Here & Now

Here & Now for November 20, 2020

Announcer:

The following program is a PBS Wisconsin original production.

Tony Evers:

I’ll be declaring a new state of emergency this week and extending our public health emergency until January of next year.

Frederica Freyberg:

Governor Tony Evers this week extends the state mask mandate even as his original order remains in courts. Republican leadership speaks to the political log jam over COVID relief.

Robin Vos:

Governor Evers is the governor and the Legislature is controlled by Republicans. We’ve got to figure a way to get this done.

Frederica Freyberg:

While the pandemic rages, so too do the states electoral politics with the Trump campaign paying for a two-county recount that started today. I’m Frederica Freyberg. Tonight on “Here & Now.” In a moment Wisconsin Public Radio’s Shawn Johnson has the latest on the recount and the politics of COVID at the state Capitol. Coronavirus updates from the state deputy health secretary as well as the UW System President Tommy Thompson and Zac Schulz reports from the field, literally, on COVID’s impact on the deer hunt. It is “Here & Now” for November 20.

Announcer:

Funding for “Here & Now” is provided by the Focus Fund for Journalism and Friends of PBS Wisconsin.

Frederica Freyberg:

Presidential election recounts are now underway in Dane and Milwaukee Counties. The Trump campaign requested the partial recount this week in counties that vote overwhelmingly democratic. The 2016 presidential election recount changed results by fewer than 150 votes but this time the Trump campaign is alleging mistakes and fraud in counting and return of votes cast in the state’s two most populous counties. We check in now with Wisconsin Public Radio Capitol Bureau Chief Shawn Johnson. Nice to see you Shawn.

Shawn Johnson:

Good to see you.

Frederica Freyberg:

So as you know, all eyes on Wisconsin and here’s a rundown of Trump campaign allegations in its recount petition including that clerks “cured” ballots, that not requesting an absentee ballot in writing contravenes state law, that more than 200,000 people voted absentee as “indefinitely confined” without voter ID and observers in Milwaukee couldn’t get close enough. Seems like they’re kind of trying to run the table on allegations of fraud in our election process and made those challenges today at the Milwaukee and Madison recount sites seeking to throw out something on the order of like 200,000 plus ballots. How does this get resolved?

Shawn Johnson:

You could only imagine it probably gets resolved in a court somewhere, probably in a state court and in a state Supreme Court because what they are doing is not like a recount like you think of with, you know, 2,000 in Florida where they’re examining hanging chads or something. They’re challenging the system basically, the entire system of absentee balloting and the advice that clerks have followed from the state Elections Commission on how that system is run. Essentially they’re trying to upend the whole thing. So kind of necessarily, a court is probably have to get involved in that.

Frederica Freyberg:

I would say. Courts could rule, then, to throw out the votes and flip the results and change Wisconsin’s 10 electoral votes to Trump. Are we getting ahead of ourselves by talking about that kind of thing?

Shawn Johnson:

On the one hand you hear what you just said and think maybe we shouldn’t go that far, right? That’s never happened before. And typically a recount is kind of unceremonious. We had one four years ago. Didn’t change much. Let’s just let the system play out. On the other hand what the Trump campaign is looking to do here is, as you mentioned, throw out just broad swaths of votes that were cast in two counties that really delivered Wisconsin to Joe Biden. And so if they are successful in court that would necessarily change the outcome of the race depending on how many votes they end up challenging.

Frederica Freyberg:

The nuts and bolts of the recount are that it is supposed to be finished by December 1st and certified by our Elections Commission. That could all go out the window, though, that kind of timeline. What then?

Shawn Johnson:

What then is probably anybody’s guess because that’s something we haven’t been through before. It is something that election experts were kind of warning about ahead of this election. This idea that what if the state can’t agree on what electors to send? And so that’s kind of a bridge that we have to cross when we get to it because we haven’t been down that road before where instead of state voters deciding who represents them in this process, it gets decided by Washington.

Frederica Freyberg:

Wow. Well, let’s switch back to Wisconsin because meanwhile in the state Legislature Republicans were planning to hold their own investigation into this election this week. Haven’t heard anything on that. What do you know?

