Support for the statewide broadcast of the state of Ohio comes from medical mutual, providing more than one point four million Ohioans peace of mind with a selection of health insurance plans online at Medda Mutual dot com slash Ohio by the law offices of PorterWright Morris and Arthur LLP.

Now with eight locations across the country, PorterWright is a legal partner with a new perspective to the business community, Morad PorterWright Dotcom and from the Ohio Education Association, representing 100 24000 members who work to inspire their students to think creatively and experience the joy of learning online at O H E A dot org.

Mike DeWine will face a primary next year as another Republican jumps in the race for governor, changes to child care and the Senate budget plan stir up heated debate over accountability and accessibility.

There have been some cases of fully vaccinated Ohioans getting covid.

Some of the state's top docs dispel myths about the vaccine and the disease.

And the cicadas are here after their 17 year hiatus, singing their songs.

But some Ohioans are sick of that term.

We'll talk about these topics in this week's edition of the state of Ohio.

Welcome to The State of Ohio, I'm Jo Ingles.

After months of hunting and criticism of state government, Republican former Congressman Jim Renesmee announced he'll run in the primary against Governor Mike DeWine.

Reneke didn't make his announcement to statehouse reporters.

Instead, he talked with local reporters in Cincinnati and Cleveland.

He told them he thinks to win is no longer popular with the Republican base, largely because of the way he handled the pandemic.

This isn't Renesys first bid for governor.

He briefly ran in 2008 before switching to the U.S. Senate race, where he lost to Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown.

Renesmee joined central Ohio farmer Joe Blystone in next May's GOP primary.

DeWine hasn't officially kicked off his reelection, but he said he'll run for governor again.

Justice Jennifer Brunner, elected to the Ohio Supreme Court last year, wants to be its next chief justice.

If she's successful, she'd be the first Democrat elected to that post in four decades.

Current Chief Justice Republican Maureen O'Connor cannot run again because of age restrictions.

Two of Bruner's Republican colleagues who have been there longer, Justices Sharon Kennedy and Pat DeWine, are also said to be considering a run for chief justice.

The Ohio Senate passed its version of the two year state budget this week.

Majority Republicans who were solely responsible for its passage say the plan makes investments that help Ohioans.

Not a single Democrat voted for it.

Many took issue with the big changes in it and the more than 100 amendments that were attached, including ones to make it harder to get abortions and requiring parents to sign waivers before sex education could be taught to their children at school.

It also excluded the VAX a million database from public records requests.

It makes big changes to child care, especially for low income providers and families.

And it blew up the school funding structure approved by the House that school groups supported.

The Senate plan offers a five percent income tax cut for taxpayers, but advocates for the poor say those who earn twenty three thousand dollars a year won't see any cuts, and those who earn less than one hundred five thousand dollars annually wouldn't get enough to go out for a nice dinner.

The Senate plan will now go to the conference committee that will hammer out the differences between the Senate and House passed budget plans.

The amendments to the budget weren't the only ones causing raised eyebrows.

This week, an amendment was slipped into a bill that allows appeals of cases involving state agencies to be transferred to local courts.

But the newly inserted amendment to that bill goes further the way it stands now.

Most crimes committed by elected officials in state government are prosecuted in Franklin County, where for the first time in more than six decades, a Democratic prosecutor is in charge.

But Democratic Representative David Leland says that's why the Republican sponsor of this initial bill quietly attached the amendment that would change where state leaders are prosecuted.

This is Republicans circling the wagons, seeing the corruption that's happening in the statehouse and in Franklin County and deciding that they need protection, they need the home court advantage.

They want to move this out to local small counties, which may not have the expertize or may not have the interest in actually pursuing these public corruption cases.

Former Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder and former Ohio Republican Party chair Matt Burgess are both awaiting trial on federal charges of corruption.

But if state level wrongdoing is found, charges could be brought by the Franklin County prosecutor.

Unless this amendment passes, Leland says he intends to fight this change.

As mentioned earlier, the Senate budget includes a change to the way public assistance flows to child care facilities.

Advocates for businesses and children say the change lowers the bar for accountability in early childhood education, while supporters say it's necessary.

Statehouse correspondent Andy Chow reports.

