(soft upbeat music) - COVID-19 case numbers in Ohio shot up in the last week bringing us farther from the benchmark set by governor Mike DeWine to lift pandemic health orders.

Criticism over Lieutenant governor Jon Husted tweet referencing the Wuhan virus continues, as his Asian-American neighbors expressed their concerns to him.

And no face paint or head dresses will be allowed this baseball season at progressive field, but the controversial Chief Wahoo logo is still permitted.

Ideas is next.

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(orchestral Music) (upbeat music) - Hello and welcome to Ideas.

I'm Mike MacIntyre, thanks for joining us.

We're going the wrong way, rising COVID-19 case numbers fueled in part by variants of the Corona virus have not only stalled the state's progress toward ending pandemic health orders, it's shifted in into reverse.

The state is responding by flooding hotspots with COVID-19 vaccine and vaccination clinics will be set up on college campuses and in individual workplaces.

Meanwhile, should you have to prove you've been vaccinated to see a show or visit a business?

A state lawmaker says a vaccination passport policy must be outlawed, even though no one has proposed such a mandate.

Joining me this week to discuss all of these stories and more, is ideastream managing producer of health coverage Marlene Harris-Taylor.

Reporter Nick Castele and Statehouse News Bureau Chief Karen Kasler.

Let's get ready to round table.

Marlene to try to head off this surge, the governor says he's gonna get more vaccines in the trouble spots.

What does he mean there?

What's gonna happen?

- Yeah so, what the governor talked about yesterday was that you have some communities where there's more vaccine than people who want it.

And you have other communities where there's people who want the shot, who can't get it and where they can clearly see the numbers arising so what they're going to do now instead of just proportionally giving it out to everybody across the state, they'll look at these numbers now and make sure there's more vaccine going to the places where the numbers arising and you have a lot of people who are standing in line wanting the shot.

- Karen with the numbers moving up again it's appearing that we may reach a point when the legislation limiting governor DeWine authority may come into play during the pandemic not just for future emergencies cause we at some point thought, okay, we're gonna get there and back to governor had said, "Hey we gotta really push in those next 90 days."

Now it looks like that's a little dicey.

- Well yeah, I talked to Senate president Matt Huffman for our TV show, the State of Ohio this week.

And I specifically asked him is the plan to come back and overturn, the governor's health orders.

Once the law takes effect because the legislature will have the power to do that.

And he said, well the legislature will probably be in session anyway because the budget deadline is the end of June.

And so when the law takes effect, they'd be here anyway and he said yeah, it's their intention to go ahead and override, the governor's health orders because Senate Bill 22 gives them that power.

Assuming Senate Bill 22 does go into effect, I mean, DeWine was asked yesterday again if his office plans any sort of a legal challenge he says no, that doesn't rule out legal challenges by other groups that were opposed to Senate Bill 22.

I mean, hospital association, various other medical entities, County commissioners and boards of health, I mean all of these groups were very concerned about the power that Senate Bill 22 gave to the legislature and took away from the governor and from counties.

So, it's just interesting here that lawmakers apparently are are thinking about doing this regardless of where we are in terms of case numbers.

I mean, right now the statewide average is 167.1, which is three times the governor's target number of 50 cases per 100,000 residents.

But one of the things Matt Huffman told me is that the state of emergency, that was declared last March, March, 2020 would expire 30 days after the law takes effect because that law says States of Emergency can only last for 30 days.

So, he said even if we don't do anything, if that law takes effect that state of emergency does go away.

- I think I was saying a couple of weeks ago here about how it just sort of felt like we hit a turning point, things were moving in the right direction, vaccines were rolling out, people were wearing masks, numbers were going down.

Nick, this isn't really what people wanna see as we enter spring and this huge event that's coming to Cleveland on the draft even though most of it's outdoors or some indoors.

But I think people might've expected we'd have incremental progress up to these big events that might've been a big turning point.

- Yeah, exactly now we still have a four weeks to see things turn around before the draft so maybe there's a possibility that we'll get this little spike under control.

As you said, a lot of the event itself is going to be outdoors down around first energy stadium, right there on the Lakefront.

