Pennsylvania Ping!
Please ping me with articles of interest.
FReepmail me to be added to the list.
Posted on 07/15/2020 5:16:01 PM PDT by lightman
Gov. Tom Wolf said Wednesday he’s willing to “pull the plug” on school reopening if a new surge of COVID-19 infections continues to grow.
Yet it might be irrelevant, he said, because fear of catching the disease would likely keep teachers and students away anyway.
Wolf and others cited that potential as a major factor in the decision to impose the new restrictions on restaurants, bars and indoor gatherings announced Wednesday.
With only about six weeks remaining before the start of school, it’s critical to bring the surge under control now, they stressed.
“If we do not get community disease transmission rates down, we’re really threatening the most important re-openings that you have coming around Labor Day,” said Dr. David Rubin, a pediatrician, referring to schools.
Rubin works at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and is involved with a tracking and projection model Wolf and state Secretary of Health Dr. Rachel Levine drew on in deciding to impose the new restrictions.
Rubin said his team wants schools to open this fall. But they believe it requires infections being brought under control to assure safety and to gave families and teachers confidence they will be safe.
While the new restrictions extend statewide, Wolf defended them as a targeted approach, saying they apply to settings where, through contact tracing, major infection spread is known to have occurred.
A major catalyst in the resurgence, he said, are people who went to bars and restaurants and didn’t wear face masks or adhere to social distancing.
“This carelessness has resulted in pockets of ‘super spread’,” Wolf said.
He and Levine acknowledged the economic pain that will be felt by establishments forced to operate at a fraction of normal capacity. But they said the alternative is no one going to restaurants and bars out of fear of getting sick.
“This whole process we’ve had an array of choices and they’ve all been bad. We’ve been given the decision as to what’s the less bad option,” Wolf said.
Rubin, citing his tracking and projection model, painted an alarming picture of an emerging wave of infections, saying it’s flowing in from other states.
He cited COVID-19 resurgences in Ohio cities including Cleveland and Columbus which are “washing over our western border” into Allegheny and surrounding counties. He similarly cited resurgences in Washington, D.C., Baltimore, and new surges in southern states, which he said are being carried up I-95 and Route 11-15 to areas including central Pennsylvania.
Wolf also attributed much of the new outbreak to interstate travel and “lack of national coordination” in the pandemic response.
“That has resulted in states in the south and the southwest especially not committing to the things they should have done … and so we’re paying the price in different ways for what states and other places have not done,” Wolf said.
Thanks for visiting PennLive. Quality local journalism has never been more important. We need your support. Not a subscriber yet? Please consider supporting our work.
Note to readers: if you purchase something through one of our affiliate links we may earn a commission.
Pennsylvania Ping!
Please ping me with articles of interest.
FReepmail me to be added to the list.
Stop getting tested if there is nothing wrong with you. They’ll just give you a false positive.
They better pull the plug on teacher pay then.
yo moron... want to stop the surge in positives tests?
THEN STOP TESTING!
ROFL... because that’s the ONLY thing driving the current supposed “surge” in cases. It’s simply a SURGE in TESTING.
DA!
‘A major catalyst in the resurgence, he said, are people who went to bars and restaurants and didn’t wear face masks or adhere to social distancing.’
total utter bullshit...
Do people not understand you can’t hide from a contagious virus? When you come out of your hidey hole, it will still be here. Best to up your health and face it and let’s all get beyond it. Best to be exposed to it in summer when people are overall healthier and the other colds and flus are scarce.
We will all be exposed to it. As we are to colds and flus. We don’t all get symptoms and for sure we don’t all die. This shutdown crap should be saved for Ebola with 50% death rate.
Does anyone in the media EVER mention protests and looting as a cause?
There hasn’t been a single case reported where children infected each other, dying of covid or passing it to adults.
Penn Live, Wolf shills 100% of the time.
Wolf had better figure out how to pull the plug out of his butt before pulling the plug out of school reopening.
Exactly. The virus has to run its course, infecting those with reduced immunity, bypassing others. There is a reason it occurs in winter, everyone is indoors and deficient in vitamin D. This decimation of our economy and its attendant fixes are crazy. It is now a political football with its only goal getting a demented crazy bastard named Jackass Joe elected. And if he is, God forbid, the urgency of the virus will evaporate into thin air.
Sooooooo that’s a YES then!
Hey idiot, kids are NOT dying from this, and mostly cannot pass it on to others!
The Dems are NOT going to let this go. They’ll lie their butts off to obtain their desired outcome.
Has the guy in the wig spoken?
It must be, because, Pennsylvania opened early.
In fact, multiple reports and studies, including the one yesterday discussed on FR from the New England Journal of Medicine, saying that there have been NO confirmed instances in which children have passed it on to other children or to adults.
Yep. He is just throwing restaurants under the bus because it is a good excuse to blame them instead of the BLM types by the thousands inches apart mask less and yelling and screaming.
Property tax rebates coming soon!
I live in CT and only went out to eat ONCE since indoor dining reopened. We were greeted by a hostess who read a half a dozen rules we must follow or be asked to leave or be trespassed by police. I have no intention of dining out or doing non-essential shopping while the state forces business to treat me like a walking plague.
To be honest, I don't miss it as much as I though and plan on dining out less once this is over. Within a year the Dem run states will probably see a massive number of vacant restaurant and retail space.
Blessing in disguise. What a shame if kids couldn’t go get indoctrinated at public schools.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.