Same old story on COVID in Wis. Cases still high, and rurals getting it worse

Not much changed in the weekly update of county-by-county COVID stats from the Wisconsin Department of Health Services. The amount of new cases is around the same, at a 7-day average of 2,500-2,700 new cases a day. And even the places that have "critically high" rates of cases are mostly the same, although the number of counties at that level dropped from 21 to 17.

And for the second straight month, all 17 of the counties at the "critically high" category voted for Donald Trump, and the largest cities out of that group of counties are Chippewa Falls and Marinette.

Deaths also continue to stay high in Wisconsin, with cases averaging between 10 and 12 a day for the last month.

For both deaths and cases, rural Wisconsin has been damaged by COVID at a consistently higher rate than the metro areas. Especially up North.

Highest death rate from COVID, Wisconsin (statewide 139.0 per 100,000)
Iron 369.3
Florence 302.7
Forest 299.9
Lincoln 275.4
Waupaca 264.8
Menominee 241.4
Oneida 221.9
Dodge 219.7
Rusk 218.6
Vilas 211.8

Some of this may be skewed due to the small populations of these counties, but it is reflective of a larger trend in the country, where COVID has become a predominantly rural-based affliction, a complete turnaround from who was getting hit by the virus when it first broke out in 2020.

Rural Americans are dying of COVID at more than twice the rate of their urban counterparts — a divide that health experts say is likely to widen as access to medical care shrinks for a population that tends to be older, sicker, heavier, poorer and less vaccinated.

While the initial surge of COVID-19 deaths skipped over much of rural America, where roughly 15% of Americans live, nonmetropolitan mortality rates quickly started to outpace those of metropolitan areas as the virus spread nationwide before vaccinations became available, according to data from the Rural Policy Research Institute.

Since the pandemic began, about 1 in 434 rural Americans have died of COVID, compared with roughly 1 in 513 urban Americans, the institute’s data shows. And though vaccines have reduced overall COVID death rates since the winter peak, rural mortality rates are now more than double urban rates — and accelerating quickly.

And yet it's largely rural people that continue to refuse to get vaccinated, and it's rural GOP legislators that rail against any kind of mitigation measures. You'd think that would outrage a lot of people in the places that are getting hit hardest by COVID in Wisconsin.

But not yet, and so we all continue to get fight against the headwinds caused by these COVID-IOTS.