Ricketts brief reporters on the States Coronavirus response monday. He gave an update current case numbers and on the more than 975 hospitalizations. This runs just under an hour. Gov. Ricketts good morning, everybody. Thanks for joining us on the states response to the pandemic. As usual, we will start off by reminding people that with the virus still in our commute, we need everybody to please continue to practice all the tools we gave you, follow our rules to be able to slower slow the spread of the virus. That means we need to keep that six foot of distance between you and other people when we wax you you are in public, and other people when you are in public. Secondsr hands for 20 at a time to kill the virus. Stay home when you are sick. Thats a big deal. I note nebraskans love to work and they want to get back at it. But if youve got any symptoms, you need to stayathome. Please go get tested, but dont go into work if youve got any symptoms. Of course that should be true even if you test negative for coronavirus. You dont want to give the flu to someone else. We need people to follow that rule about staying home when you are sick. When you go to the store, go once a week, go by yourself. ,lease avoid the three cs crowded spaces, confined places and close contact. Place,re in a crowded confined space or close contact, thats when you give the virus an opportunity to spread. So please continue to follow all the rules with regard to how we slow the spread of the virus. And then of course, task test nebraska is an option available for all raskins. Weve delivered 448,000 tests through test nebraska. Turnaround time is 2448 hours im so you can get that turned around in a relatively quick manner. The testingeased schedule slots so that you can get tested more regularly if you want. And of course with the holiday coming up, its always a great opportunity so we planned for that. All the things we do or about making sure we slow down the spread of the virus and preserve our hospital beds. Times what than four it was in the hospital on october 1. So we need to be able to slow them down. Right now weve got 30 of hospital beds available. 20 5 of icu beds are available and 70 of ventilators. As you know, about a week and a half ago, i published a plan that shows that if we hit 25 of our hospital beds being taken up with coronavirus patients, we are going to go into the red category and there will be additional restrictions. We will limit indoor gatherings to 10 people or less. We will limit outdoor gatherings to a five people or less. Bars will only be able to provide takeout, deliver, or drivethru. Restaurants will have limited hours, 5 00 a. M. To 9 00 p. M. So these are some of the restrictions we are looking at, if patients at hospitals with coronavirus go above the 25 threshold. So again, folks, please do your part about slowing things down. Weve got thanksgiving coming up on thursday. Please reduce the size of your thanksgiving holiday gatherings. We are doing that in my family. Smaller groups will make it less likely the virus spreads. Fewer groups mean fewer opportunities for the virus to spread. So please avoid that. Apparently wednesday night is a big night to go out to bars. Its actually the biggest night in nebraska for duis. Please, folks, the best thing to do is actually dont go out to bars on wednesday night. Bars are a place where you get crowded bars come youre going to have the crowded spaces, confined places, and close contact. So the best option would be to stay home. If your goal if you are going to go out, find a patio with an outdoor area and drink outside. That will reduce the virus spread. Especially for thanksgiving, you dont want to pick it up and then go take it to grandma and grandpa. And please, also do not drink and drive, especially in this , uberover and lyft and lyft. So do a good job aborting getting coronavirus and dont have an accident because of drinking and driving. We have a lot coming up this week with regard to the holidays. Please remember weve got the virus out there and please take steps to change this Holiday Season because of the pandemic. Today is also our National Public health thank you day. So this is a national day that we recognize all the folks who work in Public Health. Thats from contact tracers through our doctors and nurses. Everybody in Public Health has been working around the clock these past eight or nine months to be able to keep people healthy here in nebraska. So its a great opportunity to be able to say thank you to all those officials. Again,to remind people especially when it comes contact tracers and local Public Health people but theyre just doing their jobs and reaching out to you to tell you to isolate or quarantine if youve been exposed. It will be a great opportunity today to say thank you because it is Public Health thank you day. Be lighting up the capital in blue. Its to show our support to all the Public Health folks. So please say thank you to them. Whether its a contact tracer who gives you a call, or a doctor or nurse. Please tell them thank you. We want to remind them that we appreciate and support them. Ive got our chief medical officer in the state to come and say a few words about that as well. Thank you, governor. As the governor mention, Public Health professionals have played a Critical Role in this period of time and every day in the health of all nebraskans. Nonstop ton working protect us, to slow the spread of the