“Hard thinking” that’s the phrase for the summer.
Gov. Evers yesterday wouldn’t commit to the simple question of ‘What kind of a summer can we expect?’
He talked about masks, he talked about following the science, he said he’d love to get to a Brewer game, and he said he wasn’t making any promises about the State Fair.
He said there’s going to need to be some “hard thinking” about what this summer will look like.
But why?
We know what this spring has looked like. Coronavirus numbers are down, vaccines are up, and people are ready to return to normal.
The latest numbers:
Wisconsin’s Department of Health Services reported on Tuesday that the state’s seven-day positivity rate is just above two percent. DHS reported new positive tests, as well as 215 people in the hospital, including 57 in the ICU. The numbers show that almost 98% of the 570,412 people who’ve tested positive for the virus in Wisconsin have fully recovered. DHS is reporting 6,539 coronavirus related deaths over the past year. But overall, the state’s coronavirus numbers are down significantly since the peak in November.
DHS said on Tuesday that doctors and nurses have administered over 2 million doses so far. DHS reports that nearly 22% of people in the state have gotten one dose of the vaccine, another 12 percent have gotten both doses.
That means that nearly one-in-three people in the state have been vaccinated. Add in the half-million people who got the virus then recovered, and you’re talking a lot of people are walking around protected.
But Gov. Evers refuses to let go of the fear. He is refusing to let go of the lockdowns.
“It’s more the shape of the curve,” Evers explained. “A plateau does not mean we’re moving in the right direction. It’s more the angle of the curve, rather than a number.”
It sounds more like an attempt to keep Wisconsin locked down.
But did the year we spent in lockdown do any good? We had over 6,000 deaths. But many of those people are older with health problems, and the virus was often just a contributing factor to their death.
We saw over 600,000 people lose their jobs. Many are still out of work. Countless restaurants, shops, and businesses have closed over the past year.
And don’t even get me started on schools and kids.
So why ware we looking at a summer of 'hard thinking?'
Because no one will admit they got it wrong.
Gov. Evers isn’t going to tell people it’s okay to go to Am Fam Field or the State Fair because he’d have to answer for his year of wrongness. The Journal Sentinel and State Journal have spent the past year scaring people to death, for them to embrace life as we used to know it would expose them as fear mongers.
So we head into another summer of nothing, another wasted opportunity for family, friends, and fun. All so the people who have been wrong for months can continue to be wrong.
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