And many of the fans who will be in sort of the inner circle right there in the front row, they're going to be required to be fully vaccinated and masks are also gonna be required as well so you can see Cleveland and the NFL trying to take some steps to make sure that they are not going to be responsible for any kind of spike in COVID cases when they have this huge event that will probably draw a lot of people downtown.

- Governor made a couple of announcements yesterday detailing the state's plan to stop the surge counties with spikes and COVID-19 cases will be targeted for vaccines as we mentioned, and college students will be able to get vaccinated in on-campus clinics, here's the governor explaining that.

- That age-group interacts more.

More socialization, more movements, more contacts.

And so, it is a strategic move frankly, to vaccinate them, on campus.

- Marlene would be the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, the governor basically saying if we're doing it on campus more students might see other students and be inclined to do it and the Johnson & Johnson being a one and done.

- Yeah, I think that makes sense.

I think there's that peer pressure factor that he's hoping will work on students.

And frankly, I think a lot of students probably want the shot.

And I've heard a lot of initially people were worried about the Johnson & Johnson shot because technically it wasn't as effective as the other shots and folks were worried, will people want that shot?

Now, this sort of the reverse I'm hearing a lot of people saying they want the Johnson & Johnson shot because of the one and done factor.

And I think that is particularly appealing to young folks.

I know that when it was opened up here in Ohio to anybody 16 and above, many young people jumped at the opportunity our reporter Lisa Ryan was over at Wolfenstein and she talked to a lot of young folks coming out there with their parents, celebrating, taking selfies our own Anna Huntsman went and got it, my own son just got a shot yesterday he's 18.

So I think people may think young people don't want this, but I think young people will welcome this and the fact that they're gonna go around to the college campuses, I think that's fantastic because many young people don't have the transportation to get to a centralized place if they're away at college.

- And Karen the governor laid out why college campuses could be for I think he was saying, we'll wait until the fall and we'll get everybody else done.

But now he's saying even if they don't get sick they might be more likely to be carriers.

- Yeah and he's concerned about people going home for summer break and spreading it to grandparents and parents and other people in the community I mean, it's the same argument that we heard when schools were closed back at the beginning of the pandemic there was a real concern not necessarily because of the kids because the evidence has always been that this is a disease that really hits older people hardest which is why older people were prioritized for the vaccine in the first place.

But he says, this gives them the opportunity if they are carriers, if they would bring this home to family members, this would help them not do that.

And I think another thing about offering college students the vaccine right there I mean college students like convenience they like things right there so they could just take advantage of it right at that moment.

And I think that's a really interesting opportunity to have the vaccine, right there one and done, you get it over with.

And so I think that's the whole goal of trying to bring it to the kids right there before they leave for the summer and potentially bring it home to the community that they live in.

- The state now says 2 million Ohioans are fully vaccinated about 3.5 million have at least had one dose.

But the number of people contracting variants of the virus is growing to, setting up a battle vaccines and variants that is something that Dr. Bruce Vanderhoff talked a little bit about yesterday.

Karen, let's talk a little bit about that, we're worried about these variants taking over and really driving these numbers up.

- Yeah and that's something that DeWine has talked about the last couple of press conferences is the race, between getting people vaccinated and these variants that are developing.

Because the whole idea of vaccines is to get the virus down and stop it from spreading, because if it spreads, it can mutate.

And some of these variants have turned out to be, pretty potentially dangerous that they spread easier, they are potentially make more people sick and have more really negative impacts can kill more people.

There's a real concern about that, and the question is, how do you stop the vaccine from spreading and mutating into these variants?

Will you do that through vaccines?

You also do that through mask wearing and social distancing, all those things that you're supposed to continue to do even after you've been vaccinated.

And so, DeWine and Dr. Bruce Vanderhoff is the medical director of the high department of health, were saying yesterday that the variants are a concern, because it's showing in our case numbers going up, but also in certain parts of the state we had counties that were showing increases and especially when you start looking at the Northern part of the state and comparing it to what's happening in Michigan, Michigan is really the number of cases is really growing up there.

