Another candid covid conversation with Josephine County city council member and business owners
hey everybody welcome back to another off the beaten path off our normal lane episode of dad cast it's a kind of a rebuttal to uh the episode we did with our josephine county commissioner a few days ago i am your host jp joined as always as your co-host mr nick martin nick how are you today i'm good how are you man good man i'm doing great uh i actually i got my negative covet test back so there you go vaccinated messed up still negative we're doing good joining us today uh for uh what we're looking to be a rebuttal episode to what you may or may not have seen earlier is a business owner mr bradley a converse how are you sir been great thanks for having me on guys absolutely and city council member on the illinois valley here in southern oregon part of josephine county mr jesse dugas how are you sir doing well thanks for having me absolutely all right well and but and so i don't make the same mistake as well you guys are dads i heard three and three and four yeah i got four uh ranging from 20 to a year and a half wow so you're in the same boat as nick nope that's good congrats man we'd i'd love to have you guys back when it's a little more light-hearted to discuss that whole journey anything but here we go nick i leave it up to you good sir the conscious yours i will uh obviously interject where i see fit i'm sure i will and uh let's do it cool okay so the point of these episodes are to basically just spread awareness of we need as a community to do something um we did interview hermann bearcheiger a couple days ago and it was good you know he we agreed that yeah stay home if you if you can limit your trips mask up if you can um and get get the vaccine but you know seek medical attention seek medical advice so um anyway basically i want to get the take of somebody that works in the schools somebody that works in town as a business owner how big of a crisis is this in your opinion i'll take it um i mean it's it's bad i early on like back in you know march of 2020 i was kind of banging the drum like this is really really bad potentially um and i mean a lot of people back then didn't see it and couldn't see it some people still don't see it um but my wife she was a nurse in the hospital and she didn't have a mask during the pandemic because they didn't have supplies so yeah um early on it was a big deal we kind of got out of it for the past couple months just with vaccines and with um just kind of we kind of had the bug figured out and then delta hits and things got bad really fast so again with banging the drum early on you know late july early august like we're we're in dire straits and with our low vaccination rates um we just had our daughter two and a half weeks ago at the hospital and we had all sorts of random people coming in taking care of us which worked great for us because it was actually like more qualified people but the whole staffing there is just a mess the the hospital ice views are just chock full um we're trying to be as careful as possible so we don't trip and fall and have to go to the er because it's it's packed so it's a it's a big problem locally right now all right jesse yeah i would uh i would agree with brad we're dealing with the same thing out here i we've lost a couple people as recently within the last couple weeks that passed away due to covet um out here in the valley and and it's it's a much tighter group out here you know cave junction has a popular somewhere around that 2200 mark but when you uh when you load the valley as a whole there's there's much more than that and it's it's scary you know i'm i'm finding families on a daily basis that are quarantined and a habit my entire family was quarantined just last week i got off on tuesday uh from an exposure that we had at preschool and so it's it's a situation where uh where it is definitely hitting home um it's bad i mean it's real i agree there's still people out here that don't think it's real and have turned that page to trying to make it more political i don't think it's a political thing i think it is uh it's something that everybody needs to hunker down and and figure out how to navigate through together because right now there's there's way too much of a division for anything to be successful right and speaking on that division i'd just like to jump in here now now this question may be next to impossible to answer but i'm going to ask it anyway i don't have an answer i have ideas but you always going to have the other side so the people who are going to oppose any possibility of a shutdown it's you know it's our freedoms are being taken away you're you're hurting business owners it's just not right the mental capacity of people it's affecting them but what's the answer in your guys's opinion to if we were to shut down if we had the power to shut down josephine county jackson county just two three weeks to uh slow that curve uh what is your statement to those who would object to that i i kind of go first there's a lot of restaurants and businesses that had to shut down due to covid um you know so many that you know a local rafting company had to shut down i heard they had 40 some people or they had several dozen people sick and they lost one of their employees to covet so they shut down walmart had to get shut down for a while because they were completely covered all these shutdowns that they're going to happen one way or the other so either the government's going to implement it before it's necessary which feels like it wasn't necessary or the business is going to have to do it to themselves after the fact and we kind of blew our shot early on you know keeping things shut down for so long when it just wasn't that prevalent here shutdowns are very necessary uh at a certain time but when you do it when it's not necessary it just burns people out so a lot of businesses couldn't easily withstand one but you've also got restaurants that can't get supplies because the cisco is shut down and it's it's a complicated mess where we have shutdowns happening not artificially anymore like they're they're people getting very sick and dying that i had one of the local business owners he's a very well-known guy around here uh he's in a coma right now and we we really hope he makes it but that's gonna affect a lot of women his restaurant's been shut down for what i think the last two weeks now which is a bummer it's hard i mean and it's not like i mean these are just fantastic people in the community that um no one wishes ill upon them at all like our town is a better place having these people in it and we are going to feel the repercussions of this for years from yeah yeah and it's it's a bummer because his wife's a teacher like she's my kid's teacher and it's and they're like super bummed out about it so it's sucks yeah for me it's uh you know if it's a