Throw the doors open
Speaking of magical thinking and reckless behavior – the Wisconsin Supreme Court has thrown out the stay home order.
In a 4-3 decision, the Wisconsin Supreme Court on Wednesday struck down the state’s stay at home order, handing a defeat to Democratic Gov. Tony Evers in his administration’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
And consigning who knows how many hundreds or thousands of people to a hideous death, and more to a horrible illness that can take weeks to recover from and leave permanent damage to the heart, brain, blood vessels, kidneys, lungs – pretty much everything.
In its order, the Supreme Court said Evers’ stay at home order is “invalid, and therefore, unenforceable,” so some businesses and restaurants presumably may open immediately. But some counties, such as Dane, have already issued replacement orders enforcing the elements of the governor’s order, and therefore must remain closed.
The virus will probably take note of this show of defiance and decide to leave Wisconsin entirely alone. Right?
Crap. The organization I work for is housed at UW Madison. I work remotely, but I’ve got a lot of friends and colleagues there. Hope they can stay safe.
More likely leave it whistling in the dark.
Double crap. I live in Wisconsin, and my son works at UW-Madison (mostly remotely, but not always.)
A few weeks ago a bunch of morons drove around my county in a “end the stay-at-home-order” parade. They think this is political. Or they think it’s like-the-flu. Or they want to make the libtards cry.
Agh, dammit, Sastra.
The slightly better news is that the ruling is against the state mandate; counties can still mandate a shutdown. I’m guessing the county Madison is in is not Republican. (I knew some fiery radicals from UW-Madison back in the day.)
Ugh, keep safe, Sastra.
And Dane County, where Madison is, is definitely lefty.
I hope they also slap the virus with a restraining order. That’ll learn it.
Next decision? Anthropogenic climate change is officially not happening; everyone can burn everything.
YNnB:
Have a look at what the Australian far Right is saying about Covid-19, climate change any thing else getting in the way of business-as-usual.
https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2020/05/the-national-forelock-there-for-the-tugging/
I live in Wisconsin and work in St. Paul, MN and this decision combined with MN Gov. Walz ending the state stay-at-home order yesterday (but not reopening bars and restaurants yet) means that there will be more community spread of the COVID-19 virus. Whether testing can ramp up enough to make tracking of cases possible is the question to be answered now. I’m not optimistic. I’m able to work remotely from home in a small town and my home county (St. Croix) has had only 30 cases and no deaths – so far. That we know of. My wife has been pressured to go back to work and she’s not wanting to yet, so there may be a point where she will either get fired or quit her part-time job. Thankfully, we don’t need the money so it’s not a dire matter for us.
As for the Republicans, it’s clear to me that their game plan is to do all they can to not report COVID-19 cases or deaths so they can claim it’s over now and then get credit for a revived economy. So expect Fauci to get fired on some pretext and for the CDC to change how it counts COVID-19 cases and have problems testing people too. If a few hundred thousands more people die and millions more suffer from the consequences of this pandemic, that’s a price Trump and the GOP is willing to pay.
Wow, who knew regions that ignored pandemic experts would suffer the worst??
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/may/13/first-thing-surge-in-new-covid-19-infections-in-republican-heartlands
Fauci won’t be fired, at least – Trump might kick him off the WH task force but his job is not in Trump’s control, thank fuck.