And so, the real concern is making sure that people are still doing the things that DeWine wants them to do that science backs up that work and getting the vaccine and again there's that race against time so to speak.

- There is a question about a mandate that private businesses might have, and that is this.

Would there be something that people are calling vaccine passports?

For example, if you wanna come to my theater to watch a show, or if you wanna do other kinds of activities of businesses, they would say, okay well show me your vaccine card or your vaccination card if you've been vaccinated, you can be let in.

That's something some people have talked about it's never been proposed, but one Ohio lawmaker wants to preemptively ensure the state doesn't go down that road.

Right?

- Yeah representative Al Cutrona, from the Youngstown area he has proposed a bill that would ban a mandated vaccine passport.

And he said his concern is not just for the freedoms issue and that he feels that the governor's mandates and the mass mandate locked down that sort of thing have impinged on people's freedoms.

But he's also concerned about any sort of a digital vaccine passport, like an app that you would show to get on a cruise line or whatever.

He says that those apps can be mined for information that Big Tech in his words could use the information in those apps and sell them and so he's concerned about that.

But, it still does come down to, if private businesses want to require that, I mean I thought Republicans were fine with private businesses making those sorts of rules.

And so his issue is just of course the government should not be mandating that and again, no government is mandating that, the white house has said, they're not gonna mandate it, DeWine was asked yesterday the state is not gonna mandate it there's no mandated vaccine passports but private businesses may be, and private entities may come up with those things on their own.

(suspenseful music) - Asian-American neighbors of Lieutenant governor Jon Husted and the Columbus suburb of Upper Arlington, sent him a letter expressing their concern, over his recent tweet, in which he referred to the Corona virus as the Wuhan virus.

The tweet linked to an article in which the ex-director of the centers for disease control and prevention made questionable claims about the viruses origin.

Karen, where does this stand at this point?

I think he said he would address the issue with the neighbors who sent the letter but, what does that mean?

- That's a good question and this has certainly been going on for quite a while because the original tweet was, I believe Friday night or Saturday morning and it's been escalating over time because the Lieutenant governor put out his initial tweet and then responded by saying, "Hey I was concerned about the Chinese government, the Chinese government has not been transparent."

And really kind of doubled down on what he was saying at first.

But, the pushback has been from groups and individuals who said, hey, wait a minute this, just putting a tweet out there that just says, so it was the Wuhan virus after all question Mark with no context, especially in a time when, there are rising incidents of Asian-American hate and attacks against people of Asian descent in this country this is a bad time for this.

And so he was asked twice yesterday at the press conference and the first time he kind of stood his ground on what he had said initially, the second time he talked a little bit more about, the community reaction and what he hopes to do to maybe work this out.

But yeah this has been going on for, the better part of a week at this point.

- Nick, let's lay this out because I've heard some people say listen, if we know it originated in China, why can't we label it the Chinese virus or the Wuhan virus.

And on the other hand what we just heard from Karen is something that we've been reporting extensively here at ideastream which is this rise in backlash and hate against Asian-Americans because of the use of these types of things.

The WHO says, "Don't attach these geographic names to these viruses for that reason."

- Yeah I mean, you certainly have heard including from neighbors and Upper Arlington, Asian American saying that they find it offensive to see the viruses in some ways being attached to ethnicity, right.

And feeling that they're being painted sort of with this broad brush as an other or as different, or something like that.

And that's sort of the concept that there's offensive.

It is a different thing to say, serious questions about the way the Chinese government handled the early outbreaks of the virus, but you can probably do that without saying Wuhan virus, without saying, any other kind of explanatory information.

- Jeff sends us an email WHO says, "I get not calling the virus Chinese or Wuhan, but why is it okay to call variants by their nation of origin, such as the UK variant?"

- Well again, I'll just go back to what I said before, I don't hear people in the UK saying that, connecting that to us is harming me as a person but we do have people in the Asian-American community who say connecting that virus to our ethnicity is harming us as people and we're experiencing violence because of it.

So to me, that's the difference.

(suspenseful music) - The Ohio Supreme court this week approved new rules aimed at limiting cash bail.

The rules impact counties that have both municipal and county-based state court, which includes Cuyahoga.