couple week thing then you can you can try to pull the positives out of it you know number one safety that comes out right out the gate but number two there is such a staffing shortage right now people workers and this uh you know a two-week break could give small businesses an opportunity to revamp come up with a new game plan of what they're going to do um come up with a recruiting campaign to grab employees but ultimately those those employees will return if we can get coveted out of the picture and so it uh it may take at some point a uh a revamp or a reboot and i would i would try to spin that and you know call it much more of a reboot get everything up where it needs to be get your security protocols in place understand what you're going to require as far as coveted ghosts separate from what the county and the state are going to require and in trying to come up with a new game plan but you know there's i i do agree that's probably an impossible question uh we were supposed to be through this by now right so they told us hey we get through this last wave and and it's in the rearview mirror we're good to go and now our numbers are are worse than they've ever been and we don't have the mandates or the shutdowns that we did when it wasn't as bad as it is right now and so it's it's a tricky situation but i know speaking for myself i want to be here in six months i want to be here in a year i want to be here in five years i definitely don't want covid and i don't want to take the chance to get in covet and dying from covet and you know i i definitely don't want any of my family or close friends or any community can any more community members to uh to be affected by it so i would as a small business owner if i had to shut down i was i was shut down i was shut down the last you know 10 days while i was on quarantine luckily because i'm vaccinated i was able to uh to get tested and get released off the quarantine early um but it's you know it's it's just one of those things where you gotta instead of fighting the system so damn much do what's right yep i agree you needed to be tied to the hospital like i posted on facebook back in april 2020 saying we need to open everything back up because we didn't have a whole lot of covid in josephine county at that point and then just tie things to the hospital if the hospital raises the alarm that we're going to be running out of bed soon that's when you shut things down we've run out of beds we're maxed out and then some now would be the time to shut things down and tell our hospital to get to a level that they feel comfortable with not just an arbitrary date like you know if we shut things down really hard and it's better in a week great open back up but if we shut things down really hard and it takes a little while we don't just go off arbitrating arbitrary dates we go once we have this many people in the hospital with kovid and our icu has capacity again let's get right back to it and not not dilly dally but the whole arbitrary dates thing i think is what um set a lot of people off of you know not wanting to do really anything a lot of the government restrictions were just arbitrary in people's minds and that is hurting us now now is the time we need these things and people just don't want to do it yeah i agree i think they we stepped in or the government stepped in too hard too fast and over over-promised and under-delivered and now we have a real crisis that is so much worse than it was originally and we need a game plan and from talking to herman i i don't feel that there's a solid game plan like i suggested possibly opening up the pavilion at the fairgrounds as an offside hospital hospital to put in the patients from the hospital that can't leave yet and i was told that the hospital refused to do that well so i talked to wynn about that and they're thinking i don't think too much for him but rough idea is there's beds that are in the nursing homes right now that could take a lot of these people there's just not staff for it so if we create a new area that needs to be staffed additionally with the food requirements and all that other stuff you're you still need that staff from somewhere so you're not necessarily solving the problem isn't one of space it's one of um staff and what about the medical staff that was sent in the the emerging are the extra people here we've got well there was a national guard and there was healthcare there's 500 some healthcare people sent around the state which is going to help for sure i don't know the specifics so i know asante has received some of those and you know that's definitely going to help um there's only so much we can do and talk about within regards to specific hospital policy that you know it's just kind of beyond our purview but there's a lot we can do from just the community standpoint of raising the right awareness uh stopping the misinformation and countering it so that when people say things that are just factually inaccurate you get on that pretty quick um and then yeah the schools is the one i mean i was i called up my school um the principal today i'm let the boys know waiting here back but i'm with the mandate coming that's just gonna be you know i've heard a lot of the teachers at my school in the grade that my daughter's going into are unvaccinated anti-backs and so come october 18th is it that those teachers are gonna go to a distance learning is it that they're just gonna be laid off for a year and we're gonna bring in random substitutes like that's what i'm trying to figure out right now there's a big unknown there that um i asked the same questions uh regarding my school or my children's school i actually this is week two in medford school district they have not gone to school yet i'm planning on sending them back on tuesday because apparently if they go 10 days without being they get unenrolled and even if i call and say hey look this is what we're doing we're not leaving we're still here they have to come back so we'll put them back for a day maybe a week see how things go and but that that's that's scary you know and being unvaccinated in the same room with if it's one of those teachers and again your choice but it's also my choice to not have my children exposed to possible you know infection and just it's a pickle man it's a pickle and there's no right answer yeah um yeah like we're still talking about not letting my my 16 year old go back to high school yet like kind of waiting it out for two weeks to see what happens as far as if there's gonna be outbreaks of that kind of stuff so it's just because she's not vaccinated she is against the vaccine so which i it's in we're having that conversation of hey why you know she's a lot of influence from her church is going into her choice on the on the vaccine thing which is just it's that's a whole nother topic we get into a lot of facebook memes yeah i am dealing with the