Monday, April 10, 2023

Covid Chronicles. Chapter 21: New Cases Continue to Spike

 
Read chapter 20 here

Friday, April 10 
 

I see that the number of new COVID-19 cases has recently spiked in Pennsylvania, perhaps the reason for Governor Wolf’s decision yesterday to close schools for the rest of the academic year. (I’ve been receiving daily email news updates from the Warren Times Observer since late March. Not sure why as I let my subscription lapsed more than a year ago.) 

As far as I can tell, public schools in Wisconsin are closed ‘indefinitely’, although the University of Wisconsin-Madison suspended classroom (face-to-face) instruction starting March 23. Other campuses in the UW system followed suit within the following two weeks. 


Wisconsin reported 129 new cases yesterday, the lowest tally since March 30. Everyone, of course, is concerned about the impact of our ‘ill-advised’ election, as Judge Conley Conley described it. If there is an impact, it’s not likely to be apparent for a couple of weeks. 

Yesterday, Governor Evers ordered many of the state parks closed as they had become overwhelmed with visitors not practicing social distancing. What’s worse, park staff saw a big increase in littering and vandalism. A Milwaukee Journal Sentinel article was accompanied by a photo of a crowd of young people hanging out in the parking lot of High Cliff State Park, along the northern edge of Lake Winnebago east of Appleton. 



Fortunately, most of the state’s residents are abiding by the ‘safe-at-home’ order. According to a series of projection models developed by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, the numbers of deaths from COVID-19 in Wisconsin will peak on April 15. Same with Pennsylvania. We’ll see.

Read chapter 22 here

No comments:

Post a Comment