(instrumental music) - The current COVID-19 surge is every bit as serious as it was last winter.

Says the state's top public health doctor.

Your house Supreme court hears arguments and justices asked pointed questions about state legislative maps in a case alleging gerrymandering.

And lawmakers finally agree on legal sports gambling in Ohio.

Now it's up to the governor to sign it into law.

Ideas is next.

(instrumental music) Hello, and welcome to ideas.

I'm Mike MacIntyre.

Thanks for joining us.

Ohio in five other states, mostly in the Midwest, are driving the current national surge in COVID-19 cases on hospitalizations.

Ohio's top doctor says our medical infrastructure is strained as hospitals, especially in Northeast Ohio, struggled to care for the sick.

The Ohio Supreme court hears arguments over new state legislative maps and all attention focuses on the chief justice.

Lawmakers have approved a sports betting bill that would provide for gambling at casinos and racinos online via mobile apps and at bars and restaurants.

But if governor DeWine signs it, it may still be a year before it's all set up.

We'll talk about that and so much more on the reporters round table.

Joining me this week in studio, Idea stream public media health reporter, Anna Huntsman.

From WKSU radio, senior reporter Kabir Bhatia.

And from the statehouse news bureau, reporter Jo Ingles.

Let's get ready to round table.

So Anna Dr. Vanderhoff says the current surge is as dangerous as any other.

And we're talking about last winter when things were nasty.

I was surprised to see that.

And I think it maybe it was in your story.

It was like the hospitals are saying, this is as bad as it's been.

- I was also surprised when I started hearing from officials that they were really concerned about the amount of patients they were seeing and the beds filling up.

And I have to admit that, when the vaccine came out earlier this year and was widely distributed, I thought we're not gonna get to that deadly surge levels as we had last winter.

And the vaccine absolutely is helping as Dr. Vanderhoff said, the majority of the patients who are hospitalized are un-vaccinated.

The problem that's happening now is kind of twofold.

So it's not just the increase in numbers, but it's the decrease in staff.

So hospitals across the state, are having staffing shortages.

So they're not able to staff beds, so they have to cut back on beds.

So that's happening at the same time as COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations are really taking up.

So that's the problem right now.

- There's a lot of confusion and a lot of discussion we're having with our friends and family about vaccine and about their efficacy and all of that type of stuff.

Walk me through this.

So if we say that, if you're vaccinated, you're going to have a better outcome and less likely to have to be in the hospital.

That's one fact point.

- Correct.

- On the other hand, Northeast Ohio hospitals are the ones that are driving this.

And we have a higher vaccination rate, for example, in Northeast Ohio than many other parts of the state though not particularly great in the city of Cleveland.

- Right?

- But if our vaccination rate in Northeast Ohio is better than say some parts of central or Southern Ohio, why are the numbers worse here?

- Well, Cuyahoga county has a really good vaccination rate.

And by the way, when we say really good, we're still in the sixties.

So that's 40% of people who still don't have the vaccine.

That's a large chunk of the population.

When they talk about Northeast Ohio, they're also talking about there's, 18 counties that are south of us that don't have as high a vaccination rates, Carroll, Tuscarora, Holmes, Wayne, I think I would maybe already said Wayne, but those counties don't have as high of a vaccination rates.

So that's another problem.

Summit and Akron are also seeing these major upticks.

They're also talking about Northern Ohio as a region.

And so there's some Northwest counties that also don't have great vaccination rates.

So that's kind of what can be, what can account for what we're seeing right now.

- Kabir, what about the cold weather?

- The cold weather is here, unfortunately, and it's forcing everyone in doors.

And when you're indoors, the air isn't circulating as much, you don't have windows open.

You get, I may be call it stack effect still.

That might be an old timey term, but essentially the air is not moving.

You're gonna have stagnant air.

There's gonna be particles that go in there.

They don't go out the window.

They go into you and then suddenly you've got a case of Corona.

Whether you're talking about your house or a gathering, we've got, I was at a holiday concert the other day at a school, no windows or anything in an auditorium, lots of people, lots of air that isn't moving.

And that's a recipe for getting this thing spread with the cold weather coming as people huddle indoors.

- I like how we talk about cold weather on a day when I think it's gonna be 54 today.

- It was surprisingly one.

- Welcome to Ohio.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

And if I can add just one more thing too, about what's going on, at least from what I've heard from hospital officials is that we're not seeing the deaths increase significantly as well.