same thing with my 14 year old son who's a freshman he's uh he's not vaccinated and it's he's extremely intelligent but he uh he's uneducated on the matter so we've spent the last week trying to educate him with uh with legit sources as we feel at 14 with him being as independent as smart as he is that he should be part of that conversation yeah but it's uh it's it has been ongoing it's what i'm finding to be rough is just all the stuff that the kids have gone through the last year and a half and all the in your face covid and we're shutting you down we're taking you out of school we can't do this my daughter's at the point where she just doesn't want to hear it anymore so she doesn't want to have that conversation so that's that's kind of what we're dealing with and it's and i'm like hey you know look at all the positives of you know what happened with me personally i was in a car with jp when i had my first cove at something and he he was backstage and he was fine your grandma and grandpa totally fine because they're vaccinated and they were around me before i knew i tested positive so there's a lot there's a lot of good things that come from it it may not be a cure-all who knows it but it lessens the symptoms and it increases your chance of not catching it you know what and it it may not have worked at all right but maybe i'm immune to the thing i don't know but all i know is i was trapped in a car for eight hours with the guy who had coveted and i had the vaccine we're i mean we're sitting this close to each other yeah talking to each other breathing in each other's faces making videos a little disclaimer i had no idea that i had cobit i had it already that was it so had i known i would not have gotten in the car with jp i would have stayed home and been responsible and you hear the stories and this one was confirmed i think it was the new york times but there was a right after covet had hit here in the states there were a group of i think it was 15 people that were all staying in a ski lodge together one person went infected and within four days 11 of those 15 were infected and that was uh that was the original variant and that was pre-vaccination so it's i mean the contagious level of it and from what i was told this version you know like before with the pre i think they said it was like an r1 not a medical guy but one-to-one transmission rate and now it's like one to seven so every for every one person is infected they could possibly infect the seven people so it's uh on average that's that's those are scary numbers right yep okay sorry guys i'm going through the the questions over here um so kind of going back to the the previous interview we did with with herman do you think we should issue a state of emergency on the county level because uh according to to the county commissioners they are not going to issue the state of emergency i don't know i don't understand enough to know that it does any if it's going to do any good if it's going to help if it's just a just a label you know i don't know well that's that's the question i would have is what would the uh what's the end game there so if we were or the county commissioners were to grant you know a state of emergency for our county what's the goal of that what are you trying to do are you trying to do that to impose a shutdown at the county level versus at the state level is that why you know is that why that's in the discussion or is it a or is it just a label i think that's that requires a more in-depth conversation mm-hmm yeah it could be just you know an optics thing um herman's response was that you know the state's already got that so they don't need to do anything else um a lot of that's just the politics game herman's in a tough spot there's so many people in this county that are not just ambivalent they are very strongly anti-max anti-vax they're opposed to any government measures at all and those are the ones who are showing up to the meeting people that are trying to be responsible wear masks stay home they're not going to the wednesday commissioner meetings it's 99 people that are yelling at these guys telling them do not do these things that's what they have to go up against so when and then you've got a lot of people who are opposed to or you know our pro vaccine pro um you know stay at home pro taking majors they're you know doing a little bit of talking to these guys but a lot of them are just you know blasting on facebook saying these guys are terrible you know or writing letters to the commission or the letters to the paper saying how terrible they are but they're not getting the point across um i've spent hours with herman and uh and dan on the phone talking about this now trying to come up with um you know solutions that they could actually do that would uh move the the needle even a little bit but they're they're in a tough spot i'm going to throw a disclaimer out though you know anything that we're saying regarding herman i totally appreciate him for jumping on and having the conversation with us i every i don't have anything negative against him you know the going back and forth on facebook is stupid if if you have a question reach out have a conversation the conversation went completely different than the perception of back and forth on facebook so going forward i i have nothing against herman or any of our county commissioners i'm just trying to get answers and educate people a little bit more so i don't want anyone to take any of this conversation the wrong way thinking that we're dogging on our county commissioners or we're dogging on whatever that's that's i'm still dog on them a little bit they i was also on the phone with dan early on and like you know last year and he just there was one point i told him like damn just look these things up he's like i don't use the internet so they're not all like completely innocent they um and you know i went through and looked at all the videos of what they were you know you can just look at the recorded meetings and for the past six months prior to um you know then taking it even a little bit seriously they were making jokes about it they were comparing the sterilization equipment at the jail to stuff that the nazis used against jews uh they were they were not taking it seriously at all so yeah i'm glad that they're doing a little bit better but i'm not gonna sit here and say they've done a great job either that that would be uh false on that note i mean like yeah we can we i mean leaders are going to get more criticism than others they have a lot more power than anybody else so if we are not going to hold our commissioner's feet to the fire then i mean like i'm still hopeful that they do some good things with this and but you know back in the first part of august is when things really needed to shut down when things needed to happen when i was saying guys the dive is cast like it's like i was