may depend on some of that.

- Are you saying I'm not in the priority ZIP code?

- I don't know, Marlene.

- Is that what you are saying?

- Are you or aren't you?

Good question.

- I know there's a lot of spread in Cuyahoga County.

So, hopefully we're considered a priority.

- Gotcha.

Andrew, what about on college campuses?

Kent State University, for example, when the spring semester begins, what's the plan there?

- The plan is, well, I mean, I should start off by saying that every college and university has a slightly different take on how they are addressing COVID on campus.

For Kent State, they have put into effect with the return in the spring semester, a vaccination requirements.

Every student, every staff member, every faculty member has to be vaccinated unless they have an approved exemption.

They're focusing the testing at Kent State on those who have the approved exemptions.

And they say they have enough test to deal with this.

They have a weekly delivery of 1500 rapid home tests, 3,500 PCR tests that they can administer, this is every week, so they feel they have more than sufficient capacity to deal with this in an ongoing basis.

- I noticed that Case Western Reserve University there's a vending machine where you can actually go and get a PCR test.

- And Novelty, yeah, Novelty aside.

It's an interesting way of handling this.

They've got them distributed in machines around campus, and they've kind of gotten around the whole idea of, well, you got the test now, what do you do with them?

Because, of course, there's someone in the backlog and processing them, well, Case Western Reserve has the capacity in its own labs to process these tests themselves.

And they're saying they can get the results back in 24 hours - That's right.

You need to be a student or a faculty member.

You get the thing in a little bag.

You do the swab, you put it into a drop box and a day later you get your results.

So we're seeing some innovative ways to deal with testing now.

(Ideas theme music) The Ohio Redistricting Commission has a Saturday deadline to complete new district maps for the Ohio House and Senate.

The Supreme Court threw out the original maps approved by the commission, saying they were unconstitutionally gerrymandered and did not adhere to voter approved reforms.

Any chance they're gonna get anything done in the next 24 hours?

- Yeah, yesterday they did meet for a second meeting since the Ohio Supreme Court threw out their previous maps.

And they say the deadline is Saturday.

Typically, if a deadline is Saturday, in government, it's usually pushed to Monday, but they've been saying Saturday.

So by Saturday, tomorrow, hours away from now, they're supposed to have new maps for the Ohio House and Senate.

And right now it appears that Democrats and Republicans on the panel are pretty far apart.

And that was the way it was with the previous maps.

But the question is now, what are people like Governor Mike DeWine and Secretary of State Frank LaRose gonna do?

Because they have raised real concerns about the maps that they approved before, and Frank LaRose says if we don't approve a map soon, we're gonna potentially put the May 3rd primary in jeopardy.

So a lot of things are coming together on this, and whether we get a map by the end of tomorrow is really a big question, I think.

- It really raised a question for me too when you talk about Frank LaRose that he essentially held his nose and voted yes for the previous map.

But apparently, there was a text that he sent to his chief of staff that was saying, "This whole thing is asinine and I should vote no."

And I thought to myself, well, then why didn't you?

- Well, and that was something that came out in the lawsuit over the legislative maps.

Like you said, it was a text to his chief of staff.

And now he's raising these alarm bells about what might happen with the May 3rd primary.

Governor Mike DeWine said at the meeting where they approved the maps, that he was sorry we were at this point that maps, he raised concerns as well.

He even said about the congressional maps that the panel approved later, he didn't think they were gonna fly in court.

So we're in kind of this, we're definitely in uncharted waters because this is all brand new because of those two constitutional amendments, one approved in 2015 and one approved in 2018.

I don't think anybody thought that this was, well, okay, maybe some skeptics and pessimists might've thought that this was not gonna go very well.

But I think there were a lot of people who were hoping that this process would change, it would be more transparent, it would be less partisan; that's not what we've seen so far.

- Well, in fact, when the Supreme Court made its ruling, Chief Justice Maureen O'Connor was saying, "Well, maybe there's another thing you ought to do.

"Maybe you ought to go to..." And this was actually when she's talking about the congressional part of it, but maybe this is another amendment that ought to be made to the constitution, so that the politicians don't have their fingers in this at all.

- Yeah, and I've talked to advocates about that.

And Catherine Turcer from Common Cause Ohio, who was one of the big drivers of the 2015 legislative amendment said that twice, voters in Ohio have rejected the idea of an independent commission trying to figure this out, once in 2005, once in 2012.

Whether it's time to consider those things again, because apparently then the voters said, well, we were concerned about an independent commission not being accountable to voters.

Well, the Supreme Court ruling, Catherine Turcer says, showed that the elected officials weren't necessarily accountable to voters.

So all of this though is coming down to the wire in terms of whether the primary is gonna have to be moved.

