(light airy music) - Same virus, different variant.

2022 feels a lot like 2021 as COVID 19 cases surge and Northeast Ohio takes the brunt.

The Ohio national guard has been called in to help hospitals, but deployment is hampered by the large number of unvaccinated troops.

And get ready for a major year in politics with pivotal races in Ohio at every level of government.

Ideas is next.

(light airy music) Hello, and welcome to Ideas.

I'm Mike McIntyre, thanks for joining us.

The Omicron variant of the Corona virus is coursing through the country and especially walloping Northeast, Ohio.

The Ohio National Guard has been tapped to help overrun an understaffed hospitals, but the deployment is hampered by low vaccination rates in the guard.

Meanwhile, 2022 is a huge political year and the pandemic will no doubt play a role in campaigns at every level.

And Ohio public school districts, sue the state saying the expansion of a private school voucher program violates the constitution.

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

Joining me this week, Ideastream Public Media Health Reporter, Lisa Ryan, WKSU senior reporter Kabir Bhatia and statehouse news bureau reporter Andy Chow.

Let's get ready to round table.

We're getting a firsthand view in Cuyahoga county, how transmissible Omicron is.

- Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, just in November, we were talking about only Delta pretty much.

And in December we started to hear about Omicron and that picked up, it started to double each week.

And now we're seeing about 95% of cases throughout the state, how Omicron is retesting.

So we're seeing that surge throughout the state and it's predicted to continue through January.

So nobody really knows how long this will go on, but it does seem like everyone is sick right now.

- Yeah.

And it also seems like everybody's "Is gonna get it."

You know, we've been talking about that.

In fact testing is the big critical thing now.

And you and I were on the phone talking about this over the holidays because looking for tests had come in contact with somebody who had it.

And so now we're, everyone's scrambling, hitting all the libraries, going to all the drug stores trying to get them.

I know the president has said now that they're gonna send tests to people, but right now not everyone who needs a test can get one.

- Yeah, they're very hard to get.

I will say that PCR tests, which take a little bit longer for results are a little bit easier to get.

You know, in Cleveland we have the W.O Walker Center.

I actually got tested there, but again, those results take a little bit longer.

And when it comes to rapid tests, those are really hard to find, at least I've found it hard.

I know some of our listeners have found it difficult to find those tests, which really makes a difference because we need those results quickly.

Especially as we see that Omicron is that more contagious virus and we're seeing it spread faster.

So we really need those rapid results.

And we're just not getting them because we don't have those tests.

- You mentioned that W.O Walker Testing Center.

There are testing centers in Akron.

There's a number of them opening up, throughout the state.

We reported a couple of weeks ago about what a mess it was when they first opened that Walker Center.

Our Stephanie Czekalinski went this week and apparently they've got their act together.

- Yeah.

And I actually, I was there this week too.

And they really do.

They are, there's quite a few checkpoints as you go through it and you kind of drive around this whole area and there's National Guard Members out there.

A lot of other people out there moving things along, and it was a fairly quick process.

So Stephanie had the same experience as well.

- Yeah, she was there working on a story for ideastream.org and we put that over the air as well.

But because the testing and the rapid testing as you mentioned, isn't quite up to snuff.

We don't have enough of that, Cuyahoga county health officials say they're not looking really at testing numbers, they're leaning on hospitalization numbers to understand the surge.

- Yes.

So yeah, because the testing numbers are not as reliable.

I did ask the county board of health officials you know, if they're under-reported, how are we looking at this surge?

And they said, they're really looking at these hospitalization numbers, which we are seeing.

You know, more than 90% of the people who are hospitalized or the people who are still dying from COVID-19 are unvaccinated.

So they're looking at those numbers to see how things are, and these hospitals really are still feeling the surge of COVID 19.

- Andy hospitals aren't the only ones that Omicron is impacting, first responders to are taking it on the chin.

- Yeah, you're right, Mike.

So of course, when we look at how bad the COVID-19 pandemic at this point with the Omicron surge, we are looking at hospitals, looking at the hospitalizations and ICU rates, but then it trickles down to other issues.

And of course, with cases going up, that means that people have to take time off of work.

So firefighters are saying that they're seeing the crunch, we're hearing it from law enforcement, from other sectors around Ohio that because people are testing positive.

Even if their cases are mild, they've got to stay home.

