COLUMBUS, Ohio — Outside the Statehouse Thursday, dozens of protesters staged a demonstration —shouting things like “shutdowns kill too” and “stop the quarantine” and calling for Health Director Dr. Amy Acton to step down.

These people were clearly not happy with the guidelines the governor put out, but inside, it was a different story. Dr. Acton and Ohio Governor Mike DeWine (R) say what we’re doing is working. While there have been 20 deaths in the last 24 hours due to COVID-19, they say largely, we are winning this fight, and we cannot let up now.

“I want you to know that every move we’re making is based in the best science and we will not leave your side as we get you carefully through this arduous journey ahead," Acton said.

Dr. Acton spoke over the drowning noise of the gathered protesters, who ignored ithe stay-at-home and social distancing orders.

“Amy is the last person that I would ever want to trust with that decision making process. They’re doing things broadband without any consideration as to what the end result is going to be,” said Louis Russo."

Protestor Louis Russo says he worried these sweeping actions are too restrictive and will make it difficult to recover economically once we’re out of the woods.

“What Amy and Mike have done is they’ve maligned the agenda of getting us all to a better place medically by making adjustments that unfortunately put us in a much worse place socio-economically,” said Russo.

The protests came the same day as Lieutenant Governor Jon Husted addressed our grim unemployment numbers.

“6.6 million people nationally have lost jobs due to the coronavirus. Of those people, 696,000 were Ohioans. That’s nearly twice as many in three weeks than we had in all of 2019," Husted said.

When asked about self-employed workers who find themselves in limbo, Husted said they don’t yet have the infrastructure to accommodate them.

“Its not like we can just plug them into our existing system, we have to have a new system to process that and we are in the process of building that. Their eligibility will be backdated,” said Husted

He says that system will be up and running sometime in the next few months — which can feel like an eternity for those without income.

Still, the trio of leaders at the briefings say we’re all making sacrifices in this wartime effort in order to save lives and that our efforts are working.