It is ensuring that our children who are experiencing poverty are being taught by teachers who know child development and know how to help them learn from.

In Lightcap is the executive director of Preschool Promise Inc in Montgomery County, she supports Ohio's requirement that all child care facilities, hoping to serve children using public assistance must abide by an accountability program known as step up to quality.

She says it will help prepare kids for kindergarten.

Like Cap and other groups are rallying to oppose a change inserted into the budget bill by Republican Senate leaders to get rid of that requirement.

The amendment states that Childcare's would no longer need to participate in the step up to quality five star program in order to be a qualified facility for kids on the federal publicly funded child care program.

Joe Patton, director of Allen County's Job and Family Services and Ohio Means Jobs.

Allen Co. says the requirement is leading to fewer child care providers eligible to serve low income families.

We want to put people to work, but they need to have a safe place to put their children.

So in losing, these child care providers have lost opportunity to move our people on public assistance into work.

And the unfortunate consequence of this is this a portion of affected minorities and low-income child care providers who don't want to jump through all this red tape and the government stuff to be able to take public funded children.

Andrea Stout is the director of the Learning Tree Childcare Center in Allen County.

She was invited to speak to reporters at the rollout of the Senate budget, saying her program is an example of a facility that could not keep up with the standards and administrative work required by the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services, or Odia dogface to qualify for stars with step up to quality, our child care program can only sustain what we can utilize by private paying parents.

I was unwilling to raise the rates for private paying parents to sustain being able to maintain and keep the children and outreach efforts.

Stoute added that the church her child care program is based out of begin to offer scholarships to children from low income families to help fill the gap.

Linnean Gutierrez is assistant director of Groundwork, Ohio, a nonprofit that advocates for children and early childhood education.

She disagrees with critics who say step up to quality decreases access to child care.

Groundwork Ohio put out data from AgForce that said the number of kids using public assistance being served in star rated facilities has actually increased since 2017.

If this was ultimately about paperwork, we would not be in this situation right now.

This is about the willingness to make an investment.

What matters and what we know can produce outcomes with public dollars versus making the short sighted decision to try to solve a long term spending problem at the expense of all of our youngest children.

Part of that investment Gutierrez was talking about includes putting more money into the program and expanding access.

The current eligibility for federal publicly funded child care is 130 percent of the federal poverty level, which translates to a family of three making no more than twenty eight thousand two hundred dollars a year.

The Senate proposal does bump that number up to 142 percent.

That's a family of three making up to 30000 840 a year.

But advocates want to cast the net wider than that.

The House still has to approve the elimination of the step up to quality requirement.

And lawmakers have been hearing from advocates, including Republican former Senator Peggy Laner, who said the change was a, quote, travesty and urged legislators to keep the program in order to provide children with the best education.

Gov.

Mike DeWine, who has made early childhood education a priority in office, would also have the ability to line item veto the measure.

Andy Chow Statehouse News Bureau.

The statewide mask mandate has expired.

So have the coronaviruses orders.

More than 46 percent of Ohioans have received at least one dose of covid vaccines, and more than 41 percent are fully vaccinated.

Things seem to be getting back to normal, but there's one thing to remember.

The virus continues to pose a threat to people who haven't been vaccinated and in some very rare cases, to people who are.

For the past six months, Ohioans have been getting vaccinated against covid-19 and it's made a difference.

The covid death rate has dropped from 141 on November 25th to single digits these days.

And while many Ohioans are no longer wearing mask, the threat of the.

Paris is still real, Beth Mulcahy of Worcester knows that she got her second covid vaccine on April 9th when her son came down with covid 20 days later, she took care of him, thinking she was more than two weeks, passed her second vaccine and would be safe about a week after my son became ill.

I got sick and was tested.

I was very surprised to be called a positive after being fully vaccinated.

And I have been very sick and it has been very difficult.

It's been difficult for me to work, to take care of my kids and to sleep when fully vaccinated people get covid.

It's called Breakthru covid.

As of June 2nd, Ohio recorded 95 cases of Breakthru covid that required hospitalization and 14 deaths.

But that's a very small number when you consider the total number of Ohioans vaccinated with four million four hundred ninety five thousand four hundred ninety two Ohioans having their second vaccine by May 19th, two weeks prior to June 2nd, that means approximately zero point zero zero two percent of fully vaccinated Ohioans were hospitalized and less than point zero zero zero three percent died.