Shawn Johnson:

So just got an email from Representative Ron Tusler who is leading the investigation in the Assembly. He said they are investigating as he put it. They haven’t met yet but they are investigating the election and that they were going to hold a meeting on the 24th of November but held off at the request of the Elections Commission until the recount is done. But that is definitely moving forward.

Frederica Freyberg:

Interesting. Thank you for that update. Also on COVID and COVID relief legislation, Governor Evers and Republican Speaker Robin Vos met today. What do we know about whether anything might be forthcoming from that?

Shawn Johnson:

What we know is that they both said nice things about the meeting and kind of said it’s a step in the right direction. Beyond that we don’t know much. I mean, if you look at what the governor has talked about, what he introduced this week. Some of the big pieces of his latest COVID-19 bill include $540 plus million dollars to continue testing currently being funded by the federal government. A potential ban on evictions. Speaker Vos has said those are non-starters with him. When it comes to other stuff like mitigation efforts, a mask mandate for example, Governor Evers and Republicans are definitely far apart on that, too. They’re meeting but we don’t know what they can agree to.

Frederica Freyberg:

That seems like a good first step. Shawn Johnson, thanks very much for joining us.

Shawn Johnson:

Thanks Fred.

Frederica Freyberg:

The COVID-19 surge in Wisconsin does not appear to be relenting. More records for positive cases and deaths set again this week but help is on the way. New vaccines are in the final stages of approval and Wisconsin is now planning for how to acquire and distribute them. Chief to that task deputy secretary of the Department of Health Services Julie Willems Van Dijk who joins us now. Deputy Secretary, thanks very much for joining us.

Julie Willems Van Dijk:

You’re welcome.

Frederica Freyberg:

The governor declared another emergency order this week and extended the mask mandate which has been in effect since summer. Why hasn’t the mandate worked effectively to slow the spread?

Julie Willems Van Dijk:

To clarify, facemasks and facial coverings can certainly work very well but what it requires us is to have a very high uptake and compliance with that. Estimated probably we need to have 80 to 90% of the population regularly wearing a mask in order for us to see the desired effects. I think — so I think there is opportunity for us to improve in that regard across the state. The other thing is last week we received some really good news from CDC. We’ve been saying all along that facial coverings protect you from me, but emerging evidence also says that facial coverings like the one I’m wearing now protect me from you and so it’s really a win/win for people to wear facial coverings and it also has to be — this isn’t a panacea. It has to be combined with the other important preventive mechanisms we talk about. Staying six feet apart from each other. Staying home if you’re sick. Washing your hands. Don’t touch your face. Don’t touch your mask. One of the things that annoys me the most is watching people on TV adjusting their mask all the time. Those are the things we need to do in order to improve the effectiveness of wearing masks.

Frederica Freyberg:

Describe the situation now in Wisconsin as it weathers this surge in COVID cases.

Julie Willems Van Dijk:

Yeah. We’re in a really tough place right now. We have a still very rapid increase in cases. We’re running second behind Texas in total number of cases, third behind the Dakotas in the rate of cases and as a result, we’re also starting to see what we knew would happen if we continued this rapid increase, hospitals filling up. Unfortunately our rates of death increasing. This week alone we’ve had several days with 70, 80, 90 people dying each day from this disease. So we’re also rivaling New York City. Right now, we have about 6400 cases per day and at the peak in New York City in the spring, they were at 5300 cases. We’re over 1,000 cases more a day than New York City at the peak and that’s why these preventive measures are so important now. It’s our major tool to start bringing this rate down.

Frederica Freyberg:

Meanwhile the Department of Health Services is planning for distribution of a vaccine that could start arriving by the end of the year. Now you have described this work as even more complicated than you ever imagined. How so?

Julie Willems Van Dijk:

Well, we’re going to have vaccine coming from a number of different manufacturers. Each manufacturer will have different requirements for the schedule of the vaccine, the storage of the vaccine. As many people have heard, some of the first vaccine, in fact the Pfizer vaccine which is applying today for their emergency use authorization, has to be stored at very cold temperatures. And so we’re going to need to do a lot of really good logistical planning to make sure we store it right and distribute it right to the right people.

