The curious case of Wisconsin.

Less than two weeks ago, Wisconsin's supreme court (which is controlled by Republicans) declared the lock down orders unconstitutional. This meant that businesses were in the clear to reopen. However, the news and media quickly started pushing the same bunch of photos of mass gatherings of people, having the time of their lives in bars, restaurants etc. Surely they were spreading their dirty microbial COVID droplets again and a new second wave outbreak is on the way?!

Panic! Shame!

Well, that was now 12 days ago and the stats haven't really changed much, if at all. We know that the measurable changes should occur about a week later but it's been longer than that, and we still don't see it. So what's happened? Well that means the lockdown was a hoax! People wanted it to destroy the economy! Right???

But wait!

As it turns out, despite the lockdown order being lifted statewide, many cities passed city-level lockdown orders essentially nullifying the lifting orders.

Also!

But the crucial point here is this. Regardless of whether there is a lockdown order or not, people are going to behave in the way they feel most safest and secure. That means, if they don't feel it's safe to go about their previous normal lives, then they simply won't. In-fact, this is supported by Google phone location data which shows that the visits to things like restaurants and shops are barely affected. (Check the header image.)

People remain guarded because the situation is far from clear. They continue to avoid public spaces now, as they did before the orders to stay at home, as they will do until it is all but apparent that it is safe to go back to business as usual. Whatever the government says, it is the people that ultimately decide what they will be comfortable engaging in.

That being said, Wisconsin has been seeing an overall increase in their case numbers over the last several weeks. The test:positve ratio is about 5%, and like the rest of the country, testing is now happening at quite the accelerated pace. It is likely that they're catching the symptomatic cases quickly and so there's no reason to believe the numbers are inaccurate.

This does mean that they will need to take further steps to control the spread. Standard OP would be contract tracing, enforced mask wearing, isolation of positive cases, quarantining of possibly infected contacts etc.

Don't believe all the stories on the news.

General population behaviour aside, even with a slow start after lockdown measures lifting, we are beginning to very slowly see movement and activity. Both from businesses opening up, but also with people wishing to act as consumers. We cannot rule out that the loosening of general precautions have played a role in the gradual rise of cases in recent weeks. To what extent, we really don't know.

This is all to say that the whole scenario is really not as simple as people make it out to be. And that drawing any kind of conclusion -especially from sources such as the news and msm- should be cautioned, particularly when they resonate with our views or emotional bias. Remember that people who put out these pieces are driven by metrics such as clickthrough rate and virality. Verifiable truth is not their highest agenda and thus some misrepresentation is to be expected.

If you see a headline that's having an emotional impact on you and reinforcing your views, breathe and take a step back. Learn the details. Whenever possible, look at the raw data. Sites like http://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/ provide great up-to-date data on COVID cases by state, and sites like https://testandtrace.com/ will give you a sense of whether a state is testing enough to have good data.