And that really hurts the supply chain.

It really hurts just the flow of work from first responders, firefighters, libraries, all sorts of industries around Ohio, because if you're sick, you got to stay home of course and then you have people who are short-staffed.

- And when you're short-staffed, sometimes you see, you know, you're calling the cavalry.

That's what the hospitals were hoping for with the call up of the Ohio National Guard to help provide more staffing.

But then we find that the vaccination numbers of the national guard are kind of in keeping with the public.

It's just a little over 50%, actually a little lower, little lower than the public.

So, so many are unvaccinated they can't go into these hospitals and work.

So what has that lead to?

- Well, the state is facing an interesting situation with the Ohio National Guard to begin with, because if you're pulling national guard that work in the health field already, so medics doctors, nurses, if you're pulling them from where they're already working at hospitals, to send them to maybe another hospital that needs a little more help, you have to be really selective of where you're gonna pull those resources from.

And then on top of that, you've got to make sure that you're choosing people who are vaccinated and only 56% of members of the Ohio national guard are vaccinated at this point.

So that makes the pool even smaller.

And that's been the issue that my bureau chief at our statehouse news bureau, Karen Kasler has been following.

She's talked to people like the Governor, Mike DeWine, Major General John Harris and they're saying that this is a very frustrating situation.

And, you know, Major General John Harris, the Adjutant General of the Ohio National Guard, he's been very candid, and he says, if you send somebody, if you deploy somebody who works in the national guard, you want to make sure that they have the safety and the security and the protection that they need, whether that's armor, if you're sending them to combat or a vaccination, if you're sending them to a place where there's gonna be a high rate of COVID-19.

And so they're only sending people who are fully vaccinated, and they've also made the deadline for required vaccinations even earlier than the national deadline for military.

So Ohio national guard members, those who are still unvaccinated have to be fully vaccinated by the end of March.

- Let's move on to talk about how this is impacting children, Lisa, I know there was a time when we said, okay, well, the Corona virus is bad for adults, but kids aren't effected not necessarily the case.

And certainly not the case now children are being diagnosed really more now than at any other time during the pandemic.

- Yes, children are being affected by this pandemic.

And also we're seeing a higher rate of this inflammatory syndrome called MIS-C in children.

And that's really scary because even if a child survives COVID, they might have these long-term impact.

So we're seeing that as well.

And it's kind of scary because there's still research to be done on the effect that it might have on kids.

And we're also seeing pediatric hospitals become a little bit overwhelmed as well with these COVID patients and having difficulty treating other patients as well.

- Schools are making decisions now because of the fact that there are a number of students that are out there, a number of staff that are out as well.

Andy and we're looking across Northeast Ohio, you're looking at throughout the whole state, but boy, that's a mixed bag.

Some schools are saying, let's go remote for a little while.

Some are delaying returning from the Christmas break.

So it's continued as the holiday break and so it continues.

And now we're hearing of some others that are doing Hybrids.

Cleveland schools went remote this week, but now it said that they're going to come back to in-person on Monday, all kinds of differences going on.

- Yeah, what you have here going on in the schools around Ohio's all these different factors.

And you just mentioned it there are kids cases.

So students are testing positive for COVID-19.

Teachers are testing positive for COVID-19.

So maybe the teacher who can't make it into class.

And then what we have seen even before the pandemic was a shortage in substitute teachers, a shortage in bus drivers.

So you have all these different things going on leading to schools and school districts, canceling classes, going over to remote learning.

And you really just have to see these school administrators be flexible and sort of calling audibles at the last minute.

And so you just mentioned the situation going on in Northeast, Ohio, down here in Central Ohio Columbus city schools in the past 24 hours, went from having only a couple of schools closed a couple of schools on remote learning because so many teachers were out with the virus.

And then this morning, Columbus City Schools announced, you know what?

We're just gonna cancel school for everybody, no remote learning.

So it was basically like a snow day today.

And that's what schools all around the state are experiencing.

And what we know from what the state government's been deciding is that the game plan from governor Mike DeWine and the Ohio department of health is to leave this up to local control up to the local district leaders to decide how to go forward with the rest of this pandemic.

I say the rest of this pandemic, but we don't, who knows how long it's gonna last.

- Yeah, good point.

Who thought we'd be here now?

Let's talk about colleges Kabir Ohio state is requiring all students on campus to pass a rapid test.