Vaccines, well, very, very good.

Have never been and will never be 100 percent.

There are a lot of factors involved with the response to a vaccine, including your own immune system's response.

So my particular caution would be to those who might have conditions that have affected their immune systems and they need to be particularly careful.

The CDC said this week that a study of 4000 people who got the two shot, Fizer and Moderna MMR and shots, found full vaccination with two doses was 91 percent effective at preventing covid infection.

A single dose was eighty one percent effective.

The single shot, Johnson and Johnson vaccine's effectiveness is lower but is still considered extremely effective.

Doctors say those with immune system problems and those who are unvaccinated should beware, especially right now, when highly contagious variants pose a threat.

Dr Paddy Manning Courtney with Cincinnati Children's Hospital says there are children right now who are quite sick with covid, and since kids 11 and under cannot be vaccinated, she says they should still wear masks just as before.

When they're out in crowds, out in public, out in stores, out at events, they should be masked and aware of the belief that parents should mask and family members should mask along with them.

It's it's just the only way to protect that population.

If vaccinated people get covid, medical professionals say it will likely be less aggressive than those who have have no vaccine.

But for those who get covid without having the protection of a vaccine, the virus can be very dangerous.

So I got sick in March of twenty twenty.

I was mildly ill.

I wasn't hospitalized.

I came close once, but I wasn't hospitalized and I. I seem to get better, and then I started having some other problems for more than a year now.

She's suffered with a variety of problems, including fever and fatigue.

You're aware this band that constantly measures my heart rate, my respiration, all of these things.

And so it tells me when I've done too much.

So if anybody knows anything about this, I don't know, Mia, you just have a certain amount of energy every day and once it's done, it's done.

And so I use this technique called pacing.

And it means sometimes I decide if I'm going to cook dinner or do the dishes or if I'm going to do laundry or fold it.

Doctors say they want to prevent people from getting seriously ill or dying from covid.

And the best way they say to do that is to get vaccinated.

Death totals, case numbers and hospitalizations are way down as more than five point three million Ohioans have received at least partial vaccines at this point.

But doctors say that rate needs to climb significantly before herd immunity could possibly be achieved.

In an effort to increase Ohio's vaccination rate, some of the state's top doctors played the role of fact checkers this week.

They tried to dispel a variety of myths that have been responsible for keeping some Ohioans from getting vaccinated.

The covid vaccines are not only safe and effective, but absolutely no corners were cut in their development.

Let me make three important points in this regard.

First, the vaccines can't give you covid-19 vaccines don't include any live virus and thus they can't give you covid-19.

The vaccine works by triggering the immune system to manufacture antibodies against the disease.

Secondly, covid-19 vaccines don't contain other substances or materials that are harmful or controlling.

There's a far fetched notion floating around the Internet right now that the vaccines contain microchips or other nefarious ingredients that could be used to control people.

These ideas are completely false and simply not based in science or reality.

Third, the covid-19 vaccines simply cannot change your DNA.

Some people have misunderstood what MRSA is and how it works and believe that this approach can somehow alter your DNA.

That's not true.

There's no interference with your DNA.

The vaccine simply doesn't affect your DNA at all.

This is also false.

The Society for Maternal Fetal Medicine and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists have both recommended that people who are pregnant have access to covid-19 vaccines during the clinical trials.

Several people actually became pregnant now, as reported using the CDC's vouchsafe after vaccination health checker, more than one hundred twenty one thousand people vaccinated have indicated that they were pregnant at the time they received the covid-19 vaccination.

After the administration of more than three hundred million doses and more than six months of national experience, the CDC has not reported any serious vaccine effects and reproductive health.

There is no scientific evidence, nor is there a scientific pathway for there to be any ill effects towards fertility, both during at the time of vaccination and future fertility.

We know that covid itself can affect sperm parameters and potentially fertility.

There was a recent study study published that looked at covid-19 the effect on sperm parameters, which persisted for up to six months.

So in order to potentially prevent any sort of effect on male fertility, the vaccine is essential.

There are really two ways that a person can acquire some kind of immunity to covid-19 one is to get infected and the net result of that is that you will develop some level of antibody coverage.