So that kind of goes back to the point of the vaccines.

The purpose of the vaccine is to prevent people from getting severely ill and dying.

- [Mike] Right?

So because there are maybe still a handful of vaccinated folks that get in the hospital, they're still not dying.

We also have better treatments at this point in the pandemic than we did last year at this time.

- Let's talk about how this is affecting hospitals.

We know they're getting slammed, so they're taking action and I've seen the headlines.

They're postponing elective surgeries.

Now there's some issues of even transferring patients.

So how are they dealing with this?

- So all three major hospital systems in Cleveland have first, they simply rescheduled elective procedures.

Now they're just postponing their, sorry, I got that wrong.

Actually at first they were just not scheduling any new elective procedures.

Now they're actually rescheduling ones that were scheduled for the next couple of weeks.

So that shows you that there is some major problems with the bed space at this point, because they don't want anybody to have a hospital stay.

- So those are elective surgeries where you would need a bed for the night.

- Exactly, right?

- Right.

- So if it's an elective procedure where you don't need a bed, they can still do it at this point.

And they're still doing emergency surgeries, cancer transplant, anything like that.

- Right.

- Obviously.

And then another thing is, they've also up their visitation a little bit, in some ways, it's just you can only have one visitor, but maybe you can have a different one per day.

That's been a recent change, but overall, they're cutting back on visitation.

- I heard there a little bit different on that.

The Cleveland clinic was, you can have a one a day.

I'm sorry, I think it was-- - One per stay.

- One per say was, UH I think, and Cleveland clinic was a little more relaxed than one per day.

So again, there's some confusion about that.

- It's so much happening.

- But there is a limit.

It isn't like, you can have your brother, sister and mom come and visit it's one at a time because of this capacity issue.

- Right, you have to have a designated visitor at a time.

- And we saw Dr. Vanderhoff is talking about emergency rooms in Williams county, in Northwest Ohio.

They're actually turning patients away.

Are we seeing anything like that here?

- We're seeing those long wait times here for sure.

I haven't heard directly from hospital officials that they are turning people away, but I do know that the wait times are, getting pretty bad.

And so then what happens is people just actually just go home and decide not to get treatment.

So it's kind of a major problem right now.

- I had a little bit of a cough last week and it concerned me.

So I got a rapid test, negative cough, persisted.

My wife said, "You better go get one of those PCR tests."

And it was negative, thank goodness.

But what about that idea of more testing?

I know that Dr. Vanderhoff said, we're gonna be having these holiday gatherings, maybe ought to be tested before you do those.

- Yeah, and rapid tests are good for letting you know if you have COVID-19 at that exact moment, but people are encouraged like you were.

If you continue to have...

If you develop symptoms or continue to have symptoms to get a PCR test, those are more accurate because they can detect the virus when it's even at a lower load.

And it's all about timing.

So a rapid test may show that you're negative, or you might be negative at that time because you didn't have enough virus present in your sample.

So, and this is actually, I remember over Thanksgiving, the guidance was not necessarily like get a test or anything like that.

But now I think because the cases are rising so much and because you might have just a little cough and think it's a cold and it actually turns out to be COVID-19, especially if you're vaccinated.

- Right, you wanna be better safe than (murmurs).

- Exactly.

(instrumental music) - Ohio attorney general, Dave Yost on Thursday, rejected proposed petition language for a ballot issue that would ban vaccine mandates and so-called vaccine passports.

The group pushing to compel the vote on the ban.

Ohio advocates for medical freedom, says current legislation, limiting vaccine mandates are being considered and so-called vaccine passports don't go far enough.

They have the option of addressing the language, Yost rejected, gathering more signatures, and then trying again for a ballot measure, Jo, the supporters can try again.

It's not hard.

I think it's just a thousand signatures after they rejigger the language.

But are they saying that they're going to do that?

- Well yes, Stephanie Stock, who is the president of the group, says that they will amend the petition.

They'll bring it back.

And she says, it's really too important not to pursue it.

A lot of folks who are in this coalition have been put in a position between getting vaccines or keeping their jobs.

And so she says, thousands of people testified for this bill when it was in the legislature and they have to bring it back.

So they're going to amend it and send it back to the attorney general's office.

- Where do we stand with the legislation though, that was presented in a, there are a couple of bills, 248 and two 18, but where do we stand with that?

Will there be a vaccine ban, a mandate ban?

Is that going to happen or has the legislature just kind of decided to park it?