One new rule, the first option would be releasing an individual on a personal recognizance bond.

Nick, we've been talking about this for years, and in fact it's something that the chief justice of the Ohio Supreme Court has been pushing Maureen O'Connor, for a long time as well.

We now finally have some clarity, that might really go toward the goal of having no cash bail.

What's the goal here?

Why is it that cash bail is being seen as something that isn't healthy?

- Well, I think it goes to this the underlying issue of someone's ability to pay, being the determining factor of whether they keep their liberty or lose it during in the lead up to them facing some sort of criminal charges you know, two people might commit the same offense or be accused of the same offense, bail set perhaps at the same amount but if one person just happens to have more financial resources they can go free.

Someone who doesn't have that kind of money can't and they may suffer collateral consequences from that losing their job because they can't show up to work, problems with childcare, because they need to find someone else to look after their kids while they are in jail.

I mean, so there are these sort of collateral consequences and if it's determined ultimately by this idea of whether you've got enough money in your pocket or not, or whether you've got friends or family who can bail you out, is that really the justice that the constitution is supposed to ensure.

- And we should note, that these are not people that have been convicted of a crime they're charged.

- Right.

- And so you wait until your trial, the question is, where do you wait?

In a jail cell or are you able to be at home and have some sort of reporting responsibility, et cetera.

The other part is the question about what the bail is supposed to do which is essentially to punish somebody, but just to assure that you show up for a court date.

So we've talked about a number of different ways, to determine whether someone is likely to flee or to show up for their court date really that's the whole idea of bail, right.

- Right, I mean the idea ultimately is to ensure that someone who is charged with a crime comes back for court and doesn't try to skip town and avoid the legal system.

So there are other ideas out there, pretrial risk assessments is sort of one of those, that's been embraced by I think a lot of local judges in courts around Northeast Ohio that have the resource to just do it, where they're looking at what is their likelihood of not showing up to court again, that's often paired with, like you mentioned required check-ins with some kind of pretrial services agency, perhaps wearing a GPS monitor.

Now there are organizations, like I believe the ACLU that have criticized risk assessments as perhaps having some sort of underlying bias and also the idea of GPS monitors as being just another form of detention out of jail and that debate is still I think raging, especially as we consider what would replace a cash bail system.

- Karen.

- One thing I'm gonna add here is, very interesting that this is an area where conservative and liberal groups really have worked on this.

I mean, Nick just mentioned the ACLU you've also got the Buckeye Institute and Americans for Prosperity on the conservative side that have really advocated for this and pushed for this.

and so it's really an opportunity for people of very divergent views on a lot of other things to come together and say, "Hey we all agree that bail should not be used as punishment the people who have more resources should not be allowed to walk away when people who have less fewer resources can't."

So it's really interesting to see groups that are very very different partnering on an issue like this.

- And maybe part of that is because it's also a money saver.

- Yeah, I mean you've got conservative groups who have said that it could save the state tens of millions of dollars and so that's another element of this it's really kind of interesting.

- Marlene.

- Yeah, I just wanted to add Mike that, the other piece of this outside of, you know we've talked about the economic factors, how it impacts people disproportionately, who don't have a lot of money.

We also know that this also disproportionately impacts minority communities and it criminalizes often folks who don't have that money.

So it's one of the factors that has criminalized particularly a lot of black men, they end up in the system if you will, because they don't have bail, the cash money for bail.

So they end up in jail and as Nick mentioned, maybe they lose their job and it's just a spiral and it's a cycle that we've learned in recent years that this cash bail system really contributes to this cycle of criminalizing black and brown folks and particularly black men.

(suspenseful music) - The Cleveland mayoral race is underway with a number of candidates declaring one candidate we don't know about mayor Frank Jackson, will he run for an unprecedented fifth term?

An email this week from a local contractor endorsing Jackson's candidacy, has people buzzing about whether it was just a misunderstanding or the contractor knows something we don't.

So did the mayor say it is what it is?

- Wow and what does that mean?

None of us knows.

Yeah so what happened was this week, Norman Edwards who's the head of a group called the Black Contractors Group.

