Friday, April 17, 2020

Agitation to reopen economy echoes Walker's contempt for labor, data & science

Rignt-wingers are organizing against WI Gov. Evers' extension to May 26th of the state's shelter-in-place order to stem the deadly spread of Covid-19.

The extension is logical because according to data cited Thursday, only roughly  45,000 people in the state have been tested while the disease continues doing damage.

The Wisconsin Department of Health Services says there have been 3,875 positive tests for the new coronavirus. There have been 40,974 negative tests, a daily increase of 1,648. The number of deaths in the state has reached 197, 15 more than Wednesday
Wisconsin has about 5.8 million residents, which means about 3/4ths of one percent of the population have been tested.

Which means caution and social distancing have got to govern policy-making until more testing creates better data which produces a clearer picture of the epidemic's spread or decline.

The obvious importance of better, deeper testing data is lost on one former defeated Wisconsin politician 

12/11/18, about 5 weeks after his defeat
who thinks keeping blue-collar workers closer to their job site machinery and out of break and lunch rooms will somehow prevent them from catching or passing the virus.

Which, you know, leads to family members becoming ill, or silent carriers of the easily dispersed virus.

As if workers returning to work would not be taking disease transmission risks by riding the bus, or carpooling, or bumping into one another in the parking lots or halls and stairwells, let alone in bathrooms where the hand-washing soap and water is kept - or are the bathrooms off limits, too?


Will a personal portapotty be set up next to each worker's machine? 

Does every worker then eat lunch at his or her machine. Next to the portapotty?

Maybe workers should eat their ham on wheat bread inside the portapotty?

Socially distancing, for sure. But pleasant, or hygenic? Not so much.

This basic failure to understand that it's dumb and dangerous to make life-and-death decisions based on insignificant data, or to assume that human beings should be tethered to or ordered to become a cog in the  machinery just the way 19th century factory barons had dreamed is less surprising when you remember the eight years of anti-worker and anti-science imperiousness with which this particular ex-politician had governed. 


Good thing he's now nowhere near public policy decision making, except in his own, irony-free and freely-projecting mind. 

Scott Walker says overreaching coronavirus restrictions are 'what happens when people get power-hungry'




1 comment:

Unknown said...

Walker is a science denying, education hating, imbecile, who damaged Wisconsin deeply, and who's scars are still felt in the ghosts of the supreme court and Vos. Hopefully he will fade into distant memory once all this is over. Hopefully Evers will stick to his guns, and Wisconsinites will respect that. Economies can be revived, dead people not so much. Scott Walker and his cronies have never shied away from blood on their hands. Good thing Evers is here at this time or we all would be in danger. The numbers are lower because Evers took decisive action and put people over profits.