And then there's going to be regular testing there as well.

Boy, that sounds like a logistics nightmare?

- Absolutely, it's going to be a lot.

Well, Ohio state has huge school.

So of course it's going to be, and this is mainly affecting people living in on-campus housing.

They're going to have to test when they show up for school for spring semester, they're going to have to continue throughout the semester to be tested.

They're delivering tests to the frat houses and sorority houses for them to do before school starts.

And then they're also going to be testing throughout for anyone it looks like who has an exemption, whether they live on campus or not.

And in these cases, they will quarantine you if you end up testing positive for a few days and they're prioritizing that 'cause they don't have an unlimited amount of space prioritizing that for out of state students and first come first serve.

So the testing is going to be in full force.

They've also clamped down on beverages and eating and stuff at the athletic facilities.

So they're social distancing, there's all, everything that you're reading if you had told me, this is what they did going into fall of 2020, I would have believed you it's that level of seriousness that they're treating this with.

- Yeah.

The if you are going to be quarantined on campus, it is for off-campus students or out of state students, the others they're telling you go home for five days and come back.

- Yeah, pretty much.

They're saying a five day quarantine.

Let's see what happens if this rapid test comes back positive.

And as you said, it's gonna continue throughout the semester, at least throughout this semester.

- One other point about the COVID pandemic.

And that is that it isn't necessarily going to be called a pandemic, now there's an endemic?

I'm trying to wrap my head around this, Kabir help me with this.

- Okay, so endemic would be it's with us fairly regularly Like the flu and pandemic of course, is what we've been seeing for the last two years.

So Tara Smith and several others that we've spoken with have been saying that this thing may be transitioning to something that's just always going to be here, be with us.

And every year you'll get a COVID vaccine shot.

Like we get the flu shot every year.

And it's just something that we'll end up living with and you know, we'll have to continue coming up with interesting names for each variant, I guess.

- Right?

- I do think it's interesting because at the beginning of the pandemic, we were hearing kind of talk about once we have the vaccine, we'll see an end to the pandemic, we'll see zero COVID cases, essentially.

So it's interesting to hear those conversations sort of shift to, well, we might just be living with this infinity years.

(light airy music) - 2022 Will be a pivotal election year in Ohio and every level of government, voters will elect a new United States Senator, Members of Congress, a Governor, Supreme Court Justices, and other statewide offices.

This week, the two Democrats seeking the nomination for governor named their running mates, former Dayton mayor, Nan Whaley chose Cuyahoga county council member and former Cleveland Heights, mayor Cheryl Stevens and former Cincinnati mayor John Cranley chose State Senator Teresa Fedor of Toledo.

So let's get into some of the politics starting with the gubernatorial race.

Andy, both Whaley and Cranley are from Southwest Ohio, is Whaley's suggestion of Steven's a way to improve name recognition in the Northern part of the state, and by the way, she is also a prominent in Akron with a development nonprofit there.

- Right, yeah.

So what you get into with these gubernatorial races, and of course, everybody here at cap square who follows state house news, they all get really excited about who their running mate might be, but really when it comes to the average voter, you have to wonder how much does it matter who the running mate is and how much does it impact people.

But when it does come to strategically thinking about winning Ohio and winning the democratic nomination, you have Nan Whaley who does have pretty big name recognition across the state for the way she's handled different crises happening in Dayton.

And then you have somebody like Cheryl Stevens who has a little bit more name recognition than maybe other leaders up in Northeast, Ohio and Cuyahoga county and the Akron area.

And so what she's trying to do obviously, is to try to connect with voters from different regions of the state and then her big pitch to people.

Because usually when you have a running mate, it's somebody who is more familiar with state government issues and so that's where you see with John Cranley picking Teresa Fedor, but I'll talk to her about her soon.

But when it comes to somebody like Cheryl Stephens, Nan Whaley says that having a local leader is actually gonna play well because she has more of a connection to local voters, maybe local organizations, community organizations, and advocates in Northeast Ohio to sort of get out the vote in this region that has a huge amount of democratic voters.

Like the majority, nearly the majority of democratic voters are up in Northeast Ohio.

So that's a big resource to tap into.

- Then why did Mayor John Cranley and Cincinnati pick somebody from Northwest Ohio and Teresa Fedor?

