Among the many right-wing astroturf “Open/Liberate [insert-state]” vector festivals last weekend was one you may not have heard about, in the small central Wisconsin town of Mosinee.
It was depressingly well-attended and social distancing and face-covering guidelines appear to have been completely blown off. But that’s par for the course now. I want to directly address my ex-congressman’s remarks there, which more or less capture the closest thing to an actual argument (insofar as it’s more than incoherent yelling about “tyranny!”) coming from this crowd:
"Over the course of the last 3 weeks, 4 weeks, we're seeing that we're not getting the same kind of outbreaks that they have in New York, or in Milwaukee,” said former seventh district representative Sean Duffy. “And if we don't get back to work soon, we're not going to have jobs to go back to….
“So because we're different, I think we should have a different plan than New York. And I think Governor Evers is at a one size fits all policy, which is we should do what other states are doing around the country, when we're very different in Wisconsin."
Oh, yeah, and there’s dog-whistles. Because of course.
So in case anybody of goodwill finds that remotely compelling (and I get how one could; the economic impacts of safer-at-home are real and they suck), I’d like to talk about just how different “we” are.
About that yellow map…
I highlighted 34 of Wisconsin’s 72 counties, mostly to the north and west. It works out to roughly the WI-03 and the WI-07 congressional districts combined. Importantly, these counties also make up 3 contiguous regional reporting units on the WI Hospital Association’s COVID-19 data page.
Here’s a clearer map of the part of WI I’m talking about. It includes Mosinee, as well as La Crosse, Eau Claire, Wausau, Marshfield (of the eponymous clinic), Stevens Point, Rhinelander, and Superior, along with my house and at least one of Sean Duffy’s. I’m going to call this “Upper WI” just to have a shorthand. (It’s to the north, and generally a little uphill, from the other part.)
Upper WI covers about the same area as the state of Maine, and happens to have roughly the same population at 1.3 million. Lower WI covers less ground, but includes most of the WI places people have heard of and is where more than 3 out of 4 Wisconsinites live.
So, I’m confident that Upper WI here strongly comports with the “we” in Duffy’s “we’re different.”
As for the “different,” sure, the gazetteer statistics are gonna differ from NYC or Milwaukee. But none of that matters to the virus. Ever hear of South Dakota?
By accident of geography it’s taken a little longer to get here. But it is here, and if we gather like it’s no big deal in factories or churches or schools or restaurants or astroturf rallies it’s gonna spread exponentially here just like everywhere else.
But way more important than confirmed case numbers, look at the current status of Upper Wisconsin’s Hospitals...
WI COVID-19 & HOSPITAL CAPACITY DATA — AS OF APRIL 21, 2020
|
UPPER WI |
% |
LOWER WI |
WI TOTAL |
POPULATION |
1,335,861 |
22.9% |
4,507,582 |
5,843,443
|
LAND AREA (SQ MI)
|
30,594 |
56.5% |
23,564 |
54,158 |
CONFIRMED COVID+ |
211 |
4.6% |
4,409 |
4,620 |
TOTAL TESTED |
10,952 |
20.9% |
41,509 |
52,461 |
COVID DEATHS |
6 |
2.5% |
236 |
242 |
ICU BEDS AVAILABLE |
77 |
16.3% |
394 |
471 |
NEGATIVE PRESSURE rooms AVAIL |
316 |
25.9% |
904 |
1,220 |
TOTAL BEDS AVAIL |
981 |
24.4% |
3,046 |
4,027 |
VENTILATORS IN-USE |
36 |
11.3% |
282 |
318 |
VENTILATORS AVAILABLE |
208 |
22.3% |
725 |
933 |
ELDER CARE HOMES |
486 |
24.5% |
1,500 |
1,986 |
Chart data as of Tuesday Afternoon, April 21, 2020. Cobbled together from: WI Hospital Association data, WI DHS Covid-19 County Data, WI DOA 2019 County Population Estimates, WI DHS Nursing Home and Assisted Living facility directories (combined into “Elder Care Homes”).
That’s right. For 1.3 million people, “Upper WI” has a grand total of 77 ICU beds currently available. There are also 208 ventilators in case we need them for any of the residents of our 486 elder care homes.
Think about that. If the virus rips through just a few care homes, this huge swath of Wisconsin will be out of ICU beds and ventilators just like that. That’s not even factoring in food processing plants, jails and prisons, or other stuff (PPE!) we’re running short on.
And on top of that, we’re flying blind with our piss-poor levels of testing and nonexistent surveillance. Because we’re only testing (very) symptomatic people showing up for care, there’s a lag of at least 7-10 days between somebody getting the virus and possibly counting as a confirmed case.
So if we “opened” Upper WI today, it’d be 7-10 days before we had any idea what the consequences were. And if it turned out that was a terrible mistake and we closed everything back down on day #7, too bad… we still have a 6-day (at least) exponentially-growing “pipeline” of cases yet to be discovered and treated. That’s why Governor Tony Evers’ criteria for “phase 1” reopening of the state hinges on at least an 8-fold increase in testing before we do anything else. (And even that might not be enough.)
So, please… if not for you, for the hospital workers and the folks in the care homes...
Stay the fuck home, Wisconsin!
A few side-notes:
- We actually have a chance to flip Duffy’s district in a special election on May 12. Tricia Zunker is a law professor and a justice on the Ho-Chunk Nation Supreme Court, and just an outstanding candidate. If you live in WI-07, absentee vote for Tricia! Everybody else, please donate to Tricia!
- The reason Sean Duffy resigned from Congress last fall was to spend more time with his ailing infant daughter. That infant daughter just had open-heart surgery less than a month ago. I’m no medical expert, but I sure hope he’s 1,000% self-isolating from his daughter after going to that covidiot rally. Who would even take that chance?
- This Mosinee event resulted in at least one cardiologist being placed on leave for violating his hospital’s policies and being an idiot. A tiny bit of cosmic justice.