virus during this pandemic. This has gone on now since january of this year. Start byd like to giving a heartfelt thanks to our own department of health and Human ServicesPublic Health team. Not only for their efforts during the covid19 response in all the team members responsible for that, but also for the other employees that have been doing the daytoday work to ensure that we have clean air and safe water, less disease, provide say providers and facilities, Healthy Schools and workplaces, and our communities are safe. We also have on our Team Programs like the tobacco free nebraska, women infant and Childrens Program, newborn screening, injury prevention, and our vaccine for Childrens Program being run on a daily basis. In team has done a great job keeping these programs running like normal, despite the pandemic. Second, i want to thank all our local Public Health departments. Simply put, we couldnt do our work without them. They are our most valuable partners, and weve spent several decades now working together. Some people might not know this, but every county in nebraska is covered by local Public Health department. This marks 20 years now that this has been taking place. Making available Public Health at the very local level. Ive mentioned before that our Health Care Worker staff is becoming fatigued both physically and mentally. I think the same for our Public HealthDepartment Staff and directors. They have been at this now since january, tirelessly, little if no time off and they deserve our thanks today. They are the cornerstone of our Public Health efforts. They work with the schools, with the hospitals, with local businesses. They are advocates for you and your community. As theo like to thank, governor mentioned, our Health Care Professionals who continue to provide this excellent care that we are receiving due to the pandemic. Today is our, opportunity to show our appreciation and say thank you, if you get a call or run into a Public Health professional or Health Care Worker. You are our heroes, but we need to do more. We need to support them in our actions. Need to save lives by reducing the transmission of the virus. We need to limit our persontoperson interaction, wear our mask, watch or distance, wash your hands, and avoid crowded places, and other confined spaces. Livings no doubt we are in extremely challenging times. Ur cases continue to increase our hospitalizations continue to increase. And straining our state and local resources and workforces. 2019,ike the flooding of we must pull together and help each other. Will shapew weeks the course of our pandemic history in nebraska. Your decisions in how and when you gather with friends and family and in the community will determine whether our hospitals and our local Health Departments will become overwhelmed. Our local Health Departments are counting on you. Our Health Care Providers are counting on you, and your loved ones are counting on you. Dont let them down. This is the time again to pull together, care for each other, and protect one another as best we can. Again, thank you to everyone in Public Health, and thank you, governor, for allowing me to speak today on their behalf. Gov. Walz great, thank you very much. I appreciate it. One of the things that we have done is bring in coronavirus survivors to be able start to be able to talk about their experience. Coronaviruswho get have very mild symptoms. But we know it can severely impact some people. ,o we want people to know that and weve heard from some of our past speakers, that if you get this virus, you can be one of those people that is impacted. Can have those severe symptoms and also other effects. Today we have tyler thompson, a teacher who is going to join us by zoom to talk about an experience he had just a few weeks ago with regard to coronavirus, and still has some of those lingering symptoms. That, there we go. Governor, thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today and to share my story. Within the last couple of weeks, i joined a new fraternity. I joined thousands of other nebraskans whove tested positive for covid19. I symptoms began right around halloween. I was at school, i felt like i was catching a head cold, like i do every fall. I worked with hundreds of teenagers a day, so i just figured i had caught a bug. And it became apparent i had not i lost my sense of a schedule to test and found out i was positive, and did my part to stay home and make sure i didnt pass the virus on to anyone else. It has been almost three weeks since i was ill. I have been back at work after being cleared by the Public Health district. Ive been back in the classroom for two weeks. Even though i am recovered, i still battle with some fatigue and random headaches and a niggling cough that just pops up at random times if i push if i push myself a little too much or im going up a flight of stairs to fast. So i definitely understand in a dirt very different way than i did three weeks ago that the virus affects everyone differently. And its something thats very serious, and it requires our vigilance. The county where i live is one of the hardest hits hardest hit parts of the state. I just looked this morning, i think we have around 1800 active cases. So it is so important that we continue to be vigilant, that we wear our mask, we wash our hands, we watch our distance, not being in crowds. Lots of people staying home when we dont feel well. I think it is good that i can