Thread by @BradMcElhinny

Justice announces 12 additional #WV covid-related deaths since Friday

https://twitter.com/BradMcElhinny/status/1305539999664943105

Justice: "This killer attacks our elderly first and foremost."

Justice: daily positive rate is 2.69 -- "That's the lowest it's been in a while; that's good."

Justice: "We're still the highest in the nation with our reproduction number." rt.live

Justice says Bible Center School, a private school in Kanawha, which is orange, "has taken it on itself to go back" to classrooms

"If we start doing things on our own, we're going to cause a lot of heartache to a lot of different people."

Justice: "Making a decision because you feel like it's safe for your children, what if it's not."

Justice: "Whether you buy it or don't buy it the nights are tough; and the sleep is not much. I can tell you this is really serious stuff.

"It's an honor to be your governor but it weighs on anybody, and it weighs on me too."

Justice: "I am trying to make the very best decisions for all or you in West Virginia. I am also praying constantly that my decisions are the right decisions."

Today at 5 p.m., he says he is asking all his advisers to "turn over every rock and look at every possibility to be able to achieve, safety goodness, the things we want to achieve that would be the very best for people in this state."

Justice says he is not going to bow to protesters or "anyone from D.C."

Justice: "It would be plain stupid to not change as we go through this and try to make things better. So we change."

Justice: "We have stood our ground in following the Harvard model."

He says the 10 to 25 range for orange may be too wide. "I don't think that's fair."

Justice: "I think we can continue to make things better by continuing to be light on our feet and changing."

Justice: Mon County is "so red, they're off the charts red."

He acknowledges a big contributor to Mon numbers is WVU.

"Mon County is in a situation, being influenced by WVU, I'm sure, as well as within Mon County." -- meaning the university plus community spread

Justice on college students: "We can't take a positive student and demand they go home and maybe make things worse where they go. But we can't stop that. That is the choice of the student and the parent."

Justice describes the possibility of putting WVU students with positive covid diagnosis into one building/area/zone and then counting them as 1, like in a congregate setting

Justice talks about making a *new color* for The Map -- gold, put between orange and red.

Then, "We should not be in school period in the orange."

Justice: "You have counties, and I hate it like crazy, that have not had the opportunity to start back to school."

Justice: "I would allow us to go back to school in the gold, and I would allow our teams to play in the gold."

Sounds like gold teams could play other gold teams?

All I know is Mike Pence and Deborah Birx really loved this Map

Justice describes dividing bands and allowing different parts of the band to play at different parts of games

<insert shrug emoji here>

Justice: "When you throw kids into school, we all know that we've got them in closer proximity to one another and you raise the risk."

Justice reiterates 5 p.m. meeting, narrowing orange, WVU situation, etc.

Justice: "With all the sleepless nights, with all the staring at the walls, with all the tweaking that's been done, we should do what the people that were able to land astronauts on the moon did -- they tweaked and they tweaked and they tweaked until they got it right."

Justice addresses recent Fayette County outdoor activities -- when that county is on orange. "That's a real problem, Fayette County."

"You need to tighten yourselves down and pay attention to what I'm saying."

"We do not need the season on the Gauley to spoil things for Fayette County."

Here is where the governor gave the OK to resume whitewater rafting

governor.wv.gov/News/press-rel…

Coronavirus response coordinator Clay Marsh: "I am looking forward to the conversation tonight. We need to be flexible."

It looks like Marsh might be at home and if so would need to not dilly-dally to make a 5 p.m. meeting in person.

Q from @amandabarren "Are you concerned that making so many changes to the metric is sending a signal of instability, or that people are going to get frustrated?"

Justice: "No, Amanda, I'm not."

Considering situation, "The amount of tweaking that's been done is almost nothing."

Justice: "Never, never in my life have I seen anyone or been lucky enough myself to have split the bullseye on the first shot."

Q from @cyoungIII, wants to know how the new color ranges would work in practice. What are the practical effects?

Justice: "I think your question is a little premature" because they are just his views, not necessarily the views of The Experts.

Justice: "I believe the orange color code is too wide, and I believe we need to do something about that."

Justice: "First and foremost we want our kids in school. But secondarily, if we can find a mechanism and a way to allow our kids to play sports and keep them together and maybe even test more..."

I asked who will be at the 5 p.m. meeting: Crouch, Amjad, Hoyer, Clayton Burch, Marsh, Justice, some of his staff and Bernie Dolan of SSAC

And I asked when we might get clarity on what's decided

Justice: "Are we right on having this range of orange so much?"

"It doesn't seem right to me, and if I can come up with a way to tweak the fine-tune dial just a little bit and help those counties and make it into a way Kanawha can get itself into the gold and hopefully into ylo

Oh, but I just wanna know when we'll have what's decided officially clarified

Justice: "There are so many repercussions of what we do and how we change."

"Maybe all my advisers will convince me it's not the thing to do."

"Maybe we end up meeting and don't do anything."

Justice: "We meet and we talk and we meet and we talk."

Justice now says they'll meet and they'll give us about an hour's notice and then describe any changes. So sounds like tonight."

"I want to give you the changes so we can react and react now."

I just accidentally bought us all a night shift.

Sorry everybody!

Q from @TaylorStuckHD

Cabell and Ohio counties were shown as orange on the Saturday morning daily map. Then they were yellow on Saturday night’s dominant map. Then they were orange on the Sunday yellow map. Is there anything that can be done to even out some confusion?

Justice: "When you have a pandemic and someone says write a system that's going to make it work --

"this thing is enormously complicated with a lot of great people that are inputting numbers."

I'M ON THE EDGE OF MY SEAT

(technical probs have occurred)

Marsh says there's a lot of careful work on Saturdays to make sure the data is accurate for The One Map to Rule Them All

Q from @dbeardtdp, following up on the idea of putting WVU students with confirmed cases into one place for the purposes of counting them as 1 congregate case. Beard describes all the places where WVU students are (Arnold Hall, quarantine)

Marsh says, yes, this is complicated

Marsh: "So as you point out, it's a more complex issue than just having one particular model only."

Justice: "We need to test now every single person that goes on the WVU campus."

"We need to find a way to quarantine or isolate the cases until we find a resolution."

"Test everybody, take all the positives, try to quarantine or isolate them until we have absolute certainty."

Q from @davemistich about whether adding an additional color layer may cause people to let down their guard, leading to more virus spread

Justice: "If we go back and tweak the color code, sure there's concern."

#DadgumIfYouDoDadgumIfYouDoNot

Justice: "Anything we do causes some layer of concern."

parapharasing: If you have been in your house for 30 days and then go out and check your dog, you are assuming some risk.

perhaps not as much risk as the dog has assumed if you have not checked on it for 30 days

Justice, wrapping it up, offers a lot of thanks to everybody

"When you have a well-oiled machine because all the great people are doing great work and you have a well-oiled machine, you don't have to do a lot, do you."

There was a clunker sound effect that I don't think I can replicate: "bum-bum-bum-bum-bum."

Justice: "We're going to have a good meeting at 5 o'clock."

He acknowledges there may be no changes at all, "But I really do believe we're going to make some tweaks and make things better."

"Thank y'all."