doing facebook posts back then saying we're cooked and it it didn't even look that bad yet but i was like just looking at the numbers and the growth we're cooked and right now we're good um and what i'm seeing too is it's it we're going to get worse in the next few weeks and then it'll it'll hit a little bit of a low and what's going to be what's frustrating is you've got that vaccine mandate that kate's putting out that is going to hit you know mid-october by then josephine county is going to probably have reached herd immunity um you know herd immunity is the goal for everything you ideally want to reach that through vaccination because of the very low risks associated with vaccination if you reach that through everybody getting covered uh covets very dangerous as you know a lot of us we've all had friends and you know people either get it and become seriously sick or i've been into a coded funeral like it's it's a a really rough way of getting to hurt immunity but we're not going to there's no possible way we're going to be revving this high for months and months there's just there's no history of that you look to india you look at all these different places that uh saw large spikes in the spike it goes up and it comes back down and then depending on how you stopped that uh spike is going to determine what happens moving forward so did you stop with vaccination did you stop it oh if you stopped with vaccination then you're just going to see a really low um tail if you stop if you didn't stop it at all then it's just going to spike and go back down it's going to stay down pretty well if you stopped it with a shutdown then that's an artificial stop and you haven't reached her immunity yet so you're going to spike you're going to come down and then at some point it's going to go back up again because you still haven't reached her immunity so it again it's a very complex complicated issue that um you know in georgetown county we're not going to get her hurt immunity with vaccines it's just not going to happen the blowback that i continue to get on a daily basis here uh seems to be that well no one saw this variant come in so if we do everything we need to now to get the numbers lower what happens to the when the next variant comes out of the variant after that and it continues to to alter its internal dna or whatever it's doing for the virus and it's i i think that's feeding a lot of the people that aren't willing to get vaccinated aren't willing to wear a mask they uh they're at that point where you know the term that i keep hearing is quality over quantity i would rather live my life the way that i want to live it and then if i die at 45 from covet or if i die at 50 from covet at least i didn't sit in my house for five years before that happened and i just i don't understand that way of thinking and maybe that's the dad in me i don't know i mean i i want to walk my daughter down the aisle and that's exactly what i was going to say you know so it's uh so i i don't understand that part of it but this is this is a grueling thing i mean our council out here we had a council an emergency session on friday we uh this coming weekend is the annual labor day festival out here in illinois valley it's our once a year thing that's put on by the lions club and there's vendors and there's tough trucks and there's a softball tournament there's a cornhole tournament and there's greasepoll and there's there's all these other small businesses that are scheduled to come in uh the money is already put out for it and so we had to have an emergency meeting as a council on friday to decide after this mandate came in place by kate whether or not we were going to allow this to happen whether we were going to alter its its course or whether we were going to just cancel it and then say sorry to those that are already invested in money so we uh after two plus hours worth of debating as a council and listening and opening up the microphone for people the community we decided to allow it but not like it's ever been done before uh there's a uh there's a shop booth where you can get vaccinated at the clinic or at the uh festival which is great um there's signings they're not selling tickets to the tough trucks to anybody that's not wearing a mask and so if you uh if you want to go sit down with leeches and watch tough trucks there'll be social distancing and mask requirement you're not getting a ticket if you're not wearing a mask and they uh they purchased i think they said 2000 mask and they have dedicated mask people that would be walking around escorting people out that aren't wearing masks and so it's uh there were a number of protocols that were put in place to hopefully make it as safe as possible but it's again it's a it was a split vote i mean it was 3-2 to uh to allow it to happen so it's it's weighing on everybody it's a tough one man like just even for like brit and concert and concerts in general i mean any gathering in general we don't know the effect of how much this is going to spread outdoors you know there's differencing difference of opinions of it spreads more so indoors than it does outdoors i've seen a lot of reports where huge outdoor concerts are having just massive super spreaders so who knows that's that's i think in part if not the biggest part is the information we do have helps but there's so much information that is still not there like factual factual information on this whole pandemic and this epidemic and and this virus there's still so many questions regarding it because we don't have solid answers um people they don't know what to think you got one side and you got the other and they're not respecting each other yeah somehow we gotta get down the middle and just you know we can still agree to disagree but we've got to work together and that's that's kind of what i wanna i'm trying to push is have a little understanding you know if if you're gonna go out wear a mask be respectful to people wearing a mask i uh i made a post before this bearing had hit i made a post because i was still you know going around the community grants pass you know medford here in cave junction and i uh you know even when there was no longer a mask mandate i always had one in my pocket and if i ever came even remotely close to somebody that was wearing a mask i put it on as respect to them and so it's uh i think it's it's one of those things where people have forgotten how to be friendly to other people and if you disagree then they're ultimately looked on as if they're uh they're lower than you or they're they're your enemy in some way it's just that division it's our entire country and it's i mean it's it's code related related it's political there's uh there is no unity here right now it's the culture i mean you look at look at japan they they've been wearing masks for years and years and years and years and years periods part of their culture