speak to the fact that as a young person, as a teacher of high school students, of teenagers, i see that people my age, teenagers, we tend to be kind of shortsighted. We think that maybe the virus wont affect us or we dont need to be as careful as people that would be identified as a vulnerable population, but thats just not true. One of my very good friends is 34 and hes been in the hospital for two weeks at southeastern nebraska. So does require us to take this very seriously and to protect the people around us who are the most vulnerable. As you mentioned, i am a teacher in public schools, and im navigating like teachers all across the state and the country. This new reality of teaching in person and teaching online. While it isful, but challenging and at times frustrating, it is necessary work. Besttudents deserve the education possible, whether we are in a pandemic or not. Thankfully, i work in a district where we mandate masks. Levelam at the district made sure that teachers and students are protected, and we appreciate that. I think it is incumbent upon all of us to keep working to make particularly only in the field of education, our students continue to be able to receive the education that they the, and also to receive social component of education being with friends and having those relationships establish with their peers and with their teachers also we protect their health and our own health as well. Hard. N 2020 is but it is our shared reality, our shared burden, and we all need to be doing our part. I understand that now, i think more than ever. And i was always someone who is mask i would wear my even in stores where it was not mandated. And yet i still caught the virus. So it is so important that we do what we can to protect one another. I returned yesterday from colorado. I spend the weekend there and as i crossed the state line back into nebraska, i had a chance to see the state sign that greets visitors when they come into the state. Is this his life. We have good people who do the right thing. They look out for their neighbors. And i think even now, its more important than ever before that we continue to do our part for the life in nebraska to be good forever. So governor ricketts, thank you for this opportunity to draw two join you and share my story, and i will turn it back over to you. Gov. Ricketts thank you very much mentioned doing double duty with in classroom teaching as well as teaching remotely as well. So we really appreciate all the work that our teachers have been doing to make sure that all our young people are continuing to withce academically, and all the things the School Brings with association to mental health, physical activity in schools. So thank you for all you are doing as a teacher. We appreciate it. Talkight, next, we will about another program that helps our young people out. This is jobs for americas grads. This is a program that has been around for quite a while. We Just Launched it here in nebraska in january of 2019. The initial program we launched in 2019 was in conjunction with iowa, which had an existing program, so they were able to help us out to get ours started here. Now we are taking the next step in becoming an official affiliate with our own affiliate staff here in nebraska. Jobs for americas grads really targets kids that we think may be at risk with regard to their academic progress, and how they may do after they graduate from high school. So its a program, a class that will help them. Sometimes visitors will get involved to help mentor them. It will do all sorts of things for these young people. It will help them learn to write a resume, how to do a job interview, abruptly dress, answered the phone, shake someones hand. Learning. Ctbased basically it helps them to Work Together as a team so they can be successful after they graduate. Right now it is serving 250 students here in the state of nebraska. Nebraskain some of our cities, and we look forward to continuing to expand that. Weve had a Great Success rate with that so far. 92 Graduation Rate and success rate. Thats defined by that young person after they graduate, they either have a job parttime or fulltime, or they are pursuing their education. Inare excited that starting 2021, we will be expanding to all public schools. Well start off with brian middle school in munro and in the fall of 2021, the enron high school and benton high school. As i said, this program would not be possible if it wasnt for our helpers. Matt is now the Senior Vice President for Community Impact and analytics. So we appreciate you being here to talk about the united way role in helping us become an official affiliate. That, ted smith is the National President for jobs for americas grads. So with that, i will call you up. Thank you,like to governor ricketts, for your leadership and support. The jobs for americas graduate work program in nebraska. I like to thank the team at the department of labor for their Strong Partnership and guidance in successfully transitioning and implementing the program here in nebraska. Im pleased to have both the governors and the commissioners support to establish job growth for americas graduates. Affiliate is the member and operates accredited program in eight locations. We are excited to report turning the program has about 250 students in the following schools. York high school and two locations in fremont, the high school and middle school. We are really grateful for