The other is to get the vaccine.

But there's a real whole series of advantages to getting the vaccine over getting infected.

First of all, you don't run any of the risks of severe illness, hospitalization or, God forbid, death that you run with getting sick by getting the vaccine so the vaccine safer.

The second thing that we now know pretty clearly from the medical literature is that the immunity that you would typically develop from full vaccination is just more robust and more long lasting than what we can reliably predict from natural infection.

Many people have been observed with natural infection after a period of time to have actually gone on and gotten sick a second time.

And I will tell you, I just recently, because this patient was adamant that she did not need to get a vaccine, I said, OK, well, let's test your antibodies.

They came back negative.

So there you go.

Case in point, if we don't know, we don't know why some infections produce a robust antibody activity and others don't.

But clearly, they don't all do that.

After 17 years, cicadas are back singing their songs loudly and wooded areas of Ohio.

They're so loud in some areas that people have complained to police after mistaking them for car alarms, many Ohioans say they think the bugs are gross and cannot wait until they go away, likely around the end of this month.

But other Ohioans enjoy them.

Count Ohio State University entomology professor David Shetler in that category.

He calls himself the bug doc.

And for him, cicadas are not noisy pests.

Periodical cicadas are deafening, though.

You know, I think we overplay that.

The reality is that most people are used to mowing the lawn with a lawn mower.

And if it's not electric, they're used to that sound.

And and realistically, when the cicadas are really busy doing what we call chorusing, that's about the level of the sound.

It's really interesting that all the males can hear each other and so they kind of get in sync.

Basically what they're doing is the louder the sound, the more attractive it is to other males and females.

And you might go, well, why would you attract more males?

Well, the more males together, the larger the louder the sound.

So the more females that will come to that whole group.

And I know you know, this is for TV, but the reality is it's it's basically to have a big orgy.

The louder the noise, the bigger the orgy and the more offspring there will be.

What is the purpose of these these cicadas that have a purpose?

I get that question all the time about what's the purpose of a mosquito?

Why in the world we have mosquitoes around, what's the purpose of this and that?

And I think the reality is, is that nature is a marvelous thing.

And over the millions of years we've evolved these different groups of insects that occupy what we would call ecological niches.

And you've got to remember, ecological niches can be things like to try to Bohr's things that eat, you know, dead and decaying things and recycle those nutrients.

There's a lot of insects that feed on plants.

You eat these things, right?

If you think about it, all they've been doing is sucking sugar and a little bit of amino acids out of the roots of plants.

So there's no toxins there.

And so they're perfectly good to chow down on.

How do you eat them?

I mean, how do you prepare them?

What do you do with them?

I've got enough cicadas that I'm just going to cook them straight, cooked them with a little bit of garlic and bacon, and then I'm going to have some other ones that I'm just going to fry up in some butter and garlic and throw them in and some pasta with some Alfredo sauce and something I would send back if I was like, I'm different.

Yeah.

Now here's the deal.

When I prep them, I take the wings and the legs off.

And I'm not a big fan.

There's really nothing in the weeds and legs that you can use as nutrients and add fiber to your diet, but because of the exoskeleton of the legs in the wings is undigestible.

It just goes right through your fiber.

So really, what we want is what's in the thorax.

That's muscles.

The muscles that operate the the wings and the legs are in the thorax.

And then more specifically, I prefer to collect females.

And the reason for that is their abdomen is full of Obree, which contains the egg.

So there's going to be a lot of high quality carbohydrate and lipids or fats that are in those eggs that are in there.

That's it for us this week.

Enjoy your weekend no matter what you have on the menu for my colleagues here at the bureau.

Thanks for watching.

And be sure to join us again next time for the state of Ohio.

Support for the statewide broadcast of the state of Ohio comes from medical mutual, providing more than one point four million Ohioans peace of mind with a selection of health insurance plans online at Medd Mutual dotcom slash Ohio by the law offices of PorterWright Morris and Arthur LLP.

Now with eight locations across the country, PorterWright is a legal partner with a new perspective to the business community.

More at PorterWright Dotcom and from the Ohio Education Association, representing 100 24000 members who work to inspire their students to think creatively and experience the joy of learning online at O H E A dot org.