The primary is May 3rd, that sets filing deadlines for legislative offices in February and congressional offices in March.

And whether that's gonna go forward or not is a big question.

And that potentially raises confusion for voters.

If you move that May primary, voters might not follow that, might forget if you move it to June or something to go out and vote.

And that potentially has some impacts.

(Ideas theme music) - Intel says it'll build a multi-billion dollar computer chip manufacturing campus in Central Ohio, what's being called the biggest economic development deal in state history.

We're talking about a pretty massive investment in Ohio.

- And one other thing to throw in here, of course, is the fact that there was going to be the ad-on businesses who help, are part of the supply chain for these microchips that are also going to locate here adjacent to this new Intel plant.

It's a juggernaut.

It's kind of phenomenal.

And Columbus wins again.

- Ohio hasn't seen a project this size, Karen, since the Honda plant was built in Marysville.

- Yeah, and that was really transformative.

That came out in the '80s, and it really just changed that whole area here, but this is potentially bigger.

I mean, Intel says in its letter that you can read part of it in Time on time.com as well as the Columbus Dispatch has done some work on this and cleveland.com and others, that the expectation is that this facility will become the largest Silicon manufacturing location on the planet.

Up to 2000 acres, that it could eventually expand, or expand from the 3,600 acres right now, expand 2000 acres beyond that, up to eight facilities here.

And they say they wanna establish the Silicon Heartland after establishing Silicon valley.

So this is enormous, not only just the initial impact, but also like Andrew's saying the add on impact, the businesses that develop to support the supply chain, just this really potentially shores up the supply chain for the entire United States.

And I think New Albany in the Central Ohio area, it's actually in Licking County that was annexed to New Albany.

It's very rural in that area, but New Albany is probably the wealthiest city in Ohio, potentially, and could potentially get even wealthier with this opportunity 'cause these are good paying jobs and all that is factoring in here.

- When you say good paying jobs, north of $100,000 for the people that are working there.

Those are good paying jobs.

- Yeah.

And these are high-tech manufacturing, and manufacturing has really taken a hit in Ohio and in the Midwest in general, but this is high-tech manufacturing.

Now, you've got people who are gonna push back and say that there are environmental impacts from all of this, but high-tech manufacturing is different than a lot of other kinds of manufacturing.

And so this is the kind of thing that has been sought again.

38 other sites looked for this particular development and the Central Ohio area won it.

- A quick question on that then, we live in Northeast Ohio, and, of course, people will look at that and say, "Hey, come we can't land something like this?"

Part of it is just land.

We don't have that many acres not developed to string together.

Everything here, it used to be something else.

- And that's a big part of this as well.

I mean, when you talk about 3,600 acres that has been annexed from Licking County to New Albany, that's 5.6 square miles.

It's the size of Rocky River.

I mean, this is a huge, huge development.

And you have to have a lot of land for all this.

And I've been a reporter in Ohio my entire career and one of the things that Ohio was always touted as being is kind of, you know, you remember The Heart of It All, that whole thing, but also as a real center for logistics, that we are 500 miles from every major population center on the east coast.

That there are railroads, rail lines rather, and interstates and all these things coming together.

And all of this potentially plays into that.

(Ideas theme music) - The snow finally came Monday to Cleveland and Cleveland was not at all ready.

Cleveland mayor, Justin Bibb, says he inherited a broken snow removal system and said his administration will get to work, fixing it.

Andrew, the storm arrived over the Martin Luther King Jr holiday, which meant some people did not have to be out in it, but it did leave a lot of questions about readiness and the city of Cleveland didn't look good.

What about Akron?

- It was, is a similar situation in Akron.

The crews were out there.

They had, depending on who you believe, 52 or 55 trucks that were out and about.

They approach snow clearance in a stepped way, looking at primary, secondary and tertiary streets, of course the main streets are the ones that they really hit first, the secondary streets.

But we were hearing even two days after the snow stopped falling, that there are a number of side streets, residential streets, where the residents basically grabbed the shovels and just went out and started digging because the crews just hadn't shown up.

And of course, part of the impact from that, both in Akron and Cleveland on the legging response was that schools were closed as a result for a couple of days, which is very unusual in Northeast Ohio, wherever you are.

And you know, what we found out both from Akron and in Cleveland was that it wasn't so much that the main roads weren't passable, it was the sidewalks that hadn't been dealt with.

- And what about sidewalks?

First of all, we have a city that was having trouble enough getting the main roads clear, and then all the side streets people getting out of their driveways.

But then when we talk about sidewalks, that's not really the city's responsibility in most cases, right?

- No, it's a gray area about who is really responsible.

Some communities will say, you have to clear your sidewalks within 24 hours after the last snowflake falls, but there is no state rule about that.

Even insurance doesn't really address that in terms of liability issues.

