{"id":64999,"date":"2020-11-05T21:30:00","date_gmt":"2020-11-06T06:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/governor-urges-alaskans-to-change-behavior-amid-rising-case-counts\/"},"modified":"2020-11-06T20:50:25","modified_gmt":"2020-11-07T05:50:25","slug":"governor-urges-alaskans-to-change-behavior-amid-rising-case-counts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/governor-urges-alaskans-to-change-behavior-amid-rising-case-counts\/","title":{"rendered":"Governor urges Alaskans to change behavior amid rising case counts"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Gov. Mike Dunleavy again urged Alaskans to change their behavior to limit the spread of COVID-19.<\/p>\n<p>In a Friday evening news conference, Dunleavy cited the effects COVID-19 spread could have and is having on members of the military, health care professionals, law enforcement officers, firefighters among others as a reason people should be doing things like washing their hands regularly, maintaining 6 feet of space from one another, conducting business remotely when possible and wearing a mask when social distancing is difficult or inside a public space.<\/p>\n<p>He said that in light of daily case counts that routinely rise above 300 and on Friday surpassed 500, the math does not work out in the state&rsquo;s favor if nothing is changed, and that will mean greater case counts among emergency responders, health care workers and others.<\/p>\n<p><ins>[<a href=\"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/governor-urges-alaskans-to-wear-masks\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Governor urges Alaskans to wear masks<\/a>]<\/ins><\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s going to start to infect our law enforcement in higher numbers,&rdquo; Dunleavy said. It&rsquo;s going to start to infect our firefighters in higher numbers, it&rsquo;s going to start to infect our military in higher numbers. It&rsquo;s going to start to infect more and more of us no matter what role we play, what job we have, where we&rsquo;re at.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>That, he said, would strain the state&rsquo;s health care system.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;We may end up soon with a situation where those people who are supposed to be caring for people in those hospital beds are actually in those hospital bed,&rdquo; Dunleavy said. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not saying this to worry people, I&rsquo;m not saying this to scare people. It&rsquo;s a bit of a problem that we can work on together.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" id=\"ls_embed_1604724070\" src=\"https:\/\/livestream.com\/accounts\/11909061\/events\/9388624\/videos\/213021759\/player?width=640&#038;height=360&#038;enableInfo=true&#038;defaultDrawer=&#038;autoPlay=true&#038;mute=false\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" allowfullscreen> <\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Dunleavy said he was not issuing a hunker-down order or mandates requiring masks or the eventual COVID-19 vaccine. Instead, he asked Alaskans to behave responsibly and compared the requested behavioral changes to driving carefully on a highway in the winter.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s prudent to drive to conditions,&rdquo; Dunleavy said. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s prudent to slow down a little bit.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>He said someone may be a young person and in good shape and thus less likely to become seriously ill or die due to COVID-19, but people who contract the contagious illness can infect others, and they may be more vulnerable.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;There&rsquo;s other people on the road,&rdquo; Dunleavy said.<\/p>\n<p>He acknowledged that could be difficult amid the impending holiday season.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;The virus doesn&rsquo;t care what month it is, what day it is, if there&rsquo;s going to be a holiday,&rdquo; Dunleavy said.<\/p>\n<p>He said he wasn&rsquo;t asking Alaskans to have &ldquo;sad holidays&rdquo; but different holidays &ldquo;just for this year.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m asking it because we&rsquo;ve got to slow this down,&rdquo; Dunleavy said. &ldquo;If we start to see 600 cases, 700 cases, 800 cases on a daily level, the mathematics is clearly going to demonstrate that we will overwhelm our hospital systems.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p><em>&#8226; Contact Ben Hohenstatt at (907)308-4895 or bhohenstatt@juneauempire.com. Follow him on Twitter at @BenHohenstatt<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>He cited virus&rsquo; impacts on the military and emergency responders. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":474,"featured_media":65000,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":9,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,4],"tags":[583,230],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-64999","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-home","category-news","tag-home","tag-state-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64999","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/474"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64999"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64999\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65000"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64999"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64999"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64999"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=64999"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}