no one looks up down on them they don't fight about it that's just a normal way of life and uh i've said it before i've said it so many times yes we are the land of the free we have our freedom but with that freedom comes great responsibility i hate to sound like spider-man and peter parker and his uncle and everything right here but you know what i mean you know we have the freedom it's our responsibility to protect each other in these times it's not the first time this happened but it's the first time where the world is such a smaller place because of the internet right i think conversations need to be understood a little bit better by people a lot of times you know someone says get the vaccine or get to or you know wear a mask but there's kind of three steps to a conversation first you've got to determine what are the facts like what's your foundation for understanding do you guys agree on like when i was talking to herman or dan it's like first question is what's the situation do you agree that do we agree that the hospital's full do we agree that covets causing it like do we even have a foundation to work from and then what are your goals are your goals to keep businesses open are your goals to keep the hospital completely empty you know what are you actually trying to do and then once you've got that figured out and you can both agree on that then you can talk about things that you could do to reach those goals but if you if you're talking to someone about we need to shut things down and their goal is to keep business open you're just going to be ships in the night it's not going to work right yeah i suggested too um let's set up a vaccine site wednesday or saturday sundays at the fairgrounds kind of like what they do in medford just to create more awareness and again was told that well we only had 49 people get vaccinated at the fair well of course you did you have a bunch of people at the fair that are anti-massacres anti-vaxxers that just don't care we're not i i don't i don't think that josephine county is doing enough awareness as far as advertising social media posts we're relying on the state stuff that's coming in not our own personal stuff i know they turned down the half billion dollars but they said they already had money because they weren't spending it to help um but again uh it's it's not like we're you know in vermont where everybody would get a vaccine if they knew about it we live in a place where it's just a very strong medical freedom community people uh want to make their own choices if you tell them to do something that they may have done otherwise they won't do it it's it is a unique area that we can't just say well if they knew more about the vaccines they'd take them that's uh not the vast majority of people that haven't gotten one weren't just waiting for fda approval necessarily like there's people that are and i think we've seen like a 17 jump nationwide is the latest number i've seen but locally so many people aren't going to get the vaccine until someone they know gets really sick and even then they may not it's just that strong of a personal decision for so many people here so in that case sorry when i was talking to like herman and daniel saying throw the vaccine out like yes keep advertising that but when we're talking about potential solutions to help out the current situation you can't just say well people won't take the vaccine so we're gonna do nothing there's there's other things we could do with the messaging that yeah and then herman said you know he posted that simple thing saying go to the website to learn about the crisis and he said he got roasted for that i didn't see it on his facebook page but he gets emails and calls from all sorts of people and people thought that was too much so again it would just it is a uh being a leader in josephine county with all the different areas that are so different um it's a very tough job well locally and nationally i i just don't think people like being told what to do you know it's our culture i don't i hate it you know i hate when some but i don't look at it i didn't look at the vaccine as something because i got it before it was mandated people hate being told what to do and it's you know i i feel like there is a massive backlash locally when it comes to the vaccine and the mask wearing because it's coming down the ladder like it's something that's that's being forced upon you and it's uh they're no longer being given that choice you know it's the state workers healthcare teachers um you know those those are the people that we are going to be relying on the most going forward and now you're telling them they don't have a say and though my personal opinion may be that they need to get vaccinated that is my personal opinion i'm vaccinated but i'm not going to sit there and tell them they have to get vaccinated that's not my job that's uh that's not what any of us should be doing and when you throw that mandate word around we are mandating that max you know vaccines are going to be mandatory and we're going to mandate that mass are going to be worn people like to uh like to buck the system and that created an avenue for them to do so yeah i think mandating it was probably the worst thing the governor could have done i think that's going to be more catastrophic than people not getting the vaccine just because it's going to hurt the health care system or the school system yeah absolutely like bradley mentioned earlier if you have if you hadn't didn't mandate it didn't tell someone that they had to do it it may be just strongly recommended through media and all the outlets and tv and whatnot you know news conferences and gave them the choice i bet you are percentages of vaccinated people would have been higher because again they weren't told what to do and while that being made me childish and stubborn uh and not necessarily smart yeah that's my stance i i agree i'm vaccinated throwing it out there i was one of those that i wouldn't say i was anti-vaxxed by any means but i was very skeptical and wanted to get you know i wanted to see how time went et cetera et cetera but again i got kids and i got a woman who is very immune compromised and there was no question after that you know it is my responsibility and my duty to do what i can to protect those around me especially my family and then after that it was no question whatsoever and i just wish more people would think that way my wife being a nurse in the hospital um she you know pregnant during the pandemic and so we talked to our ob gyn and said should she get this you know very early on you know when the healthcare workers could get it for no one else he's like yeah absolutely the everything looks great we had our honestly the least difficult baby ever like you know we're very short labor left the next day uh compared to our first daughter who we had to go to the nicu for 10 days uh