- So with John Cranley, you have the, the Mayor of Cincinnati and with Cincinnati, it's sort of this insular area where things that happen in Cincinnati kind of only happen in Cincinnati.

And so trying to break out of that, he picked somebody like Teresa Fedor, who is a veteran state legislator who served in the Ohio house and the Ohio Senate for the Toledo area.

So now he's tapping into more of the Northwest region with the Toledo area, but with Teresa Fedor, you also get somebody who is well-connected to different campaign donors around the state.

Who's well connected to different advocacy groups around the state.

And she brings a lot of name recognition when it comes to being an anti or when it comes to being an abortion rights advocate.

She's made a lot of floor speeches on this.

She stood up against a lot of anti-abortion bills and that is an area where John Cranley has sort of been hit by his democratic rivals for not being as abortion rights heavy as he could have been, especially in the past where he's had more of an anti abortion voting record or thought process.

- You mentioned that things that happen in Cincinnati stay in Cincinnati.

I think things that happen in Cincinnati, also happen in Kentucky.

- Right, yeah.

So, so you have a bunch of people who might know John Cranley, but can't vote for him too.

So that's a whole other issue.

- Let's talk quickly about the Republican side.

Governor DeWine hasn't officially announced his re-election that's foregone conclusion though.

- Yeah, We're, pretty sure governor DeWine's gonna run and yeah, when he has been asked, he says, yes, I haven't made an official announcement, but he's winked, nodded and basically said, yes, I'm gonna run.

And I think what the plan here, you know, when you look at things strategically and politically, I think he wants to let all these other people make their announcements, get the news cycle for awhile, and then come in as sort of the obvious front runner, the quote unquote obvious front runner in this election.

And you know, when we talk about polling, what we do know that in 2020, a lot of the decisions that were made early on in the pandemic by governor DeWine were pretty popular across the board.

But as things became more polarized, there are certain groups who say that DeWine currently should be doing more about the pandemic.

And there are groups who say that DeWine should be doing less about the pandemic.

So when it comes to his popularity now, currently in 2022, that's still up in the air.

- He's got former Congressman Jim Renacci declared and running against him, Joe Blystone the farmer from Canal Winchester is running against them as well.

And now we're hearing a couple of former representatives, including Candice Keller, who might jump into the race.

So certainly going much farther to the right.

- Correct, and that's, what's sort of(indistinct) about this campaign compared to the US Senate campaign, and the US Senate campaign for the Republican nomination.

You have a lot of people who are further to the right, who are vying for that quote unquote Trump vote.

And then you have Matt Dolan from the Northeast Ohio area.

Who's sort of going in the other direction now for the governor's race, you have these potential three candidates in Jim Renacci, Joe Blystone, and then Candace Keller, a former Ohio house representative who are running further to the right.

And then the, supposedly front runner, Governor DeWine being more of the moderate in this case.

And so what you have is with Candice Keller, who is who there is talk about her, potentially jumping into the race with running mate, Ron Hood, also a former representative that really shores up this far right part of the Ohio House Caucus that we've seen over the past couple of years, even though Keller and Hood are now no longer in the Ohio house.

And of course that just gets more of the vote from the far right conservatives.

And you know, people are arguing that if you have Renacci, Blystone, Keller, all fighting for that portion of the vote, that might just sort of spread it out and then might even help Governor DeWine secure nomination for the Republican side of the ticket.

- Let's hit one other election theme before we move on, on these races.

And that is what a giant hiccup in the campaign plans, the new congressional district maps and the state district maps are still being challenged.

There's no decision yet from the house Supreme court and there's filing deadlines coming up.

So we've in terms of all these other races that stuff's still very much in flux.

- Yeah.

There's really a sense of urgency here when it comes to this decision for the state legislative redistrict maps and the congressional district maps.

And that is like you said, the filing deadlines in February.

Now the bill that actually changed the congressional districts did move the filing deadline, but there's even confusion there because the bill doesn't even take effect until after the original filing deadline.

So it's all a swirl right now and what's happening is everybody's kind of waiting and watching closely what the Ohio Supreme court decides.

And if they decide that either the state legislative map is unconstitutional, or the congressional district map is unconstitutional, then state leaders have to go back to the drawing board and redraw these maps.

And that leaves everybody sort of up in the air at this point and that's the State Legislative Districts.