- You just asked, the million dollar question.

(mike laughs) We wanna know that too, but, what the problem has been is that business groups like the chamber of commerce, have opposed this legislation.

Some of the Republicans have even said that some elements of the legislation go too far.

And of course the Democrats don't like it.

And then, as I said earlier, thousands of Ohioans are saying, "Hey, we really want limits on these vaccines."

And we don't know, if this is going to be something that most Ohioans would support because there really hasn't been polling on this subject.

But we do know that a lot of Ohioans who have completed their COVID vaccines and I think it's about 57% right now, a lot of people have completed their vaccines and more are going every day.

So at these numbers are going up of the vaccinated.

It's just a matter of what do the lawmakers think about it and are they going to do anything with it?

- And what about the idea that what lawmakers are looking at in some cases are not just a ban on COVID-19 vaccines, but could go beyond any vaccine, even approved by the FDA essentially, or not approved by them.

Where are they at with that?

Basically you can't compel any vaccination, which we all have through our lives, been accustomed to.

- Well, and that's the thing right now, this legislation, the sponsors of it are very quick to point out that schools, K through 12 schools can continue to require the shots that they require now, as long as they keep the exemptions that they have now.

But as far as adults, when you start getting into adults, flu shots would be covered by this.

Any future kind of COVID shot.

Anything like that, that could come out in the future would definitely be covered by this if it passed.

(instrumental music) - More than three years after the United States, Supreme cleared the way for states to set up sports betting, Ohio lawmakers have approved a bill to legalize gambling on sports here.

It'll come under the purview of the Ohio Casino Control Commission.

Jo, this bill has been around obviously since the permission to have such sports gambling was approved nationwide.

So we've been talking about this for several years.

How did they get to this point where they're on the same page now?

- Well, the thing is that people are gambling and lawmakers know that.

They're gambling illegally, but a recent us Supreme court ruling took some of the teeth out of gambling.

So people are, gambling and not only are they gambling in Ohio illegally, but they're also going to neighboring states where they can gamble legally.

And so there's a lot of money that's being traded lost around here.

And lawmakers are realizing that and they framed it in that way that they could put guard rails on it.

If they pass it, they could make it so that it would be...

So that they could make sure that money stays in Ohio and goes for the things it's supposed to go for.

- I wonder if there was a concern though, I know there is betting, but you got to know a guy who knows a guy who can give you a Bush's number and then you can make that bet.

Here I can walk into my local watering hole and there'll be a kiosk there where I can lay a bet on the Monday night football game.

That's gonna make it a whole lot more accessible.

What about the worries about problem gambling and those types of things?

- Well, they do worry about problem gambling.

The accessibility is something they definitely wanted.

They wanted a different, or organizations, different businesses to take advantage of gambling.

They didn't want a few fat cats from, out of state to come in and get all the money.

So they were really concerned about providing different options for gambling.

But, as you mentioned, gambling can be a problem.

So about 2% of the profit on this will be directed to problem gambling, but we have a lot of gambling in Ohio.

I mean, we have keno, we have the lottery, which is the big one.

And, we have the racinos, where it's betting.

So, I mean, it's already here in some form.

- Kabir, we're late to the sports betting game, Ohio compared to its neighbors, most of them, but lawmakers see it as a revenue stream worth tapping.

And that's what Jo was getting into.

Basically, you're saying, look at all this money, we should be getting a piece of that.

There are a whole lot of other things, by the way you could say that about.

- That's true.

I mean, well, okay, I won't get into the other things, but they think 20 million probably they'll bring in from the bad 10 million from licensing.

And then it's over 3 billion there.

The experts at least that have gone over this say that we'll be getting about 33.3 billion eventually that this would realize from not just the bets, but the revenue the associated revenue, the skins and all that stuff that would come with this.

So yeah, this is absolutely a big...

Potentially big moneymaker.

It just depends on what they do with that money.

- And they're getting that money by a 10% tax on gaming receipts.

As we mentioned earlier, Anna 2% of that would go toward gambling addiction programs.

And there already is money going into gambling addiction programs from casinos as well.

How might that be used to assuage the problem that might occur because it?

- Yeah, and actually Ohio is unique in the sense that they already do use some of their revenue to go to gambling addiction programs.

But that's one of the main reasons people oppose this, is the problems with gambling addiction.

But like you said, some of this revenue will... Well, the majority of it actually goes to public and private schools.