it was a breeze and perfectly healthy sleeps great healthy i mean just no problems again totally anecdotal but there's a lot of people that like you know being me i'm an engineer i kind of hate all that anecdotal stuff because it's so worthless honestly like in the science grand scheme of things but stories are what a lot of people who haven't gotten vaccinated yet are going off like well i heard this i heard that so the more stories we can tell of i got vaccinated and i got a sore arm for a day and i took a nap and i was fine i i'm uh what five i got back in april and it was no problem um i've been around people who had coveted and i still don't have it doing great like those kind of stories are so boring and mundane that you don't hear them whereas like well i had a friend who got vaccinated and died the next day the one and a thousand the one and one thousand one in uh yeah 100 well one for death like the confirmed deaths from the kovic shots is like three from the johnson and johnson and yeah bear says a lot but when you vaccinate uh 200 plus million people there's a lot of correlation and so those are the stories that people are going to pick up on and say well this was a correlation so it means it was caused and they're going to get all up in it but the more stories we can tell of just the mundane yeah i got vaccinated i'm fine those are i think valuable at this point in the game we had our daughter in april of 2020 c-section um no vaccine at the time it was it was different our fourth and final kid and it was unlike any uh any of the others um family couldn't be there it was it was tough but it's uh i got vaccinated in february my wife went with me she had qualified to get it and uh our medical provider at the time said i suggested jessie get it and i suggest that she suggested my wife didn't my wife at the time still is breastfeeding and in april that there just wasn't enough information on you know the two and we got a call three weeks ago from the same medical provider saying hey research has been done you're good to go and she got her first shot two weeks ago so it's you know trusting the right people asking the right questions contacting health care professionals and letting them guide you on a health decision it's way better than you know pulling your facts off of a meme right yeah i think that was probably that it doesn't have the answers you said too was check there is a reddit subreddit covet 19. uh if you that's all medical papers i search that all the time so that's the bread it's great so yeah you know my my my vaccine thing was just talking to every guest that we've had on and getting you know the ones that we're willing to talk about and get their perspective on it just people of different walks of life different parts of the country different doctors i've talked to because i i was totally against it i was you know on the fence of is coveted real is this the government thing is this you what what is this wait are they trying to take control of us you know what's going on all the conspiracy crap and you know after tons of research and just thinking about i got vaccinated i'm super happy i did um and there's you know no issues i did the johnson and johnson no issues at all i'm still alive i haven't turned into a zombie so yeah there's that yeah yeah yeah exactly so yeah i think a lot of i think a lot of that stems from the panic that happened early on you know what i'm talking about the government local and nationally they panicked oh yeah they you know they were just as clueless as everyone else right and it's uh i think the the rate that they panicked has been something that has driven where we are now it's uh if they wouldn't you know but i understand why i understand why they shut down i understand the limitations that were being put on but like brad had said you know he they came out a little hot and it's uh i i think that that that as much as anything is why people are are going against it currently well and just to clarify that i honestly think like early on they needed to be even hotter like i was i called up dandy young i'm like dan everything's shut down anyways just put a sheriff at the exit say get your gas and leave if you don't live here we're all just gonna take it really chill for a little bit but not indefinitely you need to do that until you get testing and as soon as you have testing that says look we don't have covert here open everything up and just run entirely normally you know mask and social distance as you can run entirely normally um and you know they've kind of pushed back like well you know kate put shut us down for all these things if we had taken it very seriously and when any situation pops up that says you know the kobe drives again we take that seriously we don't have to abdicate power to the state because the state can look at us and say hey you're taking this seriously you do you that's kind of what we needed to do then i mean i was saying shut everything down in march and by april i was saying open everything up that's the quick turnaround we should not have stayed shut down through the summer when there was very little covet spreading it just makes no sense it just turns people off well now that we have it everywhere the time to shut down was august 1st right well and that's that was my point is you know going through the summer panicking going heavy with no answers you know there was there was nobody giving us any any information besides the fact that we're in a state of emergency and you're working from home collecting unemployment and not going out to eat you know that's that's what we were told there were there were no other answers besides that yeah the other thing to look at too is when the extra unemployment money runs out next month or this month what happens when all those people go back to work and they're working through being six they've got a fight or flight mentality now of oh my gosh i got to make this money and you know now you've got where i don't think we're going to have enough of a lull or enough hurt immunity yet to over the next two to three weeks to have all these people that are going to get back in the workplace going to work sick and then i i feel like we're going to have another spike in like november you know the the thing about the unemployment though is you look at oregon's numbers we're like at five some percent it's not that high like it's not like we're having 10 percent and everyone's just sitting on the government goal there's not a ton of people on unemployment right now so my question which i haven't gotten good numbers on how many people are medically unable to work right now due to covid or whatever how you know we've got all the problems with we're not able to put people into the um the long term living you know the care facilities is that is that because the census is high or is it because the staffing is low or both um you