Math is hard

 My hometown newspaper, the Post-Crescent of Appleton, Wisconsin, has an alarming headline:

Some. What's going on in Wisconsin? The article reports:

Eight Wisconsin metro areas have landed on the New York Times' list of places across the country where new cases of COVID-19 are rising the fastest. 

La Crosse is number one on the New York Times' list, which was updated Thursday afternoon. In third is Whitewater, and the Oshkosh-Neenah area is in eighth. Stevens Point, Appleton, Platteville, Madison and Green Bay take up the 15th through 19th spots of the list, respectively. 

With the exception of Appleton, all the Wisconsin cities on the list are home to a University of Wisconsin System campus. 

Appleton, in the crosshairs, even without a UW campus! And then we get the numbers:

According to the New York Times' analysis, comparing the number of cases from a week ago to now, adjusting for population, the following Wisconsin metro areas have seen an increase of:

La Crosse: 436 new cases per 100,000 people

Whitewater: 228 new cases per 100,000 people 

Oshkosh-Neenah: 157 new cases per 100,000 people 

Stevens Point: 106 new cases per 100,000 people

Appleton: 105 new cases per 100,000 people 

Platteville: 101 new cases per 100,000 people 

Madison: 98.4 new cases per 100,000 people 

Green Bay: 97.9 new cases per 100,000 people

105 cases per 100,000 people! But let's do the math -- that's 1/10th of 1%. That means 1 out of 1000. This is a crisis?

The Post Crescent used to be an interesting newspaper, but like most daily newspapers in Wisconsin it is now a Gannett property. Those are the same simps who run USA Today. And the dumbed-down version of journalism they've been pumping for 40 years is now what you get in my hometown. This is not progress.