Wastewater Weekend - 9/14/25
Between 2,000 and 3,300 people are estimated to be dying every week from COVID. Imagine a new 9/11 happening every single week. Now think about the type of response we had to a single 9/11 attack. Compare that to what the government is doing about COVID.
Well, my streak of consecutive Wastewater Wednesdays is broken again. The start of the school year disrupts even the best laid plans. But you know what the start of the school year doesn't disrupt? COVID transmission. It's bad out there, folks.
So let's get to the wastewater data because the 💩 doesn't lie.
Wisconsin Data
DHS updated their site recently to be more mobile friendly, which means no more side scrolling and accidentally navigating away from the page! Yay! But it also made things a little weird for a bit with data from the 12th showing up on my phone while my laptop was showing the data from the 9th. Luckily everything's all synced back up now, but the data from the 9th just about gave me a heart attack when I saw the Milwaukee graph:
THANKFULLY, that seems to have turned out to be a data error and got revised downwards:
Rewinding now to look at the whole state, here's what we've got going on:
The ten sites showing significant increases are: Baraboo, Fond du Lac, Janesville, Kenosha, La Crosse, Lancaster, Madison, Menomonie, Sheboygan, and Wausau. There are several other sewersheds with high transmission, including Appleton, Hudson, and Milwaukee Jones Island.
Taking a look at Madison in particular, it's very apparent that school is now in session and knowledge is not the only thing students are acquiring at UW-Madison.
Currently the levels are about as high as last winter's peak. We're not as high as the start of last school year yet, because the summer/early fall wave started earlier last year, but the rise is steep and likely to continue.
I've seen a lot of videos going around Instagram and TikTok where people are expressing surprise at catching COVID in 2025. It's really unfortunate that our government has failed us to this extent, but it's super important to understand that the pandemic never ended - just the government response to it did.
Nationally we are now in the 11th wave, and since Wisconsin is trailing after some of the other states, particularly in the south and west, we can look to the national data as a preview of what's coming for us. Spoiler alert: it's nothing good.
National Data
This is the latest heat map from the Pandemic Mitigation Collaborative, and as you can see, like silverware at a fancy dinner, COVID is starting at the outside and working its way in.
There are a lot of states showing very high levels of transmission, some of which have been that way for weeks (Hawaii, California, Louisiana, Texas). The US is now seeing about a million new infections every day - someone is catching COVID every 10 seconds or so. The average person has now been infected with COVID 4-5 times since the start of the pandemic, racking up cumulative damage each time they catch it.
And between 2,000 and 3,300 people are estimated to be dying every week from COVID. Imagine a new 9/11 happening every single week. Now think about the type of response we had to a single 9/11 attack. Compare that to what the government is doing about COVID.
Yeah.
The pandemic isn't over.
Just the government response is.
Because in the early days of the pandemic, people got to see what it was like to have the government actually helping them. From extra unemployment payments to direct cash assistance to eviction moratoriums...we even cut the child poverty rate IN HALF.
And then the government and corporations were like WHOA. WE CANNOT LET PEOPLE GET USED TO THIS WE MUST MAKE THEM FORGET IT OR WE WILL NOT GET TO BE AS FILTHY RICH AS WE ARE!!!
So they swindled everyone into going "back to normal."
Except "normal" is not normal.
We weren't losing 2,000-3,300 people to a single infectious disease every week in the Beforetimes.
Kids weren't constantly sick every other week during the school year in the Beforetimes.
There weren't this many car crashes in the Beforetimes.
The billionaires weren't this rich in the Beforetimes.
This "normal" they're selling us isn't normal.
We need to demand better. We need better tools. We need honest leaders in charge of our institutions. We need clean air. We need respirators. We need next gen vaccines and treatments. We need treatments for Long COVID. We need universal paid sick leave. We need universal healthcare. We need OSHA standards for clean air. We need clean air in schools. We need to upend the cultural expectations of presenteeism and instead value rest and health. We need better. We deserve better. Our leaders are failing us. But that doesn't mean we have to fail each other.
Each of us by ourselves may not be able to fix the whole system. But as in the starfish story, we can make a difference to the individual people in our lives. We can choose to mask back up. We can choose to hold a gathering outdoors. We can choose to open a window. We can choose to stay home when we're sick. We can make a difference.
Please make a difference.