What a breath of fresh air Ohio’s leadership has been during the coronavirus pandemic.
Each day around 2 p.m., with few exceptions, Ohioans can tune in to a thoughtful press conference from Gov. Mike DeWine, Health Director Dr. Amy Acton and Lt. Gov. Jon Husted.
The trio provides current numbers of confirmed cases and fatalities. DeWine carefully and thoughtfully provides his rationale behind each decision he makes to fight the spread, from extending school closures to releasing inmates from state prisons.
Viewers may not always agree with the administration, but nobody can fault the transparency behind the explanations. Nor can viewers doubt the sincerity of Dr. Acton, who sometimes appears close to tears as she alternately explains the need for continued social distancing and praises Ohioans for saving lives by staying home as much as possible.
Our state leaders also practice what they preach. Organizers go to great lengths to keep officials separated by at least 6 feet during the conference. Reporters ask questions from a separate room to comply with the directive against large gatherings.
Last week, DeWine and Acton received a measure of pop-culture fame when an animated spoof, in heavy rotation on social media, cast the two as sitcom legends Laverne and Shirley, teaming up to battle the virus. Even the state’s interpreter for the deaf had a cameo.
The news conferences have become such a lifeline for Ohioans that they’ve been dubbed in some quarters as Wine with DeWine, and virtual-viewing parties have popped up on Facebook so that stay-at-homers can feel some measure of solidarity with one another during the broadcasts.
Despite such fanfare, DeWine, Acton and Husted never lose sight of the situation’s severity, keeping the focus squarely on facts and the impact the coronavirus has on all aspects of the state’s health — physical, financial and emotional.
Contrast this with the almost daily dysfunction coming from Washington, D.C., where our president treats the presence of cameras and microphones as an excuse to contradict established science and his own experts, advocate for unproven treatments, shift the blame for bungled responses to past administrations and state leaders, change the description of a stockpile of medical supplies to dovetail with his son-in-law’s interpretation of same, crow about his ratings and Facebook popularity, and berate the press for not praising him enough.
Behind the scenes, under the cover of COVID, one might say, Trump has fired the inspector general who filed the whistleblower complaint about his call to Ukraine, fired the person who would have overseen the administration’s pandemic relief fund, and continued his administration’s rollback of environmental protections and healthcare.
And this week, Americans learned the administration largely ignored a pointed early warning from one of its own about the seriousness of the coming crisis. Instead, the president continued to downplay the novel coronavirus publicly, calling it a Democratic hoax and predicting the handful of cases would soon dwindle to one.
Monday-morning quarterbacking is always far too easy and often unfair. Just a few weeks ago, many of us, myself included, were far less concerned with the coronavirus than we should have been.
Then again, we aren’t the president. And we didn’t have access to the sort of the information that Trump was apparently disregarding.
This wasn’t the president staying positive in the face of a serious challenge, as some supporters claim he is doing with his daily intrusion into the nation’s living rooms.
No, this is a man who is almost criminally ill-equipped to lead this charge, who cannot crawl out from beneath his own ego to provide the leadership so vital in such a problematic time.
For that, the country needs to turn to people like DeWine, Acton and Husted, who are showing each day how to set policy and provide comfort and solace to a frightened and hurting nation.
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
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