News Room

Epidemiological data suggests that COVID-19 cases must drop for 14 days before a state should consider opening nonessential businesses. Yet numerous states have begun opening anyway, well before they’ve achieved that milestone. Illinois, meanwhile, was one of the first states to adopt a stay-at-home order, and it is on track to be one of the last to end it.

Vicki Bier, Ph.D., University of Wisconsin, discusses lessons learned from the 1918 Spanish Flu Pandemic. 

More than three weeks after 413,000 Wisconsin voters went to the polls, there has not been the spike in COVID-19 cases attributed to the election that many feared.

Mayor Bill de Blasio doesn’t want to just restart the city’s economy, sighs Seth Barron at City Journal — he wants to “transform” it. “For six boom years,” he spent “tens of billions” pursuing his “equity agenda” and hiring “tens of thousands of new municipal employees.” Yet his message as the city faces the coronavirus “sounds strikingly similar to his message pre-crisis.” In fact, de Blasio “has spoken of the ‘transformative’ nature of his administration so often that it prompts groans from anyone outside his closest orbit.” Meanwhile, “homeless people fill New York’s subways,” crime is on the rise and tenants have “no idea” how to pay their rent. With the city “spiraling into crisis,” the mayor “continues to sound the one note he knows how to play — about unfairness and inequality” — even though “his instrument is out of tune.”

New data shows Wisconsinites might be growing less compliant with social distancing measures meant to slow the spread of COVID-19. But public health researchers say "quarantine fatigue" isn't a reason to give up on the restrictions.