Saturday, July 18, 2020
The governor of Ohio implored the State to consider the health and livelihood of others in a rare public address around prime time at 5:30pm. In the address he pointed to how challenging it was to balance the need to ensure the health and safety of its citizens while as a family man himself and also a citizen himself. He stated that due to the cooperation and foresight of everyone in the state the virus levels were able to be kept relatively low and held down to a manageable amount giving healthcare workers much needed time to try to figure out how to best use resources, develop a plan, and fight the disease ravaging the country.
He emphasized that just because it hasn’t affected us personally doesn’t make the disease any less real and addressed the people on social media and people that were watching the news hesitant to be inconvenienced that the elderly and the young are both at risk of getting ill.
His speech echoed the themes of a call to battle and how this fight was timeless and we’ve seen this before and fought again the unknown and dealt with fear before and how us citizens can do it again. He emphasized the positives and even though it felt futile and we were going into battle with a nameless, faceless enemy that it could be won over in numbers and droves with some simple technology and that was to block entry passageways for the virus to get into our bodies, namely our nose and mouths and also to stop it from being propelled outwardly that way. And properly washing them away.
Our saliva, spit, snot, sneezes and secretions are the mode and method of transmission, the speedtrains, subway cars, playgrounds and ice rinks for the virus to travel on.
He emphasized that people are understandably weary, tired and combat fatigued and thought they were done fighting but the battle’s not fully won. He emphasized thinking of the kids once more and also elderly. And that the kids are going to school soon. And that those that don’t want to “fight the good fight” of course are understandable because of personal freedoms, but also that even more freedom could be lost if the fight against sickness gets to even worse proportions. He pointed to some of the places such as Arizona and Florida where people had gotten complacent and places opened a bit too fast and overzealous, skipping over some important precautions and now have to roll back reopening, possibly devastating the economy even more and also making it even less likely the kids and students can join their friends and go back to learn and enjoy some normalcy making it even harder on parents as they have to take care of them and figure arrangements for learning or babysitting and daycare also causing further strain financially as they can’t concentrate on their jobs.
He mentioned things we want to do like birthdays, ballgames, and sports and we all can’t do that when we’re all sick. And gave us the option to see into the future and change our lives just like if we were given a red or blue pill from a time traveller in the future telling us we could change whether we were successful or not and change our collective destinies.
And then he closed with the fact that no new health orders would be given and said that really he admits he can only do so much as a governor. The power rests in the people, the population. And he implored to a greater good and wisdom of the people that they could see that the good well intentions of people so that they could live a better tomorrow with the people having concern and care enough for their fellow man and women and child. And that even if it was slightly inconvenient that the fruits of the sacrifice now could enable that in the future months we could enjoy a free open fully functioning society again.
The speech was interesting because he tried to reach a wider audience than normal through his late time slot as people were getting off work.
And he also acknowledged that he couldn’t do it alone and it was easier or better to persuade people with honey and sparing the rod if possible.
He also acknowledged the difficulty because he relied and deferred humbly to others and medical professionals whose only technology right now was just a humble small piece of cloth to just block entry points to the body to prevent transmission of disease.
It goes back to the old ages of doctors dealing with plagues and with the old bird masks.. They were afraid of “bad air” or miasma. And the early concepts of germs and disease. People weren’t aware of this back then. And now collectively society has better tools and things to help with a better life and don’t understand because we base it on scientific theory, but it’s the only thing we have right now to understand our concept of the world right now. Quite simply we’re using hand washing, distancing and masking basically to prevent the germs from jumping onto a new host human.
So he acknowledged his limits and the limits of science and medicine and told the people that he was trying his best with the limited knowledge about what he had and given the tools from medical professionals and others. And erring on the side of caution he was simply trying to protect them. He acknowledged it was tough to enforce and make everyone do it, but just if enough people did it then we could prevent another major uncontrollable spike beyond the point of no return.
Sort of like a nuclear reactor. Once you start the chain reaction for the explosion and the fire is lit the genie isn’t going back in the bottle and it can turn really bad really fast.
Many of state levels which were graphically show using a color chart were peaking red and getting dangerously high enough to cause a major outbreak in the region.
On Friday we saw even some news casters like Lester Holt and others try to get people on the same page to explain that we all just want to go back to our lives and back to normal and no one wants this to go on forever. The U.S. got out of control and no one wants the U.S. to be the top of the charts for this. That we want to be know for innovation, science, achievements, and not for disease and deaths around the world and spreading illness.
It is a difficult situation.
But we can prevent things from getting worse collectively. Things are preventable and it’s not certain doom. We have the power to conscientiously decide to defend and protect others and ensure the health and safety and wellbeing of those around us. There’s no hidden agenda. We spin and fabricate explanations when we can’t understand the unexplainable. Nobody wanted to be in this position. Right now everyone just wants their life back.
