(Madisoncom). Gov Evers' political gambit in issuing a new May 11 Emergency Order is his latest let's-hope tactic.
Update: See The GOP tests 2020 campaign theme: ‘Some of you will have to die.’ Tony Evers' message accepts this GOP premise, giving up major public health infrastructure built up over generations.
Madison, Wisconsin — Gov Tony Evers signaled a major course change in coronavirus COVID 19 policy in a statement last week, telling WBAY-TV his current Stay-at-Home order — now before the Wisconsin Supreme Court awaiting decision — should expire on May 26.
Evers (D) told WBAY's reporter, Cami Rapson, that he believes he can predict COVID 19's trajectory on May 26, divine relevant data points now, and infectious-disease experts' advice and conclusions, false statements that fly in the face of leading epidemiologists and the history of unpredictable and rapid progression of this coronavirus through the American population, (Roberts, New York Times).
Said Evers in a meandering interview with WBAY:
I think by [May] 26th we will be in a place where we don't have to do that, [extend Stay-at-home], unless something extraordinary happens. You know, the virus doesn't consult with me on that, but we are doing a great job with testing and tracing those results in a way that I feel confident we are headed in the right direction. ...
Whether we need to extend that, I frankly think we are going to meet our metrics that we laid out anyway. And so I'm doubtful. But if we have surges all across the state and things are going backwards, I suppose that's possible. But I think Safer at Home has worked, it's done its job, and we will continue to open up the state as we can thoughtfully and safely do it.
Evers is now rhetorically appeasing the Trump administration and Wisconsin Republicans, all of whom are working to end public health experts' pandemic policy at the expense and very lives of vulnerable members of our citizenry.
Tony Evers is privately derided by progressives and Democrats here for his dithering politics, exemplified by Evers' heavily criticized effort to hold Wisconsin's April 7 elections before reversing course on April 6 in the face of national ridicule. But Evers' comments last week garnered silence among Wisconsin Democrats.
Evers insists his public policy is informed by science.
As national media cite experts warning social-distancing efforts will not be sufficient to control the pandemic in the long term in the United States, Evers publicly musing ending social-distancing in some two weeks seems absurd.
Writes Siobhan Roberts in the New York Times:
By now we know — contrary to false predictions — that the novel corona virus will be with us for a rather long time.
'Exactly how long remains to be seen,' said Marc Lipsitch, an infectious disease epidemiologist at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health. 'It’s going to be a matter of managing it over months to a couple of years. It’s not a matter of getting past the peak, as some people seem to believe.'
A single round of social distancing — closing schools and workplaces, limiting the sizes of gatherings, lockdowns of varying intensities and durations — will not be sufficient in the long term.
In the interest of managing our expectations and governing ourselves accordingly, it might be helpful, for our pandemic state of mind, to envision this predicament — existentially, at least — as a soliton wave: a wave that just keeps rolling and rolling, carrying on under its own power for a great distance.
Tony Evers seems an unappealing cross between Peter Pan and Neville Chamberlain as COVID 19's in-effect proponents wish to create a make-believe herd immunity among our citizen 'warriors,' a reality that is unachievable without a vaccine.
See the paper at the Center for Infectious Disease Research andPolicy (CIDRAP), University of Minnesota for three projected scaniros of COVID 19.
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