In late November, COVID is the hunter up North

It's right before Thanksgiving, which means families across Wisconsin get together to feast and meet up. And apparently it is also COVID season again.

The numbers of new cases keep growing higher, and the 7-day average of new cases just went over 3,000 cases on Friday.

Deaths have also remained elevated. There were 6 straight weeks after Labor Day where over 100 Wisconsinites succumbed to COVID, and was still taking a dozen people each week through the start of November. That being said, it is still well below the carnmage that we were seeing in October and November 2020, which is a credit to vaccinations and better treatment.

And if you're heading up North to find some bucks, you might want to be careful, because COVID has been hunting a lot of the residents over the last 2 weeks.

But all areas are getting hit, even Dane and Milwaukee Counties. Despite being in the bottom 4 for case rates statewide (according to the handy New York Times COVID map), the two most-populated counties in Wisconsin have seen new cases go up by 51% in Milwaukee Co and 44% in Dane County over the last 14 days.

Which indicates to me that seasonality is another layer behind this next COVID resurgence, on top of the lack of vaccination in certain parts of the state. I certainly am not taking any chances, which is a big reason I got myself boosted yesterday ahead of the Holidays (it also had been 7 months since I was fully vaxxed, and I'm not going to through another locked-down COVID Winter like the last one).

The Wisconsin Department of Health Services has yet to release figures on vaccinations among 5-11 year-olds in the first 2 weeks those kids could get their shots, and we can hope that along with adults getting boosted starts to tamper down the number of cases. But these next few weeks will still likely be rocky, especially as a segment of our population refuses to do their part to try to get things back toward our pre-pandemic normal.