Personal nitpick: We keep hearing comparisons between mask mandates and seatbelts. Seatbelts are designed to protect the wearer and pose less of a shared responsibility than a mask does. I think it's a weak parallel.
Seatbelt laws, that is.
DUI laws are probably better? They're designed to keep you from dying but also to keep you from killing other people.
Ok and last thing. This "It's kind to wear a mask" framing. I get what you're going for but some people don't give shit about being kind? And making it sound like an extra-mile politeness thing minimizes the idea that it should be a responsibility, not a favor.
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Tulsa is giving its coronavirus update. Health Department Executive Director Bruce Dart calls the county's case rate astounding. Watch here. facebook.com/cityoftulsa/vi…
Dart: We all know how important family is in the holidays, but family gatherings are one of the most common transmission sites. "Celebrating virtually or with members of your household poses the lowest risk of spread."
Waiting for the latest state-level coronavirus update. OU Health is one of the organization's represented, and here is their link to the live stream.
Gov. Kevin Stitt starts out. He's introducing several hospital executives and leaders. "To all the doctors, the nurses, the therapists, the health care professionals across the state, I want to tell you personally, thank you." We know you're carrying the weight here.
Commissioner of Health Lance Frye: We want to assure the public that the state and hospitals are working on a collaborative pandemic response. "The trends we are seeing are concerning." Slowing the spread will take every Oklahoman working together, doing the right thing.
Oklahoma House Minority Leader Emily Virgin is holding a presser right now about coronavirus response. She's calling for a statewide mask mandate, either by Stitt or by #okleg in special session.
Virgin: First, we heard it's a freedom issue. Then we heard it's unenforceable. Other states and peer reviewed studies have disproven all of this. "The governor is frankly running out of excuses for his failed leadership, and Oklahomans are dying as he does."
Virgin: My own parents contracted the virus and were hospitalized. My mother was in the ICU. "I know personally what families all across Oklahoma are going through."
We're in the media availability with OSDH. State Epidemiologist Jared Taylor says private labs are having trouble adjusting to the new electronic reporting. Says they're collecting data, and that they're partners we don't want to mandate.
This runs parallel to the testimony we heard this morning in the coronavirus response interim study, the House committee hearing. Similarly, they said hospitalization figures originate somewhere else — hospital self reporting — and the state is a partner.
Taylor: "We have no had the opportunity or the technical ability to connect the dots" with regards to contact tracing. We haven't gotten to where we can point definitively toward sources of transmission. (We used to have top five, with restaurants, gyms etc.) Cases are too high.
I’m here today. Once I’m caught up some, I’ll start live tweeting.
Kary Cox is the director at Washington County Emergency Management, speaking to represent several local emergency managers. He said this is the worst disaster he's handled, but that mismanagement and poor communication has made it worse.
K. Cox: People and organizations were told that their local emergency management was their point of contact, but we were never told. It create a sense of distrust.
Not necessarily news, but a reminder that our publicly available hospital data gives us a statewide look. For example, we know the state's ICU availability. Health officials have the same information for the state's hospital regions and individual hospitals, but it's not public.
Something to keep in mind as we get back to discussing possible strains on hospital capacity.
Also, that risk map won't show red without some triggers, the most likely of which being the regional hospital capacity reaches a low threshold. Public data won't show that coming.