the support at each of these locations. We are seeing great momentum and interest. We have a total of eight. All have done a great job with classes in programming in the schools in pandemic conditions. Up two plans to bring additional locations this. Anuary this is a program that sees results. It is a program that extends help to students who have experienced significant barriers to be sick sense to being successful at school. To run the risk of not graduating. Afterwardsmonths ensuring they have sustainable unemployment, and or furthering their education which will lead to a career. This is accomplished through supportive classroom settings that focus on practical life skills and projectbased learning approach. The 2020 senior Graduation Rate was 98 , and will be 100 when the final student crosses the finish line this december. We also had goals around employment after graduation, fulltime jobs leading to a career, and post secondary education. Goals for students around school attendance, being on track to graduate, reducing the number of office referrals, and improving improving their grade point average. This model was successful for more than 40 years. It currently serves about 76,000 states. In 39 honored for this official state affiliate. Id like to thank governor ricketts and the commissioner for their leadership and strong support of the program. Now i will turn it over to ken smith for a few remarks. You,e been looking for governor, for a long time. On behalf of our National Board of directors which includes 14 direct governors, thank you. We know from our 40 years of its been written to try something new. Governor, you decided to take that risk taste on results youve heard about from others. I also want to thank you for being so personally involved, checking in and meeting with the students, talking with the staff, teachers, and employers, to be sure that this was right for nebraska. Get 100 Graduation Rates, 86 are in fulltime jobs, i know you know this, but may 31, the highest Unemployment Rate in the country was among 1819yearolds. Not if you were in jag. We are doing something fulltime, as you said. Thats when so many young people would either be in school or be in jobs. So we are very excited about these results, special thanks to the commissioner and his team. He did more Due Diligence before he began talking to you about it. They have been so helpful with both the funding and other support. Our special thanks to matt and his team at the united way. Having that kind of private surer leadership to make this community and the nonprofit organizations across the state will be invaluable as we expand the rights of the program. None of us knew this, of course, but our timing could not have been better. If we are in the right place at. He right time there was a great choice of bringing in jim weber for his many years of experience with ja g in iowa. You got a real experience, seasoned leader to make sure we continue to do the job were doing. Finally, our appreciation to the schools, and i know youve all said, once again, its never intoto bring covid classroom space, you need scheduling and theyve all been very helpful and very responsive. I think we are seeing the value effort hashat expert made. So just know that we are thrilled to have nebraska as an affiliate, and i think matt has a plaque that signifies that. So we want to be sure to feature that in our upcoming publications. You will be pleased to know nebraska is one of the highest performing state affiliates of all of north america involved, so thank you all very much. Thank you very much, we appreciate you joining us today via zoom. Looking forward to continuing to expand it. So thank you very much. Ill ask our commissioner of labor, i want to say thanks to him for getting that going. All the work you do with you and your team. One other thing i wanted to hit articlee, i read the physiciansut some talking about beans over beef. Nutritional a more food source than beef. For example, youd have to eat noa to get thequi same and three ounces of beef. So beef is an overall healthy diet. This is really part of a National Program to spread misinformation about the Health Benefits of beef that would ultimately undermine our beef industry here in nebraska and our way of life as well. So i just want everyone to know that beef is actually a nutritional food source for you. To be supporting replacing beef because it is so healthy for you. Thing, the upcoming schedule. 2 00 p. M. Today, i will have my radio callin show, and also wednesday will be back here at the same time, same place here. With that, we will go into q a. Any statement about the deadly shooting over the weekend . Our thoughts and prayers go out to the victims and their families. We are so sorry for your loss. Obviously this will be something that is investigated and justice will be pursued on that. We are just so sorry about this terrible tragedy. Taylor, did you have extra questions that were submitted . [inaudible] the walz gov. Ricketts question was, if we hit the 25 threshold, what would be the process . Healthd issue another measure and when it becomes effective, thats when we would be following all those rules. If we continue to see rising hospitalizations and we hit that threshold, you could be as early as this week, it could be before thanksgiving that we see that threshold go into play. So please take all the steps to reduce the spread of the virus and Pay Attention as