Latest notes from the Platte County Health Department, as Platte County moves into a mandatory mask order that takes effect Thursday, July 16.
*In the last two weeks, the number of Platte County residents testing positive for COVID-19 has been growing at a high rate of speed. In the past week, the number has grown by 37. In the past two weeks it has grown by 59.
*Perhaps more importantly, the positivity rate (percentage of folks taking the test whose result was positive) is up to 17.29 percent. And that’s with testing of people with symptoms AND people with no symptoms.
*New info: Due to a shortage of tests, the testing effective this week has become limited to only people showing symptoms, it was announced at a meeting of the Platte County Health Department Board of Trustees Tuesday night.
“The demand for testing is so great we can’t handle it now. Now we are moving back to a person has to have symptoms for testing,”said Dan Luebbert, deputy director. But the results and percentages discussed above were for anyone getting tested, not just people getting symptoms.
*Asked “where are the positives coming from, is it day cares, is it schools, certain types of events?” the director and assistant director answered this way:
“It’s clearly spreading throughout the community in about any setting you an imagine,” said Dan Luebbert, deputy director, responded, and that outlook was backed up by Mary Jo Vernon, director. “There was a graduation party we had positives from, several teachers in a day care in Platte City, etc.” she said.
Platte County Presiding Commissioner Ron Schieber, early in May during the ongoing pandemic: “Our businesses are hurting. Our families are hurting.”
Platte County Presiding Commissioner Ron Schieber, during the ongoing pandemic a bit later in May: “Dear businesses and families, here are two sales taxes we would like you to approve.”
The timing seems odd and less than ideal.
Those sales tax questions are coming up on the Tuesday, Aug. 4 ballot, by the way. If you haven’t yet marked your calendar for voting, go ahead and do that now.
I’m old enough to remember when Ron Schieber said “no new taxes.”
Since that time he has proposed three new taxes.
I guess if you’re going to break a campaign promise, might as well do it repeatedly and with vigor.
In some informal Between the Lines discussions with potential voters, the quarter cent county parks tax proposal is getting mostly positive reviews.
In some informal Between the Lines discussions with potential voters, the county commission’s personal favorite–the quarter cent sales tax for law enforcement–is having some trust issues.
Speaking of trust issues, county commissioner Dagmar Wood, who has been anti-everything the Platte County Health Department has done in response to the virus and is now vocally anti-mask, had one of her “the virus is no big deal” type posts on Facebook marked as “false” by an independent panel of fact-checkers over the weekend.
Her post stayed up for a couple days with the “false” marking before being removed, either by Facebook or by Wood herself. Of course by that time people all over Platte County had taken a screen shot of the embarrassing post for an elected official. This is the same elected official who earlier in the pandemic had a couple of posts giving tacit approval to violating health orders.
It seems odd that the same county commissioner who last year basically indicated a preference for anyone with an outstanding traffic ticket to be rounded up and sent to jail is so anti-everything about steps to protect public health during a pandemic.
These are weird times, my friend.
Two of the last three Wednesday mornings the power has been out in downtown Platte City. It’s never good for any business to be without power but its in particular not good for, let’s say for example, a newspaper to be without electricity on the morning it is heading to press. Or try running a bakery/café without electricity, in particular in the morning hours when the bakery/café does the majority of its production/business.
Can’t tell you the specific reasons for the outages, but it might be time for some upgrades to your system, Evergy. If every rainstorm or any wind stronger than a gentle breeze is knocking out power, it’s time for action other than an “oops, sorry that happened, guys.”
Clown shows are entertaining for a while but even they get old with time.
(Clown shows are entertaining until something knocks out the power at deadline. Get more from Foley on Twitter @ivanfoley and on Landmark Live at plattecountylandmark.com)