Bill Lueders
Wisconsin health officials are making no effort to track whether any of the newly diagnosed cases of COVID-19 involve people who attended a mass gathering in Madison on April 24, at which social distancing recommendations were flagrantly ignored and most attendees were not wearing masks.
The state’s admitted failure to ask newly diagnosed COVID-19 patients if they were at the rally in Madison, an event that was denied a permit on public health grounds, contrasts sharply with its handling of cases that may have tied back to the April 7 election.
“Contact tracers do ask if patients attended mass gatherings, but not specifically about protests, so there’s really no data on who may have contracted COVID-19 at a protest,” wrote Jennifer Miller, a spokesperson for the state Department of Health Services this afternoon in response to an information request from The Progressive.
The Progressive wrote back: “Are you serious? You really are not in any way keeping track of whether people testing positive now were at the protest in Madison? That’s a lot easier to do than track it to elections held all over the state and you managed to do that. Jeepers creepers.”
Miller, in a reply email, confirmed it: “I asked the experts and that’s what they told me—‘Have you attended any mass gatherings?’ is the question asked by contact tracers.”
Bill Lueders
As estimated by State Capitol Police, the rally drew approximately 1,500 people, a number that seems remarkably low, given the size of the crowd on the Capitol grounds and the fact that additional protestors were sitting in cars parked two and three lanes deep on East Washington Avenue in Madison for a full mile. The event featured numerous speakers downplaying the dangers of COVID-19. Some attendees carried firearms, including assault weapons.
“You’re being told to sit down and shut up because your opinion doesn’t matter,” Madison Elmer, one of the event’s organizers, told the crowd, according to the Wisconsin State Journal. “You’re being told to listen to the professionals, but you know what, you shouldn’t ever stop questioning the professionals. They don’t live your life . . . they did not include you in this decision.”
The state’s admitted failure to ask newly diagnosed COVID-19 patients if they were at the rally in Madison, an event that was denied a permit on public health grounds, contrasts sharply with its handling of cases that may have tied back to the April 7 election.
In that case, the Department of Health Services said it asked all people with confirmed cases specifically about the April election, which involved around 400,000 voters casting ballots at hundreds of polling places throughout the state.
“Public health officials continue to interview people who have tested positive with COVID-19 and query whether someone has reported voting in person or working at the polls,” Miller wrote in an email to The Progressive on April 21. “Since we only have data on positive cases (without a comparison group of people who were not tested or tested negative), there is no way to know with certainty if any exposures at the polls that are reported are in fact attributable to COVID-19 illness.”
That said, Miller then confirmed that, at that time, nineteen people had “reported that they voted in person or worked the polls on election day; several of those people reported other possible exposures as well.”
The final tally of sixty-one confirmed cases is three times as large. For the April 7 election, DHS looked at people whose symptoms began between April 9 and April 21. Cases with symptoms starting later than that are not being counted, Miller said.
Bill Lueders
If the same time frame were applied to the April 24 protest, authorities would be tracking confirmed cases of COVID-19 in which symptoms began to appear between April 26 and May 15.
That means there still would be time to ask newly diagnosed COVID-19 patients, especially those who say they have attended “mass gatherings,” whether they came to the hours-long event on the state capitol lawn to protest restrictions imposed on their individual freedoms.
Or is this really not something that would be useful to know?