Frederica Freyberg:

Speaking of that, we want to know who gets it first and how much supply of it will come into Wisconsin? And how long will it take to roll out to the general population?

Julie Willems Van Dijk:

Yeah. We don’t know how much we’ll get initially quite yet. It will not be enough. I do know that. And therefore we’ll be distributing this vaccine in a phased manner. Our federal partners will be helping us with prioritization. We anticipate healthcare workers will likely be first. Next in line will be people living in long-term care facilities, our most vulnerable, and then we’ll expand to other populations as vaccine supply increases. It is likely to increase over the next few months after we receive our initial supplies and it is going to take a good amount of 2021 to get the vaccine into everybody’s arm who needs it. In the meantime, we need to continue to just keeping on with face coverings, social distancing, hand washing, testing, and contact tracing and all the things we’re doing to control the disease.

Frederica Freyberg:

We very much appreciate your information Deputy Secretary Julie Willems Van Dijk. Thank you very much.

Julie Willems Van Dijk:

Thank you.

Frederica Freyberg:

UW System President Tommy Thompson is taking it out on COVID.

Tommy Thompson:

Time to put the hammer down. Smash COVID.

Frederica Freyberg:

Thompson is smashing pumpkins to promote surge testing on UW campuses. We sat down with the former Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, former governor and now interim president of the UW to ask about the system’s approach to mitigating infection, especially ahead of the holidays. We should note PBS Wisconsin is part of the UW System. Governor, thank you very much for joining us.

Tommy Thompson:

Frederica, it’s always a privilege to be on your program and be interviewed by you. It’s been many years that you and I have had interviews and always a pleasant experience for me. Thank you.

Frederica Freyberg:

You are welcome, true enough. I wanted to ask first why did you partner with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to set up these surge rapid results testing sites on UW campuses?

Tommy Thompson:

We didn’t actually join with them. They came out and observed what we were doing. We were quite successful in knocking down the spread of this terrible insidious virus epidemic. They asked would it be possible to do that in a wider (audio breaks up) … give us the test and give us some resources to hire individuals. And they came in and gave us 208 individuals to help implement it and 250,000 (audio breaks up). They wanted us to see if we could knock down this terrible spiral that’s going on in the state of Wisconsin. We’re just getting hit terribly with this virus and it is affecting everybody: education, TV, communication, farmers, business people, all over. Especially the educators. So I wanted to help them and they gave me this opportunity. We were chosen by them to be the beta case to try something new and if we’re successful here, they want to turn it out across the nation and the Biden people are calling me tomorrow to talk to me about it. So it’s getting some exposure because we have been successful.

Frederica Freyberg:

How successful has it been? How many people on campuses and in the community have availed themselves of those tests at those sites?

Tommy Thompson:

We’ve only been in operation a little — about two weeks and we’re still setting up sites but we’ve already tested 35,000 individuals (audio breaks up)…because communities all over the state where we have a campus can come in, free of charge, get a very quick test. We can be in and out — in and out in about 30 minutes and have a test to prove you’re negative or positive. If you’re positive, we want you to quarantine and then we also have what is called the confirmatory test to make sure that if you test positive, you have a second test which goes into a laboratory which is more expensive. We’ve been able (audio breaks up) about 6,000 cases so far that are positive. 6,500 out of that 35,000 that were positive.

Frederica Freyberg:

Okay. And that 6,000 is just within the couple of weeks that you’ve been testing or since the beginning kind of of the pandemic?

Tommy Thompson:

Since the beginning — since the beginning (audio breaks up) 240,000 tests. And out of the 640,000 tests we have 6,591.

Frederica Freyberg:

Back to the rapid test, how reliable are those?

