Ohio has set another record for newly reported coronavirus cases in a day.
That's been true more days than it hasn't recently.
That's what experts would consider a bad trend.
There were 5,008 new cases, 231 new hospitalizations and 33 newly reported deaths in the past 24 hours. More than 2,100 Ohioans are now in the hospital today because of COVID.
It was only about three weeks ago (Oct. 14) when Ohio first cracked 2,000 new cases in a day and that was considered high.
We're cranking at 5,000 now.
Gov. Mike DeWine, totally real sources say, will convey his displeasure to Ohioans with neutered crankiness and perhaps threaten to write a second open letter or record a PSA with Urban Meyer.
The governor yesterday announced that he'd hired Stephanie McCloud, a lawyer who currently runs the Ohio Bureau of Workers' Compensation, to lead the health department as the pandemic continues to take its toll. A spokesperson told reporters her experience with workplace injuries satisfied a state law that requires the position be held by a physician or someone with “significant experience in the public health profession.”
The position has been occupied on a interim basis since Dr. Amy Acton resigned in June after her expert advice drew protestors with guns and anti-Semitic signs to her home and as DeWine telegraphed that he'd be siding with businesses in plans to reopen the state.
The fall has not been great for Ohio's coronavirus stats, and we're about to enter not only the slice of the calendar not conducive to patios and socially distant outdoor settings but the Winter of Our Rationalization, when every family will try to justify getting together indoors because they're special or because the pandemic won't take this holiday season away from them despite having taken away so much else.
Those kind of social gatherings are exactly what the county health department and the state of Ohio have pinpointed as causes of spread.
Yes, the death rate has declined, but as experts are reminding us, one of the reasons for the decline since March has been hospitals having more than enough beds and staff to treat patients.
If cases continue to grow and hospitalization rates skyrocket, "The resources will be more taxed, and it will be just more difficult to provide the same care," according to doctors who worked in New York during the onset in spring. "We need to promote the (social) distancing and the mask wearing…. We’re talking about mortality and we’re talking about hospitalizations, but we really don’t fully understand what the impact of getting COVID will do long-term. We really don’t know what we don’t know at this point regarding what this virus can cause."
As for DeWine's hands-off approach on the state level and plan for localized response, experts who talked to the Ohio Capital Journal this week said it was a recipe for disaster.
“A county-by-county, city-by-city plan is no substitute for the statewide COVID response,” one epidemiologist said. “I understand delegation, but this is a dereliction of duty. This will not end well for Ohioans.”
