Everywhere I go I find a pal

Peter Weinschenk, Editor, The Record-Review

A cloud of mayflies with bright yellow egg sacks danced above the Big Rib River in Taylor County on Saturday evening. They looked like stars swimming about in the night sky.

I clipped off my streamer and, instead, tied on a No. 14 Adams fly, an old stand by. I was going to match the hatch.

This was a bold move on a stretch of the Rib I was exploring for the first time. The surface of the river was undimpled by trout rises, but I just figured the trout would respond if actual mayflies were in the air.

I tossed the fly into the tail of a spillway where the river narrowed into a deeper pool. I was in luck.

A magnificent brook trout took the fly and ran with it. It was a beaut.

It took some time to bring the fish into my hands. It was a gorgeous trout with Peter Max colored spots of blue, red and yellow across its side. The fish was chubby and fat.

I released the trout back into the river. The fish, dazed from the fight, floated momentarily before it swam back to safety.

This was the first really nice fish of the season. I was a happy camper.

qqq

Wisconsin’s Supreme Court last week Wednesday made our life with COVID-19 tougher to navigate.

Rather than rely on the government to tell us what is safe, we, as citizens, now get to figure that out for ourselves.

This is not so easy, especially if one is concerned not just with one’s own personal health but also for one’s family members.

So, I am looking at the numbers for an answer.

As of today, Marathon County has had 34 confirmed cases of COVID-19 with 16 people declared recovered. This leaves us with 18 active, confirmed cases. A study in Wuhan, China, has indicated that confirmed cases represent only 14 percent of all active cases in the population. The confirmed number of cases is, in other words, just the tip of the pandemic iceberg. If we assume the COVID-19 profile resembles that in Wuhan, this would mean Marathon County has 128 people with COVID-19.

This calculates to one case of COVID-19 for every 1,054 people in the county (pop. 135,000).

These statistics help assess risk. What they tell us is that if our rural schools were to hold in-person graduation ceremonies this week, every other ceremony attended by approximately 500 people would have somebody in the audience with COVID-19.

That is, given the number of known cases and adding in suspected cases, the chance of COVID-19 turning up in a random Marathon County crowd of 500 people is 47 percent.

Is that an acceptable risk? I will have to think this through, but the risk sort of feels high. I wouldn’t want to drive a car if there was a 47 percent chance of me winding up in a potentially fatal accident.

Here’s what my gut says: I wish the risk was less.