He's very politically involved, lately he has been a strong supporter of Frank Jackson though that's not always the case.

He sent an email out saying, the subject line was something to the effect of mayor Frank Jackson is running for a fifth term.

And in the body of the email he said, and we wholeheartedly endorse him and we're going to raise money for him.

This was a shock to many people because Jackson had been pretty coy about whether he was going to run again.

He also really has not raised any money which would seem to be an indication that he's not going to run.

And even some city council members and former council members who I messaged when that email went out, they were shocked too, they really didn't know what this was about.

Jackson then talked to cleveland.com and said, essentially that his position had not changed, he still is not saying one way or the other whether he's going to run.

But evidently he and Edwards had had some kind of conversation, Edwards came away from that thinking that meant that Jackson was definitely going to run for a fifth term.

Jackson says either, I guess he said it's not the case but he also wouldn't say what the case was.

So we're still left guessing as to whether he's really gonna go for another term.

- He basically says, I'm running until I'm not running or I'm not running until I'm running something like that.

But basically you'll find out later.

- Yes, what he has said before is, if he says he is running, everything he does will be politicized, if he says he's not running nobody will return his phone calls so he's gonna keep us guessing.

(suspenseful music) - Baseball returns to progressive field Monday for the home opener.

Let's not even talk about the season opener Thursday in Detroit.

Those who attend games in person at progressive field, must adhere to some new rules.

Fans must wear masks and must not wear face paint, head dresses or other attire referencing native American culture or traditions.

The teams in the process of changing its name from Indians, we don't know what the new name will be yet but I think everybody knows I vote for Guardians and they've already moved away from the longtime mascot, Chief Wahoo it no longer appears on uniforms or hats not sold in the team shop.

However, Wahoo who himself wears exaggerated red face paint and a feather, is allowed on attire at the games.

So Nick, you can't dress up like Chief Wahoo, but you can put them on your shirt.

- That seems to be what the rules would indicate.

You know, the team is trying to move away from this offensive native American imagery of Chief Wahoo.

Now you have them telling fans you can't wear head dresses or face paint that's meant to sort of evoke American Indian imagery.

You know, I think a lot of people probably have seen images, videos that have gone viral showing native American protestors out protesting the use of the name and the use of Chief Wahoo and coming face to face with fans in full head gear and war paint it doesn't look very good for the club to have those kinds of images circulating around.

And so I think that having a rule like this in place might be a one way to sort of tamp down on that and phase out, this kind of imagery in favor of whatever's coming next with a new name.

- Other changes at the ballpark not just in regards to attire, Marlene is social distancing in the seating and face masks, but some of those popular face masks like a Gator, or bandanas, or even ones with valves those aren't acceptable.

- No, not at all.

And just a quick comment on the move away from Chief Wahoo just seems like they're trying to decide whether to pull off the band-aid fast or pull off the band-aid slowly - And its really slowly.

- For the fans is they're pulling it off real slow, sometimes it hurts more though, you pull it off real slow.

- True.

- But moving on to the issue of the face mask.

Yeah, scientifically they've shown that the best mask are the ones like the surgical mask or the double masking of the cloth mask and obviously if you can get N95 that's the best.

And so, people have adopted all kind of masks in daily life.

And so they expect to be able to wear those anywhere but if say you go to a hospital for example, right now those are not allowed so, they know what works and what doesn't and so they're trying to stick with that.

- All right Karen we just have a half a minute left but we're talking about the Cleveland baseball team.

It's your chance to wax poetic.

(laughs) - I have nothing, I mean after seeing yesterday's game, I have nothing, after seeing the contract that Francisco Lynn Norris sign with the Mets, I have nothing.

I will say though that my son and I have gone to games where we have seen fans in the full headdresses and the paint and I'm really kind of surprised that it's taken this long, for the team to decide that that's not appropriate.

- And that's going to wrap up our show.

Coming up Monday on the sound of ideas.

We'll discuss what the Biden administration's big infrastructure plan, could mean for Northeast Ohio.

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

(orchestral music) - [Narrator] Brought to you by Westfield, offering insurance to protect what's yours, grow your business and achieve your dreams.