Read chapter 69 here
GOP lap dogs
Sunday, August 30
During the last seven days of May, Wisconsin averaged 447 new virus cases per day. Earlier in the month, on May 14th to be exact, the state’s Supreme Court overturned Governor Evers’ stay-at-home order by a 5-2 margin, the conservative justices, GOP
lapdogs all, voting as a bloc. Republican leaders in the state legislature had challenged the order, specifically the closing of businesses, as unconstitutional and were confident that the court would side with them.
(SIDEBAR: In Wisconsin, Supreme Court justices are elected to a 10-year term. The elections take place on the first Tuesday in April and are nonpartisan. (In name only.) The Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce, which certainly had a vested interest in this challenge, plays an outsized role in promoting its legislative agenda and directing financial support to their preferred candidates. Until this year’s Supreme Court Election, the 5 beneficiary justices have done very well under this system. In a
hopeful sign for this fall’s general election, the liberal challenger trounced Daniel Kelly in this year’s spring elections.
Kelly had been appointed to the court by Scott Walker in 2016 to fill an unexpired term.)
For JoAnna and me, this high court decision spawned a sense of foreboding (i.e., we’re definitely in this virus thing for the long haul), as many Wisconsinites dismissed or even ridiculed such safety measures as wearing a mask and social distancing. For most knee-jerk ‘conservatives’, it became an issue of personal freedom, or so they were told, ad nauseam, on talk radio and Fox News, rather than a measured public health response.
The court decision, as well as an increasing number of news accounts describing people acting as though it was May 2019, led JoAnna and to postpone our planned trip to Pennsylvania, not wanting to travel at the start of the Memorial Day weekend. Playing it safe, we didn’t want to put ourselves at greater risk of getting the virus. At the same time, Madison and Milwaukee newspapers and television stations shared photos showing throngs of people in downtown Lake Geneva – many of them from Illinois -- crowding the bars and restaurants with not a face mask in sight. To me, it looked like a recipe for community spread. Our hope that Wisconsin would flatten the curve as the summer progressed quickly faded. Take a look the numbers in Walworth County. (Lake
Geneva is located there.) From March 19, the day it recorded its first case, until June 30, Walworth had 607 confirmed cases of COVID-19, an average of about 6 per day.
Since then, the number of cases has increased by 1,088 to 1,695. During this time period, the average daily number has tripled.
With no statewide guidelines to follow, a handful of municipalities and counties initiated a series of patchwork restrictions and phased-in reopening plans. No
one attempted a regional approach to fight the virus, as should have been done, at a minimum, among the five ‘hot corner’ counties of southeastern Wisconsin, as I described in a previous letter. Walworth County is a member of this group.
During the past seven days in August, Wisconsin has averaged just under 700 new cases per day, down from a peak of 931 from July 20 to 26, when the state recorded its largest number of cases during a one-week period. Yet it doesn’t feel as though we’ve made any progress. After weeks of dithering, Governor Evers finally thumbed his nose at the Supreme Court and initiated a statewide mask order, which was greeted skeptically, even derisively, by many county sheriffs, who were given the authority to enforce it. The responses, of course, are all steeped in politics, not science.
I use Fond du Lac County as an example.
Since Sheriff Waldschmidt issued his July 31st press release, the number of COVID cases in Fond du Lac County has increased 117%. The county announced its first confirmed case on February 26 – it was one of the first areas of the state to experience a cluster – and had a total of 529 as of July 31, an average of 3 per day. Since then the number of cases has increased 621, an average of 19 per day. Fond du Lac County’s politics are very conservative; it has voted Democratic in a presidential election just 5 times since 1892. Its county executive, however, is on board with Evers’ mask mandate.
With the number of new cases each week remaining pretty much the same during the past month, the number of tests is declining at a time when it should be ramping up (#backtoschool). What’s worse is that the positivity rate hovering just below 10%. One of the criteria in the “Badger Bounce Back” COVID recovery plan
is a downward trajectory of positive tests as a percent of total tests within a 14-day period. Wisconsin’s daily percentage has been seesawing all summer. If we experience 2 or 3 consecutive days of declines, that’s an accomplishment. I dislike being pessimistic, but I don’t see much change taking place through the end of the year. Safety precautions will need to remain in place: wearing masks, social distancing, no large gatherings, reduced capacity at public venues. Most schools and colleges will need to offer the majority of their classes via virtual instruction. Businesses will continue to have many of their employees work remotely — if they can afford to keep them on. (Andy’s big worry right now.) People who were living paycheck to paycheck prior to the pandemic are likely to see what little security they had evaporate.
It’s not a pretty picture, and I fear it’s one that’s going to stay in focus for quite
some time. Well beyond Thanksgiving and Christmas.
Read chapter 71 here
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