And then there's a little chunk that would go to gambling addiction programs to kinda help try to offset and appease the opposition.

- Public and private, Jo, that's interesting.

- Yeah.

Like I said, they wanted to spray spread it around.

That was one of the, they have a lot of sticking points in this bill, but one of them was that they wanted to make sure that, it wasn't so that a few people in a very narrowly drawn way could benefit.

And so they've made sure that it could go to public and private sources as well.

- One of the big debates about this has been whether it would be the Ohio Casino Control Commission or the Ohio Lottery Commission that would oversee this.

And it looks like casino control won out.

Why?

- Well, former speaker Larry Householder was really pushing for the lottery to have this.

And when he left the remaining house members, they just haven't seemed so adamant on it.

And I think the big thing is the thing that really kind of got all the lawmakers on board was, there's just something for everyone.

It set up various licenses.

You, there's the mobile betting, brick and mortar.

Casinos get something out of this, racinos get something out of this.

Everyone, the constituents, everyone gets something out of it.

And I think that was in the end bigger than who controls it.

(instrumental music) - The Ohio Supreme court heard arguments this week over newly drawn state legislative district maps.

And whether they followed voter approved reforms to prevent gerrymandering.

Three voting rights groups, including the League of Women Voters of Ohio suit over the maps as drawn, the maps would likely award Republicans, 62 seats in the Ohio house, 37 for Democrats.

Republicans would see victories likely in 23 seats to 10 in the 10 for Democrats in the Senate.

And so the whole argument here, Jo, is that the public in a vote said, we wanna have something that prevents gerrymandering that more reflects the state, which is something like 54% Republican, 46% Democrat.

And that was the focus of a lot of the questions, particularly from chief justice, Maureen O'Connor.

And reading that, reading the coverage of that, it seems to me like she wasn't particularly friendly to the people who drew the maps.

- Well, the first thing any attorney will caution you is to not read too much into the actual arguments at the time, because a lot of times justice will say things and then it won't reflect, how they rule.

But chief justice O'Connor did ask a lot of questions about partisanship.

She asked questions about the process and afterwards Fred Levenson who argued with the, she's with the ACLU and she argued on behalf of the people bringing the lawsuit.

She said that it was a good sign that the justices are talking about remedies right now.

O'Connor is more of an independent thinking justice.

If you remember back in 2011, she ruled against the maps back then.

So she's someone that everyone's watching to see what she does and right now, she won't be running again.

So she doesn't have that hanging over her either.

So, these maps are controversial and she was asking questions about some of the things that we've heard from some of the voters who've looked at them.

- What was interesting is Republicans justified the mass by saying voters preferred GOP candidates between 54% and 81% of the time.

They're the average percentage of votes, GOP candidates received in recent statewide elections and the percent of statewide races won by Republicans over the past decade, respectively.

But O'Connor was saying, hold on a minute, we're talking about 54% for Republicans, 46 for Democrats.

The lawyer for who is representing the map makers said, "That's if you look at votes cast."

And her answer was, "Well, that's what you're supposed to do."

And so interesting that we're debating even that what those numbers are.

And I guess that's what these kinds of cases are supposed to suss out.

- Yeah, exactly.

I mean, the problem is that the language is kind of vague and it doesn't really spell out.

When you talk about proportionality, it really doesn't spell out the answers to these questions.

And so the, the justices seemed to hone in on that.

(instrumental music) - Ohio house minority leader, Emilia Sykes, a Democrat from Akron is stepping down from that leadership position at the end of the year.

But Sykes says, she's not stepping away from public service.

It's widely speculated she has her eye on a seat in Congress.

Kabir, Sykes is term limited.

And it freaked me out to understand that because she's 35 years old.

- Yes, well, she started young as they say, because she's following a dynasty, her father, then her mother, because her father was term limited and then her father came back and now she's so someone from the Sykes family has been in the state house since I think it's at 1983, which I don't think she was even born yet.

Obviously not.

So yeah, she's term limited.

And she's got her eyes, you said probably on the 13th, which with currently, it's Tim Ryan.

And there is a chunk of Akron that goes with that, but he's going to, he's got his eyes on the U.S. Senate.

So that opens up something for Emilia Sykes, who's kind of a little bit following his same past.

She's a few years younger.

And, but she said, nothing official, she's gonna look for something that's gonna be essentially a good fit for her.

And she also pointed out something that a race that she can win, which I think is important in light of what we were just talking about with the maps.

