Ohio Chief Medical Officer Says Ohio’s COVID Policies Are Incontrovertible

 

COLUMBUS, Ohio- During Tuesday’s COVID update, Ohio Governor Mike DeWine issued a statewide 21-day curfew.  Ohio businesses are expected to close at 10:00 p.m. and residents mandated to be in their homes until 5:00 a.m.

“We’re not shutting down, we’re slowing down” said DeWine.  The order comes after rumors spread late last week that Ohio would be shut down for four to six weeks.

The grounding comes as all 88 counties are listed as “high incidence” for COVID spread.

Last week the Governor announced a renewed statewide mask mandate ordering Ohioans to be masked and businesses to require their employers and customers to comply or face penalties, including closure, from the Bureau of Workers Compensation Retail Compliance Unit.

The statewide mask mandate went into effect on July 23 after cases had, then, peaked over 1,600. Since then, cases have risen and as October started, they spiked sharply.

Also last week, the New England Journal of Medicine released a report on a study conducted on Marines that tracked the COVID spread among quarantined Marines who strictly adhered to nonpharmaceutical interventions (NPI) – wearing double-layered masks indoors and out, distancing at least six feet from others, eating plated meals in areas wiped down before and after they ate, and using continually disinfected bathrooms. The non-quarantined group that didn’t have strict oversight of their NPI activities actually had a lower incidence of spread.

As Ohio continues to see high numbers of COVID cases – reporting 7,079 on Tuesday – and increases in hospital admissions, The Ohio Star and WMFD reporter asked Governor DeWine about the efficacy of the mask mandate and other NPIs.

Last week your medical experts told us that they see mask compliance being high and shutdowns would do more harm than good.

Back on July 15 cases were already dropping and you said “if all of us put on a face covering for 4 weeks, 6 weeks we would drive this epidemic into the ground” Now here we are 16 weeks later.

Last week the New England Journal of Medicine military study indicated cases were actually higher in those who quarantined and underwent strict enforcement of masking, distancing and disinfecting.

It appears that the masking, distancing, quarantining is not stopping the spread – but it is certainly creating unintended consequences that are hurting more people than the virus.  But it appears your team won’t come off the dime and consider a different direction. Why?

DeWine deferred the answer to Ohio’s newly appointed Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Bruce Vanderhoff.

Vanderhoff began with a warning –  “I would caution anyone looking at a particular study and using it as a basis for contradicting a vast repository of medical data and information.”

However, last week there was a single study released by Nature.com that tried to predict the risk of spread from areas such as restaurants, bars, gyms and churches based on cell phone data captured March through May.

Prior to the study being released, DeWine had lauded restaurants and bars for their strict adherence to mitigation strategies and claimed, repeatedly, that businesses were not sources of spread.

But the evidence countering the “incontrovertible” efficacy of masks doesn’t come from one study alone, in fact there have been two in the past week, including the one from the New England Journal of Medicine.

A Danish report released in the Annals of Internal Medicine concluding that the “recommendation to wear surgical mask outside the home among others did not reduce, at conventional levels of statistical significance incident of SARS-CoV-2 infection compared with no mask recommendation.”

Ohio’s mask order does not call for surgical masks to be worn, rather the statewide mandates allow for face coverings – which can simply be cloth.

Continuing with his answer, Vanderhoff then emphatically defended the state’s various mandates and mitigation measures. “It is incontrovertible (there can be no other truth on the matter) that masking is effective in reducing the spread of this virus.”

The Chief Medical Advisor also claimed that COVID has “evolved to become highly contagious.” Whether this means the virus is more transmissible and less deadly remains to be seen, according to Wendy Orent in an article in Medscape. So far in Ohio, cases numbers have risen from around 1,000 to over 5,000 (by onset date) an increase of over 500% but deaths have remained stable over the same time.

Vanderhoff said that COVID is a respiratory virus and there is “very-good science around the droplet nature of this virus.” Concluding he said that “common sense” measures we all learned from our mothers make it obvious that distancing and hand washing help reduced spread.

Previously DeWine praised Ohioans for high mask compliance but in recent weeks has criticized those who don’t wear them and said that compliance is not as high as it needs to be. This despite his medical leaders last week, during a specially-called Monday presser, indicating that mask compliance was high.

