When Governor DeWine announced that 100,000 people in Ohio might have the coronavirus in Ohio, I thought that was bold. That was daring. That was a Scientific wild-ass guess. It was apparent that he had a set of policies he wanted to implement and he needed some scientific justification. He probably reasoned that if California, New York, and Washington have self-quarantined then it must be a good idea for Ohio to get out in front of the issue. According to the John Hopkins coronavirus site, the top five states with confirmed coronavirus cases are New York, Washington, California, Massachusetts, and Florida. All of these states are logical ports of entry for the virus versus fly-over America. These states have large cities that make controlling community spread of the virus harder to do. Self-quarantining in these states is an appropriate policy to avoid overloading the hospitals. When we look at Ohio we see a different picture.
- According to the Ohio coronavirus website, Ohio has 50 confirmed cases and 14 cases that required hospitalization. These numbers are well underneath the capacity of our healthcare systems.
- Self-quarantining confirmed cases sounds practical. Large scale self-quarantining in Ohio is probably marginally useful at best. People are already annoyed at the pandemonium and chaos it has caused. A Scientific wild-ass guess is not a good reason for lost wages.
- Spring is only four days away. Warming weather and the official end to the flu season is on the horizon.
- Ohio’s population is more spread out than the cities on the east and west coasts.
All of these factors point to a pretty good scenario for preventing the spread of coronavirus. Getting to that 100,000 number in the next couple of months is going to pretty difficult. This is a goal I am happy not to reach. Thank God, I live in fly-over America!