- And let's talk about the 13th.

That's another issue by the way with maps, the new congressional maps, which also are being challenged.

So who knows what will end up happening with that.

But if 13 stands as it is, that is kind of a newish looking district.

It's the one that I think it's the one that Max Miller, was interested.

Is that the one?

- I believe so, yeah.

- Yeah, and from Rocky river.

- And so you'd think Rocky river, Tim Ryan's from Youngstown, how is there a district that goes that entire distance, but somehow it does, yeah.

- Jo, who would be in line to replace Sykes and would she have any capacity to back a replacement?

Does she get to help pick in terms of leadership?

- Well, I think, lawmakers always have a way of getting their voice heard when they have strong opinions.

So, whether, publicly she comes out and says something is one thing, but she would have the ability to kind of nudge if she wanted to.

Right now though representative Thomas West from Stark county is running and he's the president of the Ohio Legislative Black Caucus.

He sponsored that bill that was signed into law recently that allocates the COVID money for the schools and different things.

And also we're hearing the Allison Russo, who she ran unsuccessfully in that 15th district race down here in central Ohio, against Mike Carey.

She might be interested in it as well.

So, this will be something that we'll just have to watch play out, but we're expecting it to be kind of interesting.

- So it's a vote, the Democratic Caucus would vote and choose who will be the leader.

- [Jo] Right.

- [Mike] Okay.

(instrumental music) You know that song, ♪ Oh, Christmas tree ♪ Well, it's not an, oh this year.

It may be a zero, as in there may soon be zero trees on the lot.

And the ones that are there, might have a couple of zeros in the price.

- What are you going to be rocking around this holiday season Kabir?

- Well, I'll put a yes album on and I'll go circular.

But the Christmas trees having just done this, the prices are higher.

Demand is up.

And they're thinking it's because number one last year, which would have been in the same growing cycle roughly.

So many people decided we got nothing that we can do as a family.

We can't go out, oh, well, go out and cut a tree.

So the demand for live trees has zoomed.

I think there's something on, on TikTok that's driving this to for the last year or so, based on what I'm seeing.

- What do you mean?

- Well, it's a hacks about how to get a natural tree, but also why they're better than artificial trees.

Supposedly there, you know what I'm not gonna get into that.

We only have 10 minutes left in the show.

- But they're pushing for it.

- They're pushing for natural trees.

- So this is like another thing that younger people are taking, like younger people are into cassettes now, too.

- Right.

- And taking Polaroids.

- So this is retro.

- So this is retro and trendy now, I guess, to get a real tree as opposed to an artificial tree.

- I know that Costco used to have these trees that were like nine feet tall and they were 40 bucks And people would go and get them.

They didn't offer them at all this year.

- No.

- Partly it was because of the price.

And they couldn't give the low price, I'm guessing.

- Oh, yeah, with materials-- - But they weren't available.

- No.

- And I've got a friend who was texting us last night and saying, "Look at this tree, it's a hundred bucks."

And then, "Look at this one, it's a nine footer.

"It's 200 bucks."

And was just freaked out by the price.

- Yeah.

- Right.

- They are up there.

The shortage can last for a while.

Anna we just mentioned, you can't grow a tree and have on-demand supply.

- Yeah, excuse the pun.

But Christmas trees don't grow on trees.

(Mike laughs) You have to grow the tree.

And so.

(murmurs) - Thank you.

- That we need to leave now.

- I was planning all day for that.

Yeah, so like you were mentioning Kabir, the growing cycles.

It's not like there's just gonna be a bunch of new ones next year.

And so it's kind of like a bunch of people rushed out last year again this year cut down the ones that are here.

And so the people that they talked to for this story are saying, this is an issue for a couple of years.

- We got our six voter this year at Cahoon nursery.

And it was a beautiful, just like last years.

It's a little bit more expensive for sure.

You guys will be happy to know.

And I've told this story on our Christmas program in the past.

This year I did not drive into the garage with the tree on top of the car, (Kabir laughing) of the SUV.

- Did you do that?

- Twice.

- Oh, my.

- I've done it twice.

- You're like a Griswold over here.

- Yeah.

- But not this year.

- No.

- Monday on the sound of ideas on 90.3 WCPN we'll talk with Dave Abbott, the long-time president of the Gund Foundation and his successor, Anthony Richardson.

I'm Mike MacIntyre.

Thanks so much for watching and stay safe.

(upbeat music)