Tommy Thompson:

I would say they are in the neighborhood of 80 to 85%. There’s going to be some false negatives and some false positives but the truth of the matter is — you (audio breaks up) accurate it is, you want to look at how many people that are positive. If you’re positive and it is confirmed positive, then quarantine them so they don’t spread it. The biggest problem with this epidemic, this pandemic, is the fact that you have (audio breaks up) he or she is asymptomatic, no signs but is still spewing that virus out when he or she is out and around in the public. For the first 72 hours, there’s usually no symptoms. We want to get to that individual early and say to that young man or young lady or whoever it is, an elderly person and say stay home, quarantine. You may have it. Get ready, get rested and get some therapies ready to take.

Frederica Freyberg:

So Wisconsin COVID cases are surging as we’ve described it crisis numbers according to state health officials, Dane County’s new emergency order bans indoor gatherings of people from different households. As students from across Wisconsin prepare for Thanksgiving break, what is UW guidance to them?

Tommy Thompson:

We’re telling those students we would rather have you stay on campus. We would rather have you stay in your dorm. That’s our preference. But we know students are going to go home over Thanksgiving. I did and you did. That’s the rite of passage. You go home for Thanksgiving and you go home for Christmas. We know that. Since we don’t want them to go home and infect their families, we want them tested before they go home. (audio breaks up) young woman that’s a student, get tested and then, if they want to come back after Thanksgiving they have to get tested twice. Once before they can move back into the dorms or back into school, they have to be tested and then they have to be tested again that first week. We want to make sure they don’t bring the epidemic, the virus back home from home back to the campus. So we’re being extra careful. But this is how we’ve been successful. We’ve been (audio breaks up) we’ve been diligent. We’ve taken a leadership position, and we’re driving down those individuals that are spreading it and quarantining them. If they test positive isolate them.

Frederica Freyberg:

Governor Tommy Thompson, president of the UW System, we need to leave it there. Thank you very much.

Tommy Thompson:

You’re wonderful. Have a great weekend. Thank you.

Frederica Freyberg:

Thompson says classes on most UW campuses will be fully online after Thanksgiving except for Green Bay and Oshkosh where students will return to in-person instruction.

And now this, tomorrow marks the start of the annual gun deer hunting season and there is concern among health experts that hunters traveling across the state could lead to multiple COVID-19 super spreader events. Senior Political Reporter Zac Schultz spoke with hunters and bar owners about how the pandemic is altering some old traditions.

Marty Wimmer:

Same sweatshirt, did I tell you?

Zac Schultz:

Larry Smith and Marty Wimmer are part of a group that’s been hunting together for a couple decades on Larry’s old family farm.

Larry Smith:

Well, I just enjoy the comradeship. We all get together and have a good, relaxing time.

Zac Schultz:

But as the COVID-19 pandemic continued to spiral out of control, they realized this year’s hunt would have to change.

Marty Wimmer:

The last month or so we’ve been talking to the group and, you know, things are going to be different this year.

Zac Schultz:

Although the old farmhouse is big enough to sleep 10, this year it will just be Larry who sleeps overnight.

Larry Smith:

The rest of the guys are going to drive back and forth.

Zac Schultz:

Marty will be driving 80 miles each way. He says it’s still worth it.

Marty Wimmer:

It is not the hunt that’s the most important thing to me. Really the guys and being together with them. That’s what’s critical.

Larry Smith:

We’re not going to have the camaraderie in the evenings but we will have the ability to get together out in the pastures.

Zac Schultz:

The Wisconsin DNR is advising hunters to avoid driving across the state to hunt.

Keith Warnke:

We’re recommending that hunters keep hunting local and they do it with members of their household to best avoid spreading COVID-19.

Zac Schultz:

Keith Warnke is the administrator for the Fish, Wildlife and Parks Division. He says despite the changes to traditional hunting camp, license sales for outdoor activities like fishing and hunting are up this year.

Keith Warnke:

I think what we’re seeing when we look at our license figures is that it’s a lot of people who previously had hunted or had gone fishing and they are getting back to it now.

Zac Schultz:

But hunting is more than just tradition. It is a multi-billion dollar industry and if hunters stay close to home, it will have a dramatic impact on bars and restaurants.

Diane Wulff:

If it wasn’t for my customers, I would have been shut down.

Zac Schultz:

Diane and Marvin Wulff own Diane’s Back 40 in Taylor County. Deer season usually means a packed house.

Marvin Wulff:

In normal deer season, we do breakfast, serve breakfast in the morning. The weekends are the biggest.

Zac Schultz:

They’ve been struggling to stay open during the pandemic and they are afraid the deer hunter crowds will be just one more casualty of COVID-19.

Marvin Wulff:

Honestly, it pays your taxes for the year. And it’s not going to happen this year, I know it already. I’ve talked to people and they are staying close to home. Or the wife doesn’t feel comfortable with them going out or — I think it’s going to be a bomb, just a complete failure.

Marty Wimmer:

It will be different. It will be another experience.

Zac Schultz:

Larry and Marty won’t be visiting their traditional restaurant on the night before opener.

Larry Smith:

Every Friday night for probably 20 years we went to the same place for dinner.

Zac Schultz:

Marty knows what he will think when he drives by a bar with a full parking lot.

Marty Wimmer:

I’m glad I’m not in there. You know, again, it’s their choice.

Zac Schultz:

Choice is the key word in all of this. Public health officials advise against crowding into bars and restaurants. Even if mask mandates and smaller capacity limits are in place, it is still up to the individuals involved to enforce it.

Marvin Wulff:

A lot of it we leave it to the customers if they choose to wear a mask or social distance or what have you. That’s how we read it.

Zac Schultz:

Diane and Marvin say they wear masks when they go out in public but they don’t require it of their customers and they try not to think about whether a customer may be bringing COVID in the door with them.

Diane Wulff:

You have to, otherwise you’re going to be paranoid.

Marvin Wulff:

You just have to put that on the back burner. It is part of doing business.

Zac Schultz:

Just down the road from Diane’s Back 40 is another bar. This one closed and for sale. A cold reminder of what happens when there aren’t enough customers to pay the bills.

Larry Smith:

I don’t want to get someone sick.

Zac Schultz:

For Larry Smith’s group the pandemic requires a change in tradition in the name of safety.

Larry Smith:

We’re going to be careful and we’re not going to bring anything back to our family and I feel confident that we can do that.

Zac Schultz:

Diane and Marvin Wulff will sacrifice safety in the hopes some hunters will maintain tradition.

Marvin Wulff:

The ones that come out to hunt, they will come out, I believe. That’s part of the hunting camp-type tradition thing. But the ones that aren’t going to want to go to the bars or restaurants and stuff like that, they’re just going to stay home.

Zac Schultz:

Reporting from Taylor County, I’m Zac Schulz for “Here & Now.”

Frederica Freyberg:

As Zac reported, deer hunting like all aspects of life in Wisconsin will be altered due to COVID. The emergency services director of Bellin Hospital in Green Bay told us he believes traditional large gatherings at deer camps have the potential to become spreader events. Dr. Paul Casey said precautions and changes in traditions are the best route to take.

Paul Casey:

I would say try to limit your congregation and your deer hunt or whatever place you stay when you go deer hunting to people within your immediate family. If not, try to wear masks and properly social distance.

Frederica Freyberg:

A national survey says 2 out of 5 Americans will likely attend large holiday gatherings as public health officials are bracing themselves for an additional surge of positive COVID cases. Sara Lornson is a public health nurse and contact tracer in De Pere says they already can’t keep up with the current workload and gives this advice ahead of the holiday season.

Sara Lornson:

If you have minor symptoms, a cold-like symptoms or allergy-like symptoms, you could very well have COVID. Right now it is community spread. We’re seeing such a surge in cases. With the holiday season among us, you really need to be aware of yourself and where you’ve been and have you been taking those precautions or are you putting yourself, other people at risk for being exposed to the virus.

Frederica Freyberg:

For continued coverage on the COVID crisis as well as the latest on the Wisconsin recount story, go to PBSwisconsin.org and then click on the news tab.

Also for ongoing, in-depth coverage of the COVID-19, visit our partner news site at WisContext.org. That is our program of tonight. I’m Frederica Freyberg. Have a great weekend.

Announcer:

Funding for “Here & Now” is provided by the Focus Fund for Journalism and Friends of PBS Wisconsin.