So it's up to community by community to deal with that.

Some have requirements, some are a little more lax about that.

And can you really imagine in the middle of a snow storm and dealing with getting rid of all the snow, any enforcement actually happening on that when city crews are so tied up with everything else?

- Right, I can't imagine that.

Marlene, when a new mayor comes into office, this is one of those bread and butter issues.

When the snow comes, get the snow off the road, you got to fill for the mayor of Cleveland, just coming in and having so much trouble.

He calls this the snow removal system, a broken system that he inherited and says he's gonna do something about it.

- And I think Cleveland residents will buy that at least for this year.

I mean, he'd only been on the job for a couple of weeks.

And I will say, I have to give him some points for being more forward and communicating more with the citizens around what was going on.

Even though people, by and large, there was a lot of complaints about what was going on, his administration, they were sending out robo calls to citizens about giving updates.

And he got on a social media, himself, with a video to say that it wasn't good enough, what the city did and that he pledged to do better, to do more investing in equipment, which he says was a big problem, that there's been disinvestment or not enough investment to keep the equipment going or to get new equipment.

So I do feel for him and I think other people feel for him too, but you're right, Mike, you know, campaigns are run, you talk about these lofty things in campaigns, but when you're the mayor, you govern on these bread and butter things like keeping the streets clean when snow comes and potholes and stuff like that.

- Right.

You know, one thing is in Cleveland, and I know this from talking to Nicastel who was looking into it a little bit, these snowplow drivers literally have a paper map they're kind of using a highlighter saying, "Yeah, we got this one done."

And you start thinking to yourself, can't we employ technology a little bit better than that so that we have a system for clearing these streets.

Maybe that's something that the administration is looking into.

- Yeah.

I mean, he didn't call that out specifically, but maybe that's what he's talking about when he talks about the lack of investment.

And you find this often in government agencies, government administrations, they're often way behind the public when it comes to investment in technology, whether it's at a city or a county, or even a federal level, a lot of times.

And that happens because if you think about it, when they want to invest in technology, they often have to come to the citizens to ask for that.

And people say, "I don't wanna pay for that."

But then, when we need it we're like, "Why don't they have it?"

- Right, I want it, I don't wanna pay for it.

- Exactly.

(laughs) - Got it.

(Ideas theme music) A planning committee has selected a contractor to design and build a new Cuyahoga County jail.

The choice was easy.

There was only one bid.

The Cuyahoga County jail planning committee has selected Cayuga County justice partners to design and build a new county jail.

The partners include Gilbane Construction, AECOM Hunt and Cleveland-based Ozanne Construction.

The plan calls for 850,000 square foot facility with 1,904 beds and 600 beds set aside for those with medical and mental health needs.

Andrew, not a whole lot of contractors wanted this job.

- They got one bid.

Just one bid.

From the partners you mentioned, but everybody else is not interested in putting in a bid.

I think the wisdom that's being put out there is that they're saying, "Oh, we're just too darn busy to consider building this."

But you got to wonder if there are some variables here that gave others pause when it came to putting in a bid on the project.

- We also don't know where it's going to be.

- Exactly.

They're saying this is gonna cost $550 million, and we're considering one of four sites for it.

Well, anybody who does building can tell you that a site is going to affect the cost of the project that you're building, whether it's a house or whether it's a jail.

(Ideas theme music) - The Cleveland Clinic this week launched the largest ever study aim to better understand and prevent neurological disorders, including Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, stroke and epilepsy.

Marlene, you know, usually you hear about a study and hospitals will roll these out, and they're interesting and worth covering and looking at.

This one though it seemed pretty big.

- Yeah.

When we saw the announcement, we were like, "Wow!"

Because often you have these clinical trials that involve a couple hundred people, a couple thousand people, this is hundreds of hundreds of thousands of people over 20 years.

And this has the potential to really change the game for people with what they call these brain diseases.

I mean, if you think about, it might just in your own life, everybody knows somebody who has Alzheimer's.

Everybody knows someone with Parkinson's and how these diseases really impact the quality of life for folks.

And even though there's been study over the year, most of the study has been about trying to create a pill or something that treat you after you already have it.

And so the difference here is they're trying to look at how do we prevent this in the first place?

What can we do to stop this from happening?

So this could be huge and a game changer for our society at large, if they find some answers, and they're hoping to have some answers in about five years, because what they say, it won't be finished, but they're hoping to share some data in five years.

- Monday on the Sound of Ideas on 90.3 WCPN, as we enter our third calendar year of the coronavirus pandemic, we continue to see stress and upheaval exacting a tremendous mental health toll on all of us.

Rick Jackson engages experts on pandemic fatigue.

I'm Mike MacIntyre.

Thanks so much for watching and stay safe.

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