Here & Now

COVID at ‘Nightmare Scenario’ in Wisconsin

Frederica Freyberg:

The CDC’s Dr. Anthony Fauci is now talking about a national mask mandate as COVID cases continue to surge. And Wisconsin is among the nation’s hot spots, today again posting more than 5,000 positive cases. For the latest on our situation we turn to chief medical officer for Wisconsin, Dr. Ryan Westergaard. Thanks very much for being here.

Ryan Westergaard:

Hi, it’s nice to be with you.

Frederica Freyberg:

So Wisconsin exceeded 5,000 cases twice this week, including as we said today. You said this week that we were in “a nightmare scenario.” What does that mean?

Ryan Westergaard:

The things that we’ve been most fearful of and most concerned about for the past six months or so is that when the respiratory virus season comes, which generally starts in October, November that this could really take off. And those were the reasons that we were very aggressively trying to do what we could to stop transmission, to make the epidemic as small, as mild as it could be over the summer. We failed to do that and we’re now seeing with the change in the weather and more people coming inside that the epidemic is actually accelerating and it’s doing so faster and earlier than we had feared. Thus translating to larger number of hospitalizations and cases every day like you mentioned and a larger number of deaths than we hoped to see at this point.

Frederica Freyberg:

You also say that you are surprised that we have failed to slow the spread. 10% of the population in Wisconsin has been infected so far. What happens if we continue to fail to slow the spread?

Ryan Westergaard:

Well, the very concerning thing about this novel coronavirus is that it’s novel, that the human population doesn’t have immunity to it in the same way that for seasonal influenza we do. What we’ve seen in small outbreaks in close settings is 70%, 80%, 90% of people can become infected with this virus if we don’t do things to stop it. So that could happen on a population level. We could be getting the large majority of people infected and that would translate to really high numbers of deaths. So we really need to not let that happen. We need to implement a plan to reduce infections and try to get it to a manageable level so we can minimize the deaths.

Frederica Freyberg:

Because yourself and other public health officials say there is still time to reverse this trajectory, but how do we do that?

Ryan Westergaard:

Well, we know what it looks like and it feels like. And it’s not easy. We have to think back to March, where we in Wisconsin as much of the world was really shut down. The streets were largely empty. People were dramatically restricting their activity and their movements. It is very difficult, as everybody knows. But unfortunately that’s the playbook that we have. When you look at countries that have flattened the curve, that have largely eliminated transmission of this virus, that’s what it takes. So we really need to get back to that place where we are very aggressively limiting our interaction with other people.

Frederica Freyberg:

Meanwhile, President Donald Trump has been holding these mega rallies repeatedly in Wisconsin, another today. If you look at those attending, they’re close together, most of them not wearing masks. Did these rallies contribute to the spread in these states?

Ryan Westergaard:

It’s likely that they do. Those conditions that you described, close together, not wearing masks, talking loudly, that’s the recipe for spreading this virus. We don’t know for certain. We have lost the ability to measure with a great deal of precision where and how big these clusters are because the cases have gotten so large. So our local public health workforce that tries to track outbreaks and clusters, right now they can’t keep up. So we’re in an environment where the virus is everywhere. We don’t have the information we need to know exactly who is at risk and when. And that makes these types of gatherings even more dangerous.

Frederica Freyberg:

Does the message remain wear masks, wash hands, distance and now stay home?

Ryan Westergaard:

Yes. Those are the tools that we have. And I think what you mentioned, the distancing and the staying home, where we’re at right now we need to think about those in more aggressive terms than we have in the past if we’re going to make a difference.

Frederica Freyberg:

All right. We need to leave it there. Thanks very much, Dr. Ryan Westergaard.

Ryan Westergaard:

Thanks.