Wisconsin reported its first coronavirus case back on February 5, 2020. The state began its first round of coronavirus testing one year ago today.
Since then, what do we know?
Just over 564 thousand people have tested positive. Over 97% of them have fully recovered.
Just over 64 hundred people have died from or with the virus. Nearly 79% of those people are 70-plus.
Nearly 500 thousand people have been fully vaccinated, and nearly one million people have gotten a single vaccine dose.
Wisconsin’s unemployment rate, which was just over two percent when Tony Evers started as governor spiked to 14 percent, and is now down to 5.5%.
Nationally, 514 thousand people have died from or with the virus. The initial estimates were between two and three million.
More than 60 million people have gotten a vaccine dose, and those numbers grow everyday.
Public schools, by and large, are closed. Public universities, by and large, are reopening.
We know that almost everything the experts have said has turned out to be wrong. Remember two weeks to flatten the curve? Remember the notion that masks will end the virus? Remember President Trump said the virus would be gone by April? Remember all of the warnings about a post Fourth of July bump? A post Thanksgiving bump? Post Christmas, post New Year’s Eve, etc?
Still there is a sense of panic, and fear among many news writers and big city news outlets. Though, to be honest, much of the omnipresent fear has disappeared under President Biden.
What does this all tell us?
One, that we have made Herculean strides in containing this virus like ever before. Nearly as many people in Wisconsin are fully vaccinated than ever tested positive. That’s amazing. And all in less than a year.
None of the doomsday predictions came true. The fear of millions of deaths, of children falling dead, or super-spreader events at every church, basketball game, and picnic. None that came to pass.
Two, we are often wrong. It’s okay to be wrong, as long as you admit your mistake and learn from it. We got much about the virus wrong in the beginning, that’s okay. What was not okay was the dedication to report only the worst of the outbreak. To focus on the negative. To scare people to death just to un-elect president Trump.
Three, we can beat this. There is no reason to limit fans at Brewer games or cancel summer festivals. We are containing the virus, and all but stopping hospitalizations and premature deaths. The focus now should be on getting back to normal, not testing and crowd control. Masks and crowd limits can and should go away.
Fear does strange things to people. We as a country were afraid of the virus, and we acted like it for the past year. Now, one the one year anniversary of Wisconsin's first coronavirus test, we can admit that it is time to stop being fearful. We see the numbers and they are undeniably good. The coronavirus is a thing, and will continue to be a thing, but it is not something we should continue to be afraid of.
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