If GOPs want to reopen the economy, their districts need to stop spreading COVID-19

As calls to remove the state's Safer at Home restrictions continue from right-wing Bubbleworld, we have seen the rate of new COVID-19 cases and percentage of tests turning up positive have been going down over the better part of the last week.

2/ The percentage of positive cases continues to be low, with 7- and 14-day trends again hitting the all-time lows. Indeed, the @DHSWI turned the testing trend "gating criterion" green today. pic.twitter.com/vCa5yYfOV9

— Jay Bullock, stanning for STAY CLOSED (@folkbum) May 11, 2020

So Governor Evers responded to the calls and the data by announcing some loosening of the Safer at Home restrictions today.

All stand-alone or strip-mall based retail stores across Wisconsin are now able to offer in-person shopping, as long as customers are limited to five at a time and social distancing practices are maintained, Gov. Tony Evers announced Monday.

Wisconsin Department of Health Services Secretary-designee Andrea Palm signed the order Monday that allows customers to enter stand-alone or strip-mall based retail stores. The order also allows drive-in theaters to operate with some restrictions. The new order for nonessential retail stores goes into effect immediately.

Essential retail businesses like grocery and hardware stores will continue to be open with reduced capacity.

But even with Evers’ agreement to open more types of businesses, State Senator Van Wangaard still wasn’t satisfied.

“I’m glad Governor Evers and Secretary-Designee Palm have turned the dial a little on the vise they are using to strangle Wisconsin’s economy. But this limited, overdue release of the government’s iron grip on Wisconsin employees and business continues to show the error of Evers’ one-size-fits-all approach to the pandemic from day one.

“For the 36th time, Governor Evers is crushing the huge areas of the state where coronavirus isn’t overwhelming anything, including hospitals. Regions of the state have had so few or sporadic cases that determining a trend line is statistically impossible.

Hey Van- know what's "strangled Wisconsin's economy"? 400 DEATHS AND THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE GETTING SICK FROM A VIRAL PANDEMIC! And the economy will still be reduced even with some of these stores opening, because a whole lot of people still aren't going to want to crowd in and spend at the levels that they did before.

And Wangaard’s (badly-gerrymandered) Senate district isn’t one of those regions with "few or sporadic cases." He represents the western half of Racine and Kenosha Counties, which not only are 2 of the top 4 counties for the overall rate of COVID-19 infections, but are two areas of the state that have had cases go on the rise in recent weeks.

This is what’s sickly hilarious about the lines that Wangaard and Wangaard constituent Robbin’ Vos try to trot out there. They claim that the state should open region-by-region or county-by-county, but they never bring up that their counties would be the last to open under this criteria. You can see for yourself at the Department of Health Services’ cases by county database.

By comparison, Dane County would likely be open today, as it has had notably fewer cases after the initial breakout in March. Compare those figures to the 2 GOP-voting counties that border Racine, both of which have consistently had more new cases than Dane County over the last month, despite having significantly lower populations.

So are the GOP spokespeople on AM radio telling their listeners that if the state “opens the economy” region by region, it still won’t happen in the counties where most of their GOP-voting listeners reside in? OF COURSE NOT!

This doesn’t even take into account the county of the largest rate of COVID-19 infections – Brown County, which has been adding a cases at a rate of 60 a day over the last month, with COVID deaths tripling from 6 to 18 over the last week in that county.

That reality almost makes me want Governor Evers to throw the caution aside and allow the “region-by-region” criteria to decide which areas can have more types of businesses open up. Because I’m betting that a lot of folks in the 262 and in Brown County would feel like SUCKERS if they found out that they’d still not be able to go to their watering holes in their unsafe communities.

HAH! I’m kidding. They’ll just find a reason to blame “lib’ruls” in some other fashion, instead of demanding that people and businesses step up and do more to bend a curve that’s still going up in their part of the state. On a related note, I notice that Robbin' Vos has now changed his stance on region-by-region reopening, likely because HIS region would be (rightfully) left out under that standard.

Last week, Vos and other GOP lawmakers were asking for a regional approach to life restrictions.

Vos is now calling for a statewide reopening.

— Molly Beck (@MollyBeck) May 11, 2020

At this point, they don't a chance to be part of the solution. The adolescents in today's WisGOP won't play fair or honest, so why play their game at all? Just put your head down do what's right for the people.