A viral tweet made the rounds over the weekend, from an account called “Coronavirus Update.” Posted Sunday, it stated “BREAKING NEWS: At least 75 protestors tested positive for COVID-19 after attending a large rally against the stay-at-home order in Wisconsin.”
The tweet has been retweeted and liked thousands of times, and also quoted by other Twitter users, many of them in replies to President Trump. It seems to confirm suspicions that those protesting in close quarters against lockdowns are putting themselves at risk for coronavirus infection.
There was, indeed, a large protest at Wisconsin’s state capitol in Madison, which took place on April 24 and consisted of around 1,500 attendees. And yes, more than 70 people in Wisconsin have tested positive for the virus after attending a “large gathering” in recent weeks. But it has not been established that all or even most of those positive tests came from attendees at that specific protest.
According to an Associated Press story last Friday, the state’s Department of Health makes a practice of asking those who have tested positive for COVID-19 if they have attended “any large gatherings.” The department does not, however ask which specific gathering the person attended, nor is it clear what the definition is of “large gatherings.” It did ask whether those who tested positive had voted in the state’s controversial April 7 primary election, but did not do so about the protest.
So in other words, it is possible that some of those 75 new cases came from those who attended the rally in Madison on the 24th, but it’s far from confirmed that that is the case.
It’s not clear what the source was for the “Coronavirus Update” tweet. Some sites, including WBAY and Channel One News, have run a picture of the Madison rally with that AP story, as did a website called Up North News, which is part of the Courier Newsroom network of surreptitiously liberal-leaning hyperlocal news sites. The latter site did make clear in the text of its story, however, that attendees weren’t asked which gathering they had attended.
Wisconsin’s current stay-at-home order runs through May 26. The state has reported nearly 2,000 new coronavirus cases since April 26, of which only 72 had attended a large gathering, the AP story said.
Like many states targeted by the anti-lockdown protests, Wisconsin has a Democratic governor, Tony Evers, who defeated two-term incumbent and former presidential candidate Scott Walker in 2018. The governor recently announced guidelines for reopening the state, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reported.
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