know we have a lot of people that got coveted got long covered that you know struggled to walk upstairs now i'm not saying that to everybody that's coveted but it is a considerable number i just i don't see the unemployment number alone causing the insane shortage we have right now i feel like there's increased demand um there's a lot of complicated factors more than just people are sitting at home on kate's dime paradigm yeah it's it's a little strange i mean it's you know every restaurant i i went to go pick up some food last night at a restaurant in grants pass and the only people working were the owners it was the husband and wife and the people in there were like extremely rude which was a video i posted earlier today but it's it's just like man like i i don't i just i don't get where is everybody it's like you know that every restaurant is short staffed it seems like every store walmart is extremely short staffed of there's nobody to stock shelves where is everybody right and where granted a good portion of those were or are collecting unemployment but why haven't they returned yet yeah when there's more workers there's more workers now in oregon than there were at the start of the pandemic like there's more people working where like you know i've seen a lot of people say that they're at better jobs for themselves you know there's a lot more jobs in the distribution like the delivery networks um you know more people doing working for amazon different things like are they doing that or did them work from home are there um i've seen a lot of people say that they just re-evaluated what they want to do with their lives and they don't want to work in fast food because you get terrible paid terrible hours and so they found jobs elsewhere that would be a really interesting deep dive from a reporter where they don't just take the easy answer of oh everyone's on employment like no where actually are people take a sample of you know 100 people just randomly that they're able to call up and say what's your current status why are you working are you not working are you working the same job did you go to a different job what's the story that's such an unknown that i feel too many people just take the easy answer of oh they're just sitting on unemployment and i just don't think that's the case interesting maybe and that and i mean it's a good point i've only seen it really in uh retail and food and not all retail you know the big the big stores you know the walmarts um and and anything fast food which by the way i'm not trying to eat as much anymore but uh uh yeah it's that's where i see where it's hit but anywhere else i tend to go there's there's people working at going to the doctor's office this morning they're doing fine on the hospital they're struggling to get nurses and doctors and you know a lot of that's burnout a lot of that i mean people haven't quit yet for the vaccine mandate so it's not like that's caused yet um yeah that is that is something that one of the the big media outlets really needs to dive into where are the people on the uh the state mandate that's coming down for vaccines with nurses and state workers i mean you know from dhs to nurses in the hospital it's going to be interesting and scary to see what's going to happen when that deadline hits i've got a very close friend who uh who works for the state and she was anti-vaccine she already had covert so she got covered it didn't affect her greatly her entire family did she uh she got through relatively easily considering but she uh she didn't want to get the vaccine even after having coveted and she had she has decided to get the vaccine because the alternative is to not be able to support her family um but it's you know they're that's not going to be the case for everybody there's there's going to be a drop-off in an industry that's already short-handed that's why i've said what kate could do should do is the whole antibody testing which even that isn't perfect because buyers can still get around that but if she were to say to healthcare workers you know anyone that is subject to the mandate who hasn't been vaccinated but thinks that they may have already had covid submit to antibody testing within two weeks the the reason why she hasn't done the antibody testing yet is because it could lead to coped parties where people like hey i'm just gonna get covered the natural way and then one percent of those people die you don't want to do that but um to get the people who already have had kobit and don't necessarily need the vaccine even though the vaccine would help them additionally it may be sufficient to just do that we could keep a lot of workers who cool you've got the antibodies you get a free pass we're just going to be in such a crisis as scary as a situation as it might be to where people do the covet party thing and try to get the natural immunity from the from the antibodies that that can't be your reasoning to not do it you know it's i i think the pros of allowing antibody testing for those people if if that's what's needed to keep nurses and doctors in the hospital and not doctors nurses or nurses doctors are vaccinated right so but it's uh nurses other other providers to the state if that's what it's going to take to keep those people in that infrastructure that is desperately needed why are we not already doing that you know that's that's the question i would have mm-hmm good question that's a really good question have you even gotten through that list of questions man no we're getting there though so i'm gonna ask a tough one for you guys um what do you guys think about the sheriff's dance that he issued on the mask mandate and not enforcing pontificating kate didn't ask him to do anything osha does stuff he he hasn't been asked to do anything so he has a lot of people saying you need to put out a letter to say that you're going to do this it was just posturing it means nothing there was nothing he was asked to do and he lives in a community that wanted him to say that so he did that's my that's my take i agree completely it's uh it's not something the way that the mandate was set down it's not something that falls under his jurisdiction to uh to enforce and so he uh i feel like he did the letter to slow the calls down because i know there were a lot of calls and emails on what is the sheriff's stance but i legally he doesn't have one there and so it you know that one was an easy answer for me all right so such a great word all right nick next so yeah so to follow up with that one how do you propose our local businesses work with the mask mandate as osha will be finding them if they were to go in and check which i personally have seen for my previous job we did get fined because a customer called and said one of the other customers was not wearing a mask oh she showed up a couple hours later and gave us a fine because they actually found another