we may be [indiscernible] gov. Ricketts tom asked if we are trying to help people understand how the virus can impact you . In thewe show people hospital . We have. Steve schrader was one of the first people we brought in to talk about just that experience. We have tried to get a variety of folks. Steve had a difficult fight with the coronavirus in the spring. Just like what tom was talking about. We also wanted to show that young people can also be affected. Appreciate tyler getting the message across with regard to just because you are young does not mean you are immune from getting the virus or having severe effects. [indiscernible] gov. Ricketts yes . Martha . Reporter [indiscernible] what are your thoughts about the president continuing to block [indiscernible] . Gov. Ricketts with regard to the transition, the president is pursuing his Legal Options regarding the election. I dont think those have all expired yet. There is a process in this country to go through this. We have deadlines to meet. We just have to follow the process. We will have an orderly transition of power if that is how the legal cases run and i encourage the president to help with that transition once it becomes inappropriate time to do so. Reporter [indiscernible] gov. Ricketts we have a process regarding the legal challenges and we have to allow the process to go through the legal courts and so forth to be able to allow the president to pursue his legal actions. There are times and deadlines for all of that sort of thing and we have to let the process play out. Reporter [indiscernible] parlor is another social Media Application kind of like twitter. We have continued to reach out the a social media to get all sorts of folks along the way. I think we also added snapchat on the same day. Parlor, the idea behind it is is that one of the reasons you chose [indiscernible] gov. Ricketts the question was it hasis competitive advantages in that free speech. Ensor cen it is one of the social media platforms we are using to reach out to people where they are. Reporter [indiscernible] gov. Ricketts to go back and explain, fred is asking how does this all work regarding the plan we put in place . Were looking at a number of hospitalizations due to coronavirus. It is divided by the denominator there is going to be the number of hospital beds. When that hits 25 is when the additional restrictions kicked in. On the first day that happens, we will hit the red category. We are calculating the number of hospital beds based on a 14 day rolling average. The neonatal beds and so forth out of that for the last 14 days. But it is a rolling average based on staffed hospital beds. And after we get to the red zone, to get back out of it, there will have to be a seven day rolling average of being below 25 to get back into the orange. Reporter [indiscernible] gov. Ricketts the question is what is the number right now for us to be able to hit that . The number does move because staffed hospital beds vary. So the out the nicu beds number floats around and that is why we have the chart. If you go to our coronavirus dashboard, you will see the chart that pops up right away and the red line is where we are. You will see the bars or the number of cases. When the cases hit the red bar, that is where we will hit it. 1060 is where we are today. Reporter [indiscernible] why not go to the red phase now . Gov. Ricketts Julie Anderson says we had a number of deaths that were more than the week before so why not go to read right now red right now . As we have started from the beginning, this is all about Hospital Capacity. That is what we have used as our metric and our guiding star so to speak regarding how we make these determinations. And that is what our categories are based upon. How many folks are in the hospital with coronavirus . T is how we manage it based on hospitalizations. Reporter [indiscernible] gov. Ricketts the question from Becca Costello was about a hhs lawsuit challenging and arbiters codeion regarding dress and hhs. Im not familiar with that offhand. She asks if that was the best use of time. Constraints time for that. I will have to get back to you on that. Reporter [indiscernible] paul hamill is asking for a response to the editorials with regard to calling for a mask mandate. I go back to the same thing we have been saying all along regarding masks. Toy are an important tool the able to slow the virus. We have been encouraging that. We start off the press briefings by asking people to wear a mask and we close by asking people to wear a mask. If you cannot maintain that six feet of social distance, you have to wear the mask. M. Have put those in our dh if you are in a business where your staff and patrons are closer than x feet or 15 minutes or more, you are required to have both the staff and patrons be masked. We are using masks in a way that are appropriate and we will can best consider strengthening those dhms down the road. But i want to remind people that they are just one of the tools. In that use masks swiss layer strategy that we have talked about. You wear a mask and go to the story. Secondsr hands for 20 often. Keep six feet of distance between between you and other people. Stay home if you are sick. Go to the store once a week and go by yourself. Of steps weamples can take as a part of that swiss cheese layered strategy. Other states are seeing a rise in cases. One thing by itself will not solve the problem. We need all of these