The Star reached out to the Governor through his Press Secretary Dan Tierney to find out where DeWine gathering information to drive his perception on mask and mitigation compliance.

Tierney said DeWine got his information from “anecdotal observations from local officials and health departments.”

_ _ _

Jack Windsor is Managing Editor at both The Ohio Star and The Michigan Star. Windsor is also an Investigative Reporter at WMFD-TV and The Virginia Star. Follow Jack on Twitter. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Dr. Bruce Vanderhoff” by Mike DeWine.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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7 Thoughts to “Ohio Chief Medical Officer Says Ohio’s COVID Policies Are Incontrovertible”

  1. DI

    “Vanderhoff said that COVID is a respiratory virus and there is “very-good science around the droplet nature of this virus.” Concluding he said that “common sense” measures we all learned from our mothers make it obvious that distancing and hand washing help reduced spread.”

    IF this statement is TRUE….then why in the sam hell do they have to go into my nasal cavity almost to the brain to get a sample? If from his “opinion” droplets are an issue then why can’t I just spit on the swab instead of sticking it all the way up my nose to almost the brain????

    These people are all in this big LIE from satan himself.

    May God forgive them all for all of the deaths that have been caused by their bad judgement and behavior especially the “UNBORN” which never was stopped during this PLANDEMIC…..

  2. Michael D

    op pathologist Dr. Roger Hodkinson told government officials in Alberta during a zoom conference call that the current coronavirus crisis is “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on an unsuspecting public.”

    “I’m absolutely outraged that this has reached this level, it should all stop tomorrow,” concluded Dr. Hodkinson.

    “He received his general medical degrees from Cambridge University in the UK (M.A., M.B., B. Chir.) where he was a scholar at Corpus Christi College. Following a residency at the University of British Columbia he became a Royal College certified general pathologist (FRCPC) and also a Fellow of the College of American Pathologists (FCAP).”

    “He is in good Standing with the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Alberta, and has been recognized by the Court of Queen’s Bench in Alberta as an expert in pathology.”

    1. Michael D

      Hodkinson also slammed mandatory mask mandates as completely pointless.

      “Masks are utterly useless. There is no evidence base for their effectiveness whatsoever,” he said.

      “Paper masks and fabric masks are simply virtue signalling. They’re not even worn effectively most of the time. It’s utterly ridiculous. Seeing these unfortunate, uneducated people – I’m not saying that in a pejorative sense – seeing these people walking around like lemmings obeying without any knowledge base to put the mask on their face.”

      The doctor also slammed the unreliability of PCR tests, noting that “positive test results do not, underlined in neon, mean a clinical infection,” and that all testing should stop because the false numbers are “driving public hysteria.”

      Hodkinson said that the risk of death in the province of Alberta for people under the age of 65 was “one in three hundred thousand,” and that it was simply “outrageous” to shut down society for what the doctor said “was just another bad flu.”

  3. Philip Pokatello

    Didn’t the governor repeatedly say that these were being made because they are following “The Science”? Yet here Tierney said it’s based on “anecdotal evidence”. Might I remind him that anecdotal evidence does not equal science.

  4. Tara Apking

    I think Dewine is a screwball! I think him and his cronies pull this crap out of their asses on the daily. He is corrupt and evil and he needs to be impeached. This new mandate requiring business to make their customers wear a mask is bullshit! Who in their right mind is going to turn customers away? It’s like slitting your own wrist. It’s funny how people don’t see that the reason why they’re doing it is because they know they can’t enforce it themselves because it’s wrong! So better yet let’s make the businesses do it let’s make the people turn on themselves. Thats a sick and sad individual, he doesn’t care about Ohioans at all If he did he would stop this tyranny.

  5. Stan Willis

    “eyerolls” I corrected it once and it snuck back in.

  6. Stan Willis

    When Jack, representing a large number of Ohioans, asked his question, I counted 3 or 4 eyeballs from DeWine, his countenance showing he despises the people, counting us not worthy of himself answering the question. It is incontrovertible that he is a petty little tyrant. I echo the question President Trump tweeted, “Who is going to run for governor for the great state of Ohio?” Impeach DeWine.

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