customer not wearing a mask and we weren't enforcing it because we were afraid like it was seriously people were being mean we've got threatened we were going to get shot like there's how how do you enforce that how how is that even so for me you know i'm a small business owner i share a pretty large-sized office with uh another gentleman that does a lot of the same stuff that i do we uh we work well together but we we decided early on that we were gonna switch to an appointment only and mandate mass be worn when they come in to uh to prevent that and so our front door stays locked and they come in we we don't offer a walk-in service currently and so you can get a hold of us via phone via email to the website to chat there there are enough ways in today's day and age to communicate without walking in and as sad as it is to say if we lose those two or three customers that refuse to wear the mask for my family i'm okay with that and so it's uh that's that's how i handle it okay and i'm 99 of my business is over the phone online i i get maybe five people in my shop in a week even though i'm right downtown um so i mean i'm in a unique position where just i've got one employee like it's not the same but there's a lot of other businesses locally that it's it's frustrating when the government wants something to happen and they push the blame onto the business um where you know like local businesses local dentist offices they're going to have to let people go because of the mandate even though it's the government causing it they're going to be taking the blame from the people who like why why are you firing me you know they're passing the buck um i think either you know mandated across the board and you know fine individuals rather than businesses um it's just a tough spot i mean you wish people would take personal responsibility and just do the right thing but for me they don't yeah i don't agree with osha finding any establishment for what a customer is doing i don't feel like that's right if the employees are following the mandate and they're masked up and they're social distancing and they're sanitizing the way for osha to levy a fine for an individual a patron that chooses to come in that store or that business and and operate i don't feel is right i mean there are people that get tickets for jaywalking all the time right and so it's uh i'm not saying ticket the people that are not coming in but finding the establishment when the employees are doing what they're supposed to be doing is not right i agree yeah like walmart's like the hardest one i was i actually had to go get milk for the baby the other night and noticed a younger guy with a gun on his hip arguing with the greeter at walmart about the mask and she was just like in tears and i'm like man this is ridiculous you know you're being asked to do something that it's it's impossible to enforce in this town right and it's just it's heartbreaking just to see this nice older lady just getting totally belittled by some little punk with just thinks he knows everything well i don't think it's our town i think that this is a national problem i uh i drove my son my oldest son's in the army and he got stationed uh in maryland and his car was here so we did a cross-country trip about a month ago to get him moved there and so it's i got to see a lot of the country that i've never seen and it's it's a lot like it is here everywhere and so you you have those believers you have those non-believers and it's it's pretty obvious to tell which side of the line that they're on when you see and i know local business uh owner out in ivy actually who just got his booster shot because he is dealing with so many people on a day-to-day basis he just wanted to have every layer of protection he possibly could yeah yeah sign me up when's my booster available come on all right i called yesterday two months anymore nick um no that's that's actually it that's all the that's we we covered everything so we could always do a fast five with these guys real quick to mellow out the mood i didn't come up with a fast five okay i'll do it you guys are you guys ready for a little conversation yeah you're stuck on an island somehow and there's all the food you can ever eat but you can only take one dvd because somehow there's electricity and a tv on this island what movie or tv show are you bringing uh survivor man easy well and maybe figure a way to get off that island too yeah less drought lives locally all right what about you jesse that one's easy friends yeah see you my lady would get along just fine and normally there's five of those questions but where i think i want to save those for when you guys we have you on dad cast and talk about being dads jesse brad business owner councilman uh thank you so much for uh taking time out of your day i guess now is the time is there anything else you would like to add before we uh we shut this one down for the day actually i got one more just in closing brad jesse what would you suggest our fellow citizens do to stay safe get through this next few weeks that's that's my last question i'd say hunker down just visit with as few people as possible stay away from crowds stay away from you know watch church online um just sit tight for a little while things don't do anything that's gonna break your leg you know don't do some extreme sports stuff right now um just try as seriously as you ever took kovid if you ever took it seriously take it that seriously right now if you live in josephine county or jackson county it's it's just it's really really bad out there right now mine would be to uh talk to your care providers make educated decisions easy peasy and and and to finish this my my thoughts i don't get why people are so hesitant to hunker down to stay at home man i got video games i've got a giant tv with everything in the world i could possibly watch i've got this amazing computer in front of me with the world's information at my fingertips my kids are home with me i can order food delivered to me i don't need to go to the grocery store it it ain't that bad you guys you want to go outside fine step out your front lawn do some jogging do some jumping jacks you can go outside just two three weeks man that's all we're asking it's not that bad it isn't that bad we've done it before you can do it again right exactly all right gentlemen you guys have been amazing thank you so much for your time today um who everyone watching this video thank you of course for uh checking it out if you're uh watching on the youtube platform please subscribe like comment hit the bell all that good stuff um and we will see you on another episode a more lighthearted i know yes a more lighthearted i messed that up last time a more lighthearted episode of dad cast is coming real soon gentlemen thank you have a kick ass rest your day and thanks for coming on dad cast thanks you
2021-09-07 02:12
