Wednesday, August 16, 2023

Covid Chronicles. Chapter 67: Covid? Not our problem!


Read chapter 66 here



Friday, August 14, 2020 

The first two words of this 8/13 Green Bay Press-Gazette headline can be used to describe numerous rural counties throughout the United States. The counties of Marinette (population 40,350) and Oconto (population 37,930) are located in the northeastern part of Wisconsin, within the Green Bay/Brown County media market. 

Through the end of end of June, with an average of less than one confirmed case per day, both counties looked as though they might escape a full-blown attack of the virus. 

During a period of 91 days, from April 1 to June 30, Marinette County reported 56 cases and Oconto 59. During the next 44 days, the number of reported cases in Marinette County increased 700% to 449, an average of 10 per day. Less dramatically but just as concerning, Oconto County saw an increase of 344% to 262, an average of 6 per day. 

Let me quote myself from a letter I wrote in June. 

“Apparently, enough rural residents nonchalantly considered it ‘not our problem’, an attitude no doubt reinforced by the lunatic, wrong-on-all-counts raving of our president and the conservative media machine.” 

And I suspect that Fox News and Rush Limbaugh have wide appeal in these two counties. 




Don’t let the 2008 presidential election results fool you. They are anomalies. In Marinette County, where the population of 42,000 is 95% white (compared to 81% in Wisconsin), a majority of voters have chosen the Democratic just three times since 1952. Trump trounced Clinton in both counties, winning 64.5% of the vote in Marinette County and 68% in Oconto County, which 94.6% white of out of a total of 39,000 residents. Voters in rural, homogeneous northern Wisconsin leapt exuberantly into the arms of Trump, which is the primary reason why he flipped the state from blue to red. In the state’s traditional GOP stronghold -- the suburban Milwaukee counties of Waukesha, Washington, and Ozaukee -- Trump received fewer votes than Romney did in 2012. 

The residents of Marinette and Oconto counties have gulped down glass after glass of Trump’s Covid Kool-Aid and are now paying the price for their willful ignorance.

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