Author: Wisconsin Watch

Health experts call contact tracing essential for slowing COVID-19, but misinformation is circulating in Wisconsin and its negative impact is exhausting some local officials. Having posed a series of increasingly paranoid-sounding questions about the local response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Appleton City Council member William Siebers cleared his throat, preparing for the most outlandish yet. “I’ve got to be serious,” he said. “Are there going to be any cameras situated in the city of Appleton that (are) going to supervise anybody who is quarantined or isolated in their homes, to make sure they don’t leave their homes?” Siebers’ question...

Significant numbers of Milwaukee voters were dissuaded from voting on April 7 by the sharp reduction in polling places and the threat of the COVID-19 pandemic — with the biggest effects seen among Black voters, according to a new study. Researchers from the Brennan Center for Justice say their study is the first to measure the impact of the pandemic on voting behavior. The study found that Milwaukee’s decision to close all but five of its 182 polling places reduced voting among non-Black voters in Milwaukee by 8.5 percentage points, and that COVID-19 may have further reduced turnout by...

Mia White was stepping off the walking track at Taycheedah Correctional Institution in 2018 when the ground crumbled beneath her feet and her back popped. Her spine, fractured and bulging, deteriorated for months while she begged medical staff to order imaging of her back. White says her spine became arthritic, and she developed blood clots that burned in the back of her leg. Sometimes she woke in the middle of the night, gasping for air, the result of an enlarged heart. Now housed at the minimum security Robert E. Ellsworth Correctional Center, White struggles throughout the day to breathe...

Wisconsin already faced a shortage of caregivers who offer crucial services and independence to people with disabilities. Then the pandemic struck. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Stacy Ellingen of Oshkosh lost two of the three caregivers she depends on to dress, shower, eat and use the bathroom. The helpers — all University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh students — returned to their parents’ homes when the university canceled in-person classes. Ellingen, 34, had little choice but to do the same — moving back to her parents’ home in Fond du Lac. Matt Ford, 55, already lived with his 76-year-old father, his primary...