So that's 99 House Districts, 33 Senate Districts and 15 Congressional Districts that are again, you know, January of 2022, still up in the air.

(light airy music) - Warrensville Heights, mayor, Brad Sellers announced his candidacy for Cuyahoga county executive this week assuring a robust primary on the democratic side.

Kabir, Sellers is getting into this race.

It was widely expected, not, an unexpected move, but it's interesting cause it's pitting two pretty well-known Democrats in a primary.

- It is, and that's of course after Blackwell dropped out, but this was not a surprise.

He's been kind of hinting about this.

It was not a well kept secret even when he invited reporters over.

So this, the fact that it's pitting these, two against each other and they're, you know, Warrensville Heights and university circle are quite different.

So they're sort of moving in different circles for lack of a better term, but they're both very prominent, but both have name recognition for various reasons, whether it's basketball, being the mayor of the university circle for so many years.

So that's gonna to be an interesting primary there on that side.

- It was interesting how Heller, how sorry, how Sellers had sent out an announcement saying, hey, we're going to have a big announcement on Wednesday, a lot of buildup to it.

And you know, you'll definitely want to come to this and tune in and 'cause it was, it was streamed.

And yet at the very top of it was sort of a letterhead that said Brad Sellers for county executive.

I think it kind of ruined the surprise.

- It did ruin surprise a bit.

I think it would sort of be like wearing all blue or all pink to a gender reveal.

And you know, you've blown the surprise beforehand.

So I dunno if that was planned.

I don't know if we're waiting for more surprises like that from his campaign, but yeah, they did use, they have the prominent logo up there that ever basically the logo is going to be using for his campaign at the top of the announcement saying come.

And you know, if he hadn't done that the media might have shown up expecting, oh, Warrensville is a attracting a new business.

That's what this is about.

But no, we knew beforehand that he was going to be confirming that he's finally running.

(light airy music) - A hundred Ohio public school districts filed a lawsuit against the state over its expanded private school voucher program known as EdChoice.

It gives taxpayer funded vouchers to students to use at private schools.

The districts argue it's unconstitutional.

Andy, lawmakers have expanded the program, not only the money for the vouchers, but also those who are eligible for them.

- That's right, Mike.

So EdChoice voucher program is basically a scholarship system that says, if you are a student living in a district that scores lower academically, or if you were a student in a low income family, you're eligible for these vouchers and it's $5,500 for any K-8 students that want to go to a private school that fit within these eligibility standards and then $7,500 to any high schoolers who also fit in those standards.

But the issue here, the people who are opposed to these vouchers, they say that this is taxpayer money going towards these vouchers for students who, for all intents and purposes, were probably never gonna go to the public schools to begin with.

We talked to public school leaders from around the state, including Cleveland Heights-University Heights District that said that 95% of the students who are using the EdChoice voucher program are students who were never enrolled in the public school system to begin with.

So they say this is taxpayer money, just paying for something that these people were going to do anyway, that these families were going to do anyway.

So they're taking it to court.

And the legal standing here is that in the Ohio constitution, it calls for state leaders to create an education system that's a system of common schools and they say, when you create this voucher program, you basically split it into two systems.

One where people go to the public school, maybe they can't afford private school even with the vouchers and then people who are gonna afford private school anyway, and then they get taxpayer money to help them go to that school.

- Right, the argument is the constitution says, it's an efficient system of common schools throughout the state.

And they're keying on that word system, not many systems.

So a system of common schools that'll be an interesting argument because the school voucher issue has been argued for some time but I haven't seen that argument, which is that essentially it creates more than one system.

- And you've had these groups really targeting the voucher system and these public school advocates who have been targeting the voucher system for a while.

We saw 20 years ago, the Cleveland specific voucher program went all the way to the US Supreme court.

And the US Supreme court ruled in favor of the voucher program.

But the lawyers for this current lawsuit and the public leaders for this current lawsuit say that this is going to be different because they're taking it to the Ohio Supreme court.

It starts in county court first, but they're taking it to a state level argument saying that maybe what was found okay in the Cleveland system is not what's found okay for all of Ohio and basing it on the Ohio constitution instead and that's where they're really basing their argument.

- Monday on The Sound of Ideas on 90.3 WCPN, how will the insurrection on January 6th impact our democracy?

Experts weigh in and your thoughts are welcome.

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

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