Sorry, WisGOPs, but our COVID curve isn't bending anymore. And it's in your towns, too

After today's figures from the Wisconsin Department of Health Services on COVID-19, it reiterates that the progress the state had been making earlier this month in reducing the spread of coronavirus had taken a step back.

Yes, some of that increase in new cases reflects more testing being available in the last couple of weeks. But as MPS teacher/activist Jay Bullock notes, the percentage of positive tests is also back on the rise in recent days. Which goes against the decline the Governor is looking for in getting the state reopened.

1/ From @DHSWI data, Friday's #Wisconsin #COVID19 numbers. A massive report of new positive cases--460. This came in 3172 tests, a positive rate of 11.4%, one of the highest recorded and *definitely* in the wrong direction.

— Jay Bullock, stanning for STAY CLOSED (@folkbum) May 1, 2020

With these figures in mind, I wanted to discuss a couple of recent comments from GOP legislators on COVID 19, and show how far off reality they are.

One is from State Rep. Michael Schraa, who implied at last week's WMC dog and pony show to "open the economy" that the number of people dying of COVID 19 wasn't all that much.

Schraa's comments come around 14:00 in this video.

Let's say we triple the amount of deaths, so we have 1,000 deaths in the state of Wisconsin, and you divide that out by 5.8 million people, it comes out to 0.0001. So I tried to find something that people died from, with the same percentages, and the only thing I could find is plane crashes.

Hold on there, Mike. There's a lot wrong with that statement.

1. First of all, 1,000 of 5.8 million Wisconsinites is closer to 0.0002 than 0.0001, but we'll give Schraa the benefit of the doubt on rounding.

2. Much fewer than 1 in 10,000 people die in plane crashes. You'd have 33,000 Americans dying that way (aka 1/2 of COVID's current death toll). And that's not close to reality, based on the most recent figures.

Commerical plane crash deaths WORLDWIDE 2019 - 257
Deaths from COVID 19 in Wisconsin, April - 300

3. Schraa is using the COVID death rate over 7 weeks and figuring it only will triple and end there. With FEWER restrictions. That's a dubious assumption.

In fact, if Wisconsinites keep dying of COVID at the same rates they are now, we're talking close to 2,500 people a year. But again, I'll be nice to Rep. Schraa (no college degree listed) and assume deaths are limited to 1,000.

So let's get an idea what else 1,000 Wisconsinites die of, and turn to the Annual Wisconsin Death Report for 2017, which is the most recent one out there (although the Department of Health Services seems set to release the 2018 update this month, so keep your eyes peeled!).

Causes of death, Wisconsin 2017

Note that 1,000 COVID deaths would be more than all Wisconsinites that died of the flu in 2017. A whole lot fewer Wisconsinites will be exposed to COVID vs the flu, and the flu has a vaccine available, unlike COVID.

Within that "unintentional injury deaths" is this type of breakdown:

Fall 1,599
Drug overdose 1,171
Car crashes 599

So 1,000 deaths a year in Wisconsin would be nearly as many people who OD'd that year, a lot more than who die in car crashes, and 5 times the amount of homicides that we had in 2017 (203). We certainly take actions to reduce the chances of those deaths happening, but Mike Schraa thinks we should just let the chips fall where they may with coronavirus? Seems like a bad and stupid bet.

But GOPs in the state seem not to care too much, because they claim that COVID-19 is only striking "those communities", and not theirs, and that the Evers Administration is doing a "one size fits all" policy that doesn't fit their rural constituencies. So there's no need to make their part of the state continue to be Safer at Home. State Senator Howard Marklein of Southwest Wisconsin gave an example last week.

As you know, the Governor’s Administration has been issuing executive orders and making decisions without discussing anything with the elected officials who represent you. Most of their decisions are being made by unaccountable, un-elected bureaucrats. The most recent “Safer At Home” extension to May 26, 2020 is a prime example to illustrate my concerns and I am worried about the effects that this unrealistic expectation is having on the communities I represent. I am very worried about the people I serve.

By all available data, Wisconsin is flattening the curve. We need to begin to think about re-opening....

For the foreseeable future, we will need to take precautions to protect our own health and create new habits in our society. We’ll need to responsibly limit the sizes of gatherings. We’ll need to encourage businesses to take precautions. If you are at high risk, you will need to determine what you are comfortable with. Maybe you will wear a mask, order groceries for delivery and avoid gatherings of other people. That is your choice.

But there are many people in Wisconsin, business owners, farmers, and employees, who are weighing the risk of losing everything against the risk of an illness that may – or may not – infect them and those around them. They are looking at the numbers of cases and infection rates and comparing them to the fact that they may have to close a family business that they have toiled on for decades.

This did not age well, and especially for Howard Marklein's district. Marklein "represents" most/all of Sauk, Juneau, Richland, Iowa, Lafayette, and Grant County, and that area has started to become hit hard in recent weeks.

It's now to the point that many of those rural counties are being affected more by COVID-19 than urban Dane County, which goes against all the BS that gets spewed on right-wing radio.

Rate of COVID 19 infections per 100,000
Sauk County 100.6
Grant County 83.0
Dane County 81.7
Richland Co 68.4
Juneau Co. 68.1

Death rate, COVID 19
Grant County 1 in 8,600
Richland Co. 1 in 8,800
Sauk County 1 in 21,200
Dane County 1 in 24,000
Juneau Co. 1 in 26,400

In fact, Grant and Richland Counties have death rates closer to Milwaukee County's 1 in 5,000 than Dane County's rate. Sure, smaller sample size, but maybe Howie and the rest of his WisGOPs need to recognize that COVID 19 is serious and affecting their constituents too. And opening up their districts ahead of the rest of the state is likely to make things even worse, in areas that do not have the capacity of medical care that big cities do.

Then again, maybe Rep. Schraa and Sen. Marklein do know better, but they think the money from WMC and the DeVoses is more important to their needs. Either way, they're in the wrong, and maybe they should pay attention to the precautions that locals tend to take in the Mad City. Because if the rest of the state was doing as well as Dane County in avoiding COVID 19, we would be getting Back to Business, instead of needing to be Safer at Home.

Look, I'm frustrated by not being able to go to bars and dine-in restaurants, too, and there are probably some ways things can be loosened for small groups in wide spaces, and it may be OK to open up more of a range of shops that have 1-on-1 services with strong health precautions. But until we see the testing go up and the COVID cases go down on a daily basis, there's no way you can justify having things return to anything close to where they were 3 months ago.

And it would be especially stupid to have it as a county-by-county basis, and certainly not if you open things up in a way that encourages people from other areas to travel to your community. And your "clean" counties? They might not be as clean as the WisGOPs want you to think they are.