From Nathaniel Schexnayder

Monroe 

Governor Evers has extended his Safer at Home order an additional month while also laying out a path for reopening Wisconsin via a step-by-step plan. However, this has not alleviated all concerns or questions for how Wisconsin exits the Governor’s crackdown on Wisconsin’s businesses and citizens, including my friends, family, and neighbors.

At the outset of the Safer at Home order, the goal was to “Flatten the Curve” to avoid overwhelming the healthcare system. Thankfully, the healthcare system has not been overwhelmed. Not even close. It appears that Evers has abandoned using “Flatten the Curve” as a reason to continue Safer at Home, since, at this time, there does not appear to be any evidence that Wisconsin’s healthcare system is being overwhelmed. In fact, according to the DHS website, the available ICU beds and ventilators are far from total capacity.

The DHS’s own model projected a minimum of 440 COVID-19 deaths by April 8. There were 99 deaths by that point. Currently, fewer than 250 have died in Wisconsin from the virus. Evers claims this is due to Safer at Home, but it is entirely possible that virus death projections were over-inflated and many Wisconsin citizens were already taking precautions against the virus before the Safer at Home order.

So why does the Governor insist on continuing Safer at Home for another month instead of opening the state back up in a modest fashion? His requirements for moving to even the first phase of the Badger Bounce Back plan are incredibly rigid (14 straight days showing only declines in positive cases), possibly unfeasible for some time (how soon can we begin testing 85,000 people a week?), frighteningly ambiguous (if we reach phase 2 and there is an uptick in cases, will he shut everything down again?) and is more arbitrary than scientific.

Evers’ shutdown on Wisconsin Families and the economy has no end in sight. Now that the magical curve is flattened and our healthcare system is in good shape, can Evers honestly say that beginning to reopen the state will cause thousands to die unnecessarily? Instead of a sensible reopening which puts most citizens back to work but still protects our most vulnerable, Evers has chosen to implement a blanket strategy that is blind to age, health, and geography, which puts our Wisconsin families on a collision course with disaster.