Sunday, May 21, 2023

Covid Chronicles. Chapter 44: Lending My Services

 
Read chapter 43 here



Friday, May 21, 2020 


Maybe it’s time for me to put out a shingle: Paul Nelson, COVID statistician. 

During most of the pandemic, starting around the time when states began to release daily statistical reports, I have created a series of graphs illustrating the increase in the number of Covid cases. In addition to Wisconsin, I initially focused on states where the number of coronavirus cases quickly took off: New York, New Jersey, Washington, Louisiana, Michigan, Massachusetts, Illinois, Pennsylvania. The list slowly grew week by week, new states added to the list based on news reports I read. 

An outbreak of more than 3 dozen cases among members of a church in Cleburne County, Arkansas, in late March. 

Another traced to a funeral service in Albany, Georgia, that ‘hit like a bomb’, as described in an eye-catching New York Times headline. 

One at a South Dakota meatpacking plant in mid-April, a situation replicated all over the United States. 

This growing list of states soon comprised almost all of my daily blogposts. And it made an activity, part of a morning routine since 2008, become more of a chore. Toward the end of April, the numbers on the graphs became increasingly illegible, the font size too small for my eyes to see clearly, except when I put my nose to the screen. At this point, I decided to revise the graphs on a weekly basis, which creates a more instructive trajectory. For example, Washington’s weekly numbers indicate that the state might be starting to flatten the curve, while Minnesota is most certainly not. 


Wisconsin remains the only state I update on a daily basis. Each afternoon, in addition to an updated Retiring Guy’s Digest blogpost, I post a map (number of cases per county), line graph (weekly numbers of total cases), and column graph (daily cases over a 30-day period). From the start, the series has generated regular positive feedback. In fact, toward the end of the first week of this project, I received two text messages asking me if I was planning to post the latest numbers. This occurred on a day when I wasn’t able to update the graphs until the early evening. 


Yesterday I learned that the maps have a bigger impact than I realized. 


During the morning, I received a text from Mary Kolar, a Dane County Board colleague until Governor Evers appointed her to his cabinet as Secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs. (Mary is a retired Navy captain. And a Facebook friend.) During a phone call later in the day, she explained that she’d like COVID data specific to the location of the state’s three care facilities for veterans. A woman whose husband resides at the Union Grove facility in Racine County has repeatedly contacted her office, as well as the office of her state senator (a Republican) to request visiting privileges there. Mary is hesitant to do so as southeastern Wisconsin remains one is the state’s two major hot spots. (Brown County/Green Bay being the other.) Basically, Mary requested a clear visual picture to help justify the department’s positions. 




Eager to get started, I created a series of PowerPoint slides. Along with the ‘snapshot in time’, as she phrased what she expected me to create in her request, I also provide her with the files to make it easy to update the graphs. With a restricted routine having become an everyday fact of life, Mary’s request was a welcome change of pace, an opportunity to help out a former colleague and gain the satisfaction of creating a useful educational tool. 



This is exactly what I’m looking for,” Mary responded after I sent her the files. (To me, the graph showing the rate of coronavirus cases related to a county’s population is the most instructive. With three counties in Wisconsin’s southeastern corner having a rate of infection more than twice that of the state average, why is anyone there talking about reopening? And why aren’t municipal and county leaders working cooperatively to develop a regional plan to reopen? 

Well, those are easy questions to answer. The lapdog majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court sided with the GOP leadership in having Governor Evers’ ‘safer-at-home’ order overturned. In other words, State Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald and Assembly Speaker Robin Vos punted to counties and municipalities the responsibilities to create and implement guidelines. All that did was create chaos, confusion, and, in some areas of the state, a reopening free-for-all. Hodgepodge City. 

Around the same time I received Mary’s text, I was also contacted by Daniel Schoof, a former State Assembly representative and current faculty member at Beloit College. He, too, is a Facebook friend. His request is more complicated, and I responded that I’d get back to him after I finished up with Mary’s request.

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