Some experts are surprised that following through on holding a state election earlier this month did not cause a spike in coronavirus cases.
“I don’t think that the in-person election led to a major effect, to my surprise,” Oguzhan Alagaoz, an infectious disease expert at the University of Wisconsin, told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. “I expected it.”
Out of 400,000 people who either voted or worked at the polling place, 52 people have since tested positive for the virus, which has yielded no fatalities.
The state will stop asking people who contract the virus if they were at the polls on April 7 due to the belief that too much time has passed, according to the head of the state health agency. “We’re getting to the point where the door will be closing on those,” Julie Willems Van Dijk said.
“With the data we have, we can’t prove an association,” Ryan Westergaard, the chief medical officer at the Department of Health Services, said to those speculating that the election caused a spike in coronavirus cases. “It would be speculative to say that was definitely the cause without really investigating closely and being clear that somebody really had no other potential exposure to infected people. I don’t think we have the resources to really do that, to know definitely.”
A Wisconsin lawmaker floated the theory last week that a recent surge in virus cases was because of the election, a statement Politifact Wisconsin deemed as “false,” and experts are saying it is more likely several local meatpacking factories were the reason for that.
Many Democrats criticized officials in the state for allowing the election to take place, claiming it would lead to loss of life from the virus, and Wisconsin’s governor tried to postpone the election via executive order citing coronavirus fears to no avail.
Prominent Democrats across the country, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and former first lady Michelle Obama, used the election as an opportunity to call for an increase in mail-in voting despite widespread questions about voter fraud and missing mail-in ballots.
Democratic strategist James Carville and others pointed to the Wisconsin election as proof that Republicans are willing to “literally kill people” in order to stay in power.
