Tuesday, October 20, 2020

St. Sup. Ct. killed WI's anti-COVID strategy. Then cases skyrocketed.

While I've frequently called out the state's GOP Legislature for literally hiding from COVID accountability for more than six months, it's important to remember that it was a rightist State Supreme Court majority which took the GOP ideological bait, killed Gov. Evers 'safer-at-home' virus-controlling order and gave Republicans their 'win.'

Which launched Wisconsin into the escalating pandemic without a coordinated 'we're-all-in-this-together' statewide prevention plan.

Right-wing WI Supreme Court Chief Justice Patience Roggensack wrote the 4-3 majority opinion shelving the state's Safer-at-Home order - while the Court safely met online.

Sort of like having the local government lock up its only fire station to satisfy a faction of angry firefighters knowing that the worst blaze in state history was moving towards town driven by the strongest winds recorded in a century. 

And to make matters worse, the angry faction's officers told all the firefighters they could take a six-month vacation while the fire frightened more people, disrupted more businesses, burned more buildings and killed more citizens.

You can plot the virus's rampage on the state health department's COVID-19 website since a 4-3 rightwing decision by a majority of Justices set the state free of a virus-control plan on May 13. 

There were 291 news cases reported that day which brought Wisconsin's total to 10,902 since the tally began March 15 - a period of about two months, and Evers' order and plan were in place for much of it.

Pretty big numbers, but wait, there's more.

The most-recently reported state COVID-19 data for Monday, October 19 showed new daily cases had spiraled by a factor of 13 to 3,777 in the five months since May 13 - the day of the Court's ruling. 

And the state's current reported cumulative COVID-19 case total on Monday of 173,891 has ballooned by a factor of 16 since the 10,902 total cases had been reported on May 13. 

As the Chief Justice might say, that's a lot of regular folks.




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