The Wisconsin Department of Health Services has recommended COVID testing for all persons who live and work in Brown County.
The testing centers have a pretty convenient registration and drive-through process, but it’s still about a half hour of your life spent waiting.
“But I feel fine, and I’ve barely been out of my house! I don’t need a test!” you might be saying. And you’re right…you personally don’t need one, just like you personally don’t need census data.
But it’s still important to do it.
Asymptomatic testing ain’t about you. The data isn’t for you. It’s for the health departments and the epidemiologists who are still trying to get a better estimate of what the virus has done, is doing, and can do.
After everything COVID has already cost us all – the fear, the disruptions, the jobs, the isolation and boredom, and the growing mistrust in our public servants – another ask for the greater good seems like a lot.
But think back to all those numbers you heard early in the pandemic about transmissibility, the high number of asymptomatic carriers, and the estimated death rate…all those numbers you used to decide how scared (or not) to be, and how seriously (or not) to take the isolation recommendations. Those figures didn’t come from nowhere. They came from countries that were already grappling with COVID-19 and had some clumps of data to work with.
Yes, some of the numbers we’ve heard haven’t always been very accurate. But the only way they get more accurate is with better measurement, and that means a lot more data points…like yours.
Better numbers will hopefully help us make smarter decisions about when we can go back to something like normal life, and what we do (and don’t) need to do when COVID breaks out again. Maybe it’ll be less than we’ve done, maybe it’ll be more.
But wouldn’t it be better not to have to guess?