things to Work Together to slow the spread of the virus. Doctor, you are up. [indiscernible] andrew asked without Public Health putting in certain restrictions and metric and help spreadplace to the virus or slow the spread of the virus, what would have happened without that . I have no doubt that we would be in 10 times worse shape than we are now in terms of the number of positive cases, people ofthe hospital, and number deaths. Our policies have definitely had an effect in all three of those areas. [indiscernible] is i did not hear how much did the Public Health oh, how much has the public resisted these policies . We hear sporadic challenges to placef the dhms put in in some of the Public Health districts about whether they are legal or not or whether they should follow them or not. There has there has been some resistance but in almost all cases, we have had good outcomes. [indiscernible] first of all come up before we go to that question, i want to piggyback on what the doctor was saying. Health our local public folks have received some nasty phone calls and feedback from the public when they are just trying to do their job. We have had to call the police in some cases because of terroristic threats. That is not acceptable or appropriate. Our local Public Health officials are trying to keep people healthy. When they called to ask you to isolate or quarantine, please treat them with respect and dignity. We have to remember that we are all nebraskans, we are all on the same team. We need to treat those Public Health officials with respect. And the second question was would i have done anything differently knowing what we know today . 2020. Hindsight is i dont get caught up in what i wouldve done differently had i known things i could not possibly have known. We made the best decision we could with the information we had at the time. That is the way we have approached it make the best decision we could with the information we had. Slow the spread of the virus and preserve our Hospital Capacity while doing our best job in helping raskins live the best life they could. [indiscernible] gov. Ricketts the question was s,th regard to putting in dhm and why not start earlier . We have tried to allow nebraskans to live as normal a life as possible. There are many implications to the steps that we take. We know a lot about what has happened in intervening months. We know for example that if you look at the kim found that Kim Family Foundation data. Ofy surveyed a number departments and the number of suicides of people under 20 is double what it was last year and that and those are 10 times the coronavirus debts. Drug Overdose Deaths are higher than they were last year. We know immunizations are down. Cancer screenings are down. There are other health cost to go along with the restrictions we put in place. We have to try to strike that balance in all of these things and that is why we are trying to do that in a way that strikes that balance. If you look at our positivity rate, it has slowed week over week. We want to continue to preserve our Hospital Capacity while we ares loving things down and that is what we will continue to do. That is why we take the steps that we do. We will make tighter restrictions because of Hospital Capacity if we need to and we will look at more restrictions if that becomes necessary as well. Martha, and then you fred. Interested in more information about this graduate program. Picked . The kids gov. Ricketts would you like to get more of the details . The question was around what are we doing with these kids and who is doing it with regard to the jobs for america graduates . And how are the kids picked . A no visor aed by committee made up of school counselors, teachers, and other folks at the school. They are also included in the Advisory Council also included on the Advisory Council is Career Guidance counselors. The classroom providing instruction to the students. The administrators and those folks at the school all picked kids that would maybe benefit from the program that have struggled in the past in school. They would be able to use this program to help further their academic achievement to get to graduation and through graduation and then support the students after graduation. Model has a number of different approaches. Instruction,om competencybased instruction, projectbased learning, it is, informed. It really helps teach that it is trauma informed. Kids prepare for after graduation. Folks are paying for a career specialists . . That is correct. They are credentialed at the department of education and they are providing instruction in the school to the students and their class. The new program has 3550 students in each of them. The classroom size is limited to about 1012 students. Where is the money coming from . It is in partnership with the department of labor which has a couple of different Funding Sources including the department of health and Human Services. It is combined with philanthropic private funds, if you will. Then the schools, after the first two years, also contribute to the program. Gov. Ricketts [indiscernible] thank you, governor. I would be happy to. We are extraordinarily excited at the department of labor to see jag of nebraska become its own program. Severalprogram i saw years ago at a national conference. I thought it would be something that would help disadvantaged or at risk youth. We have worked to get it going. We had at times until some conversations with the governors office. They also liked the program. We jumped in with some wagner money to give it a jumpstart. We contracted with the state of ohio to run it. It worked very well with the department of education which came up with a special certification for us. In addition to our funding that we have been able to put into the program, the department of health and Human Services has other us generously with funds for at risk youth, the free and reduced lunch youth which is where this money as directed. Knewne of the things we the way for the program to expand the most was for it to become a private entity. It took about two years until matt raised his hand on behalf of united way. United way agreed to take over responsibility for the program and now, we are very excited they have become an official affiliate for national jag. Thank you very much, john. Fred . Fred [indiscernible] gov. Ricketts the question was thate of the reasons why it is a statewide pandemic. It is pretty uniform throughout the state right now. That is why local Public Health departments will not be allowed to take their own steps because it all has to be approved by the state. Freds question is what about the municipalities taking their steps to do additional things with regard to a masked man date or Something Like that and why are we not challenging that . It gets back to if the cities are acting within the law, they have the ability to do what they can within the law. With regard to omaha, omaha passed its own ordinance. Thoseebody in one of jurisdictions does not like that, they have standing to be able to challenge that and it would be their prerogative to do so. With regard to the state itself, if the municipalities are acting within their legal authority, there isnt anything or us to challenge. [indiscernible] ministeretts every palavi will be different and we have 600 across the state of nebraska roughly. If you have that many come it would be dependent on what each individually looks like. I could not tell you if each of them is behaving legally but we encourage them to consult with their legal advisors. Andrew . Ketts [indiscernible] gov. Ricketts the question was have i talked to any retailers about how they hope to handle black friday . I have not. This was something that we had discussions with retailers back in the spring regarding taking socially social distance steps and barriers and things like that. I think retailers have continued to do a very good job regarding that. I know for example at the nebraska furniture mart, they have a policy that anyone coming into the store for a black friday will have to wear a mask. I think retailers are taking the right steps to slow the spread of the virus. It is not been brought to my attention that we need to have that discussion with retailers. I think they are doing a good job. Other questions . It is great to be back in the office. I was quarantined for the two week period after i had my exposure. It is great to be able to get back out and be with the folks working to slow the spread of the pandemic here. All right. Saying no other questions, i want to remind folks. A holiday week coming up. Please for thanksgiving, smaller sized gettogethers. Family groups. People in a small group will have less likelihood of spreading the virus then if you have a big group of people. The doctor called the doctor said on the call last week if you have 10 people, there is a 43 chance that one of them will have it. Smaller groups are better. Wednesday night, please do not drink and drive. Be tost thing to do would stayathome at home. If you are going to go out, go to an outdoor patio and under a heater have a beer there that try to avoid those crowded spaces, confined places, and close contact. Avoid that. That would be best. And please come it keep that six foot distance between you and others in public, go to the store once a week, and do it by yourself. All of these things will help a slow the spread of the virus. Thank you again. We will have another press briefing at 2 00 on wednesday. Thank you. With coronavirus cases increasing across the country, use our website, cspan. Org coronavirus to follow the trends, track the spread watchttractive maps, and updates on demand any time at cspan. Org coronavirus. Cspans washington journal. Every day we are taking your calls live on the air on the news of the day and we will discuss policies policy issues that impact you. Tuesday morning, billy shore discusses how the covid19 pandemic has exacerbated Food Insecurity in the united states. And then from the heritage foundation, dakota would talks about the index of the u. S. Military strength report. Watch cspans washington journal live 7 00 eastern tuesday morning. The sure to join the discussion with your phone calls and tweets. Board of state canvassers voted monday to States Election results making president elect joe bidens win official in the state. Republican vice chair joined certifyingn the vote the election. A republican member of state. This threeandahalf our event includes remarks from the board and virtual comments from citizens of michigan. I do want to just note that there might be some pauses just because this is a result meeting. Please allow us some technical issues. Going to our first item on the agenda is the consideration of the Meeting Minutes for approval for october 15, 2020. [